The Cuban Sylph or, a birthday brainteaser

 

I thought I'd have a quiet day today after the efforts required in hurdling the 78th fence on life's racecourse yesterday.

But, of course, I had to have my little stroll through ebay with my wake-up drink (peppermint tea). And I came on this ...

Tiens! A Cuban hermaphrodite. With bow and no arrow ...

I didn't know the lady, but I thought my friend Kevin (who is into that old business of boys dressed up as girls and vice versa) would be interested, so I had a wee delve. 

Well, there isn't much about her on the web. One can drag up a list of stage credits for her without too much trouble. But about her personal life, just a couple of tales, most prominently about her death and the fight over her legacy. This is one of the longer efforts.

M'lle Marie Zoe (1840-1885)

Actress and dancer M’lle Marie Zoe was born in Havana, Cuba, where she first performed in 1854. She debuted in the U.S. in 1855 and was billed as “The Cuban Sylph.” She specialized in breeches parts. Marie bought a house in Hempstead, Long Island, and moved there with her husband, dance master Ben Yates. In 1885 Yates claimed his wife’s mind had been “affected” and had Marie Zoe committed to the Mineola Insane Asylum. He remained undeterred by the complaints of abuse and neglect filed against it. Mrs. Yates died within a few months. Her two sisters from Philadelphia arrived and told Yates that Marie had promised them the house; they tried to evict him. Just then a will suddenly appeared among the papers of a deceased judge, stating that Mrs. Yates had left her entire estate to her husband. In this photo the young Marie Zoe poses in a military costume, complete with a mustache.

 

Well, here is one biog from her lifetime ...

And here an obit. You will note it quotes the article above on birth details. Which are incorrect. Her husband or 'husband' survived her, so the 'facts' clearly had his blessing. I would rather think he invented them.

One. Her real name was clearly not 'Marie Zoe'. Two. She was apparently the daughter of a Cuban gentlemen and an American lady. They were probably married, as 'two sisters' (unnamed) surface at legacy-grabbing time.  She always said she was born in Cuba, so maybe she was 'The Cuban