For those of you who love a mystery and solving puzzles, here’s a nice one to be getting on with. Unlike the fictitious Da Vinci Code, this one is for real. The document reproduced below was worth about a million dollars in today’s money to Catherine Hayes. It gave her back control over her assets which had all been transferred to her American husband William Avery Bushnell on their marriage in accordance with English law as it was in 1857.

A lovely and very helpful assistant in the Mairie in Biarritz, spent about an hour of her time getting out the original register of deaths in 1858 and trying to find other information for me from her colleagues. In addition to that, she gave me a free certified copy of the entry. Such a level of service was exceptional in my research although the majority of libraries, archives and others were indeed helpful.

Here is a scanned image of the document which is of course in French which Catherine was fluent in. Your task is to translate and find out what is wrong with it. I’ve given you enough information above to check its validity. One thing which I guess I should tell you because you haven’t got the registers is that entries were signed by the Mayor and only the Mayor for any year I looked at going back to 1790. (I’d already scanned through the registers on microfilm in London before going to France.)

This is the famous document:

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As a researcher one has to delve into a lot of things. I don’t remember why I looked at the ‘Story of O’ but it has no relevance in the present context.  Q was employed in 1843 by the ‘Morning Post’ in London as their theatre and arts  critic. His real name was Charles G. Rosenberg and he is described in the  North American Review of 1889 as having written ‘a series of brilliant articles on the Theatre and on the Academy (of Arts)’ . He also wrote the book ‘You Have Heard of Them’ which included chapters on Catherine Hayes and Lola Montez.

He actually met Catherine in Paris in September 1843  and not the 1845 or ’46  that he states in the published version of the book which is in the British Library and the Library of Congress. I have copies of the chapter from both libraries and my own copy from a dealer in the USA.  They are all the same but not  the original version!   That was withdrawn at the last minute following objections from Mary Hayes who was in America in 1853 when the proof was produced.  You see, Q was a good critic who liked to get his facts right and he knew Catherine’s real age.  He stated it on page 128  (which is now 129).  You can read the chapter on my site www.suirvista.com/Q  It won’t give you a clue as to what age Catherine was when Q met her.  However, they couldn’t withdraw all the proof copies and  a reviewer had already quoted the paragraph on p.128 with Catherine’s age on it. It agrees with other evidence I found so I believe it to be correct.

Something else you will notice is the spelling of her name  on pages 129 and 130 which is ‘Catherine’ . On the rest of the pages,  it’s the original wrong version ‘Catharine’ and that is also the spelling on the Contents page which has the Chapter commencing on p.128  too. There is another thing about pages 129-130 i.e. they are cut differently from the rest of the chapter. So Mary Hayes didn’t want the world to know when Catherine was really born and she had good reason for that.

Another thing that Q does for research is confirm that Catherine had her own house in Paris and this was something she did anywhere she intended to stay for a lengthy period. She had a house in San Francisco and in Grass Valley too. It was the best solution for privacy and entertaining. At other times, for short stays, they used hotels or enjoyed the hospitality of friends or patrons. 

Rosenberg also noted that Catherine defied Garcia by singing an Irish ballad for which she had to play the music herself because he refused to do so. It showed she was not cowed by authority and went her own way as many a diva does.  He forbade his students to give concerts in public and here again she disobeyed him but that’s another important story.

Remember you read these facts here first. Nobody else has ever before found out much about Catherine’s real life in Paris or anywhere else. In another article, I’ll list some of her friends and describe Paris in the 1840’s.

As far as Catherine Hayes goes, nobody knows more than I do so read the best, forget the rest.

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Don’t rush folks! It’s all worked out and the Hayes family lost every cent of it in the 19^th century.

Catherine Hayes went to Grass Valley, Nevada County, California in March/April 1853. She sang ballads for the miners and they threw gold nuggets on the stage. One of them called Troy went into partnership with her and they bought a claim known as the ‘Kate Hayes and Troy Mine’ . There wasn’t much gold near the surface and it was soon worked out. Troy’s name disappeared from the records and the mine was called the Kate Hayes when the Government Inspectors reported that it was situated directly over an ice age river bed which contained rich gold bearing deposits at a depth of 100 to 150 feet and that it should be worked.

Notices were posted ordering the owners to work the mine according to the law but of course no one responded since Kate Hayes was dead and George Power (the legal owner by virtue of her will) knew nothing about it. Mary Hayes probably knew that her daughter had bought a gold claim but if she received any correspondence from America, she wasn’t going to tell Power and his fellow conspirators. The mine was forfeited to the State and the Court awarded it to four men who had the capital to put it into production. They formed the Kate Hayes Mining Co. which employed over 300 miners and extracted millions of dollars worth of gold into the 1900’s.

According to the Nevada County Historical Society, Kate Hayes St. in Grass Valley and several other topographical features were named in honour of Kate Hayes the singer from Ireland. She may have donated to local causes as was often her custom. She was also a good horse rider who had probably gone out to the remote camps in the hills.

