Famous Biography

Recently, the Spanish dance troupe called Increpacion Danza staged a production featuring Lola Montez in London which was reported by Times Online. The show included a ‘faux’ sister for Lola called Minnie but clearly they didn’t know that she had a real sister called Catherine Hayes. This is my letter to the Times Online.

Dear Donald Hutera

I read your article with interest because Lola Montez had a real sister called Catherine Hayes. I wrote a comment but I’m not sure if it went through so this is it again:

“Lola Montez had a real twin sister! It was Catherine Hayes, the opera star. Their natural mother was Mary Hayes who was born in Devonshire. Lola was adopted by Eliza Gilbert (nee Eliza Oliver-Green) who was unable to have children. My new book ‘Virtue and Vice’ will detail the evidence.”

I wrote to Increpación Danza a couple of months ago offering to try to promote their show in Ireland but I received no response. I think they should include the character of Catherine Hayes as a singer either of opera or ballads and I’ve one who has learned a particular song for me to promote my book.

I announced at the Frankfurt Book Fair that Catherine Hayes and Lola Montez were twins but I don’t think it was picked up by the press who didn’t visit the Irish stand at all as far as I know. However, I got an interview with a film producer who expressed an interest. The new and true life story of Catherine Hayes and Lola Montez will make an excellent TV series or film far better than any that I’ve seen. I’m interested in selling the TV/Film rights and various foreign translations.

At present, I’m collating my hundreds of research documents and writing up the chapters of the book “Virtue and Vice”. This began as a genealogical exercise to check if Catherine Hayes was one of our ancestors from Limerick. It then developed into a biography of the opera singer and finally , the Lola Montez connection became obvious. This meant a lot more research had to be done into the life of Lola Montez and Bruce Seymour has been helpful to me in this respect.

I’ve also used ‘The Times’ Online archive to help with my research and found one quite interesting account of Mary Hayes having had some of Catherine’s jewellery stolen from her house. This is curious since all of Catherine’s jewellery was supposed to have been left to George Power.

Hash or Rehash?

I’ve an email from a gentleman who said I was doing a rehash of the Catherine Hayes story. I quite agree with him that what has been written by others up to now was a hash i.e. mess up of her true life history. However, I’m not rehashing their efforts. If that was all I had to offer readers, I’d have packed it in years ago. People should know that I started to study Catherine Hayes because there was talk in our family about a great singer from Limerick who was part of our ancestry. So far, I’ve been able to trace my great grandfather to Tipperary which is the next county to Limerick. His father or grandfather might well have moved over the county line. I haven’t yet found the missing links but I sure found out plenty about the life of Catherine Hayes and those who were close to her.

Looking for the Truth

Anyone who undertakes a serious study of the life of Catherine Hayes will be forced to conclude that a lot of rubbish has been written about her. One author admitted to me that his researcher failed to find the records. I’d asked because his book didn’t agree with what I’d seen and copied from the archives . Not that all official or Church records are true. Wealthy and influential people paid to have records lost, altered or replaced when it suited their purpose. The preservation of family honour or obtaining a legacy were very compelling reasons to hide or destroy the truth.

One of the many mysteries surrounding Catherine Hayes is her birth date and parentage. Her mother Mary claims to have been born in Devonshire on the English 1861 and 1871 census returns shown here:

The above is from the 1861 return and below is 1871 when Mary and Henrietta are living together with no servants.

It would appear that Mary Hayes was really born in Devonshire since there can be no transcription error. She was always imaginative about ages  as you can see by comparing the two returns  which are 10 years apart. It’s not clear whether it’s 76 or 70 on the form but a lot nearer the truth than the 50 declared in 1861. It would appear now that Catherine Hayes was  both Anglo-Irish and Church of Ireland.

When I found a Memoir of Catherine Hayes published by her agents, Messrs. Cramer & Beale of London, I thought now I can get the facts and eliminate all the silly stuff printed elsewhere. It turned out that all the other wrong short biographies of Miss Hayes had been largely based on this Cramer & Beale one. I won’t go into all it’s shortcomings here but let’s consider one major issue i.e. her education and early childhood in Limerick.

The traditional and, I have to say, accepted view to date is that she was a poor widow’s or deserted wife’s daughter with a natural talent for singing and that she was discovered by Bishop Knox as he was boating on the river Shannon. She was overheard as she sung in a bower in the Earl’s garden where she was helping her aunt who was a domestic servant there. They remarked on her fine trill.

No dount about her talent but the rest is humbug. Miss Hayes was never a servant, neither was her mother and Mrs. Daly was only an honorary aunt. The truth is that Catherine was brought up as an aristocrat’s daughter as was her sister Henrietta. They went to a young ladies academy where they learned Music, French, Italian, English and Elocution. Their mother was a rich man’s mistress whose husband had mysteriously disappeared and was never seen again.

The question now is: How do you, as a researcher, decide that all is not well with the generally accepted view of events? When you study life in Limerick in the 1820’s it should soon become apparent that there was great poverty, no schools for the poor, deserted wives could barely live never mind pay for an education. If they had the money, their children would be refused admission because only a gentleman’s daughters would qualify. By now, you should be seriously querying the published accounts of your subject’s early life and looking for alternative answers.

We have those alternative and correct answers provided for us by a close friend of the family. He details the education enjoyed by Catherine and Henrietta at a private academy and even describes their Italian and French teachers. There is later evidence in the form of letters and the employment of Henrietta that she knew French very well.

The moral here is that if the supposed facts don’t fit, you must look for alternatives which will. As a mistress, Mary Hayes didn’t work and was provided with everything she wanted. It’s doubtful if she lived in Patrick St. at all because her lover had many properties in the country which offered better privacy for his visits which had to be kept discreet.