Famous Biography

Catherine Hayes travelled the world at a time when the bell tolled almost every day at Lloyds in London to signal the loss of yet another ship. She was lucky not to have been lost at sea. She knew the dangers well enough and no one can doubt her courage and determination. The itinerary which follows is one of my working documents and will be expanded with notes in the published text. I thought it might be useful here to indicate those places in the world which she visited and where my biography should be of most interest. Some people may notice that certain dates and places disagree with all other published accounts. This is to be expected because ‘Virtue and Vice’ will be the first true account of her life.

ITINERARY OF WORLD TRAVEL 1839-1860

1839 Limerick - Dublin. Training under Sapio. First public concerts.

1840-1842 Dublin – Belfast – Dublin. Concerts during training.

1842- 1^st Limerick Benefit Concert

1842 Dublin – Paris. Opera training under Garcia.

1842-44 gave at least two public concerts in defiance of Garcia

1844 Paris – Milan. Opera under Ronconi.

1845 Milan – Marseilles 1^st Public Opera Performance.

1846 Milan – Vienna and Venice

1847 Venice- Vienna- Bergamo-Verona-Milan.

1848 Verona-Milan-Florence- Bergamo-Florence-Genoa

1849 Genoa- London. (Bishop Knox died in May 1849)

1849 Tour of England

1849 Tour of Ireland (incl. Waterford)

1850 Tours of England Scotland, Ireland (incl. Waterford)

1850 Dublin – Rome

1851 Rome – London UK Tour (July/August in France)

1851 - Liverpool – New York

1852 New York . Eastern and Southern States. Canada.

P T Barnum’s daughter’s wedding

1852 NY - Panama - San Francisco.

1853 San Francisco – Sacramento-SF- Grass Valley- SF – Chile – Peru

1854 Peru – SF

1854 SF- Hawaii – Australia (Sydney) –Melbourne-Adelaide

1855 Adelaide – Calcutta- Singapore-Java- Melbourne-Sydney.

1856 Australia – England.

1856 Trip to Paris.

1856 Irish Tour

1857 Tours of UK and Ireland. Never returns to S. Ireland again.

1857 Marriage in October. Leaves London for Pau and Biarritz

1858 In France until July. -Hasty return to UK from Bayonne

1859-61. Concerts in UK only until DEATH in August 1861

1860 Trip to Paris for Wieniawski’s wedding.

Catherine Hayes has been held out as an example of a virtuous opera singer who was always chaperoned by her mother and never had affairs but come down from the mountain into the real world. Kate was human and enjoyed a sexual life just as Lola Montez did. When I first read a tale of her being involved with the outlaw known as Rattlesnake Dick in San Francisco and Grass Valley, I was inclined to dismiss it.

Her recent biographer, in his detailed chronology of her appearances, didn’t list Grass Valley at all and so I believed him. Then I read the Nevada Journal of April 1853 and there was Kate singing ballads for the miners in and around Grass Valley. She left San Francisco on the 20 March 1853 for ‘a trip into the interior’. She probably rode there with the man who brought the news about Dick and was followed later by her mother and maids in a coach with the baggage. Her manager, Bushnell does not seem to have accompanied them.

I can’t verify the tales but there is a strong possibility that she went there to save her lover from being hanged for stealing a mule. Rattlesnake Dick was in jail at Rattlesnake Bar accused of the crime which was very serious then. A mule could mean life or death for a miner since it was needed to carry all his possessions into the mountains. Anyway, Kate arrived on her horse and Dick was acquitted. My guess is that a message was sent to her in San Francisco and she went post haste to rescue him. In fact, he would have been hanged long before she got there unless they believed she was coming and would pay handsomely to have the charge dropped. Dick was shot dead two years later during a robbery attempt