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Catherine Hayes would have been familiar with the 19c arcades in Paris. They were very popular for shopping and socialising since they provided shelter from the elements and a clean tiled floor to walk on. At the height of their popularity, there were over 150 of them providing short cuts linking the streets of central Paris. Some would have been lost in the Haussmann reconstruction which occurred after Catherine Hayes left Paris in 1844 but she would have seen the effects on her later visits which ended in 1860. Relatively few remain today and a selection of those is shown above. Well worth visiting especially on a rainy day.

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Most people go to Biarritz to gamble or to enjoy the surfing. You’ll never guess what I was doing there so I’ll tell you.  I was looking for Willy Bushnell’s grave and I spent two weeks  searching every graveyard in Biarritz and Bayonne. I braved mad dogs, the midday sun and wild boar to trace every 19c burial place there is. I suffered cuts and bruises, dehydration and the loss of my precious research papers which were stolen from my car along with my camera and passport.

You may be wondering if I looked in the registers before going on this physically tough tour. I certainly did and they told me that nobody had bought a permanent plot for any Hayes or Bushnell in 1858. Unfortunately, the burial registers run from 1859 only so there was no hope there either.  So I searched and searched tp prove or disprove a point. 

Biarritz is a pleasant place with many Victorian villas still standing  and they are all strictly preserved now by order of the Mayor. I couldn’t pinpoint the precise location of the one  in which Willy died but I found the census showing it was a small place occupied only by the owner, his wife and a 16 year old maid in a poorer quarter of town.

I tried hard but did I find Willy?  Yes and no. All will be revealed in due course.

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Many writers appear to have been under the impression that one or both of these two Irish women were Catholics. Let me tell you here and now, they were Church of Ireland born and bred but at times they pretended otherwise. In parts of the world, Catholics were in the majority and it was best to appear to be of that faith.

Catherine Hayes helped Father Matthew, the temperance advocate, when she was in New York and gave a concert to raise money for the roof of a Catholic church in New Orleans. Lola Montez had to pretend to be a Spanish Catholic to become a Countess of Bavaria. Imagine an Irish protestant from a lower class background being able to achieve that status in a country which was then violently anti-protestant. She must have been a very good actress to fool everyone including the Jesuits. Neither Catherine nor Lola cared much about any faith.

In the 19c, the official religion in Ireland was the Protestant Church of Ireland and the ruling class belonged to it. There was bitter animosity between Catholics and Protestants which continues to the present day in some areas. A mature student at a local Adult Education Centre wrote some essays which have been published in a booklet. This is what she says about going to school in the 1950’s at the age of four.

“My oldest sister carried me to the school on the carrier on the back of the bicycle. I will always remember my sister ( name removed) leaving me at a neighbour’s gate. I would go through the neighbour’s yard. I never stopped to play with the children there. There were nine children in that family and they went to a different school. We were Church of Ireland and went to the Church of Ireland school.”

That’s an example of the deep divisions in Irish society which prevented even the children from mixing and perpetuated the hatred and suspicion which fueled the Northern Ireland troubles.

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Catherine Hayes the opera singer is sometimes confused with the woman of the same name who was convicted of petty treason for the murder of her husband. She was sentenced to be burnt at the stake while one of her lovers who did the actual killing was hanged.

Thackeray got the two women confused and had to write an apology to Miss Hayes . In ‘Virtue and Vice’ there will be no such misunderstanding and neither will you read the often repeated but totally wrong accounts of her early life. I’m afraid the rags to riches story doesn’t bear up under investigation and there are at least three sources to prove the truth.

Earlier writers and researchers have failed to find the facts or indeed to understand the history of Ireland and Limerick in the 19c. Many appear to have been deluded into thinking that Miss Catherine Hayes was an uneducated servant girl with a natural talent for singing. The only bit that is right is that she was a naturally talented child. For the rest, ask yourselves how did she learn to read, write and speak French, Italian and perfect English as well as play the piano. I have one of her letters which would put many a modern school leaver to shame.

Catherine Hayes had an older sister called Henrietta who is seldom mentioned at all and when she is, she is portrayed as a neglected Cinderella figure. In fact she was also educated with Catherine and her knowledge of languages got her a job with Queen Amelie who was the last Queen of France living in exile in England. Possibly, she acted as an interpreter for the multitude of Royalist sympathisers from many countries who gathered at Queen Amelie’s residence near Richmond. They plotted to overthrow Napoleon III but were unsuccessful in their attempt to assassinate him.

Henrietta’s involvement with the Royalists may have been a factor which prevented Catherine from ever appearing at the Paris Opera. We know she tried to get into a production there but didn’t succeed. She too may have been a Royalist sympathiser or was suspected of being one by Napoleon’s agents.

This is the first time in history that the conventional life story of Catherine Hayes has been challenged. You are invited to send any comments, information etc. to us and, if we use the information, you will receive a free signed copy of the new sensational biography.

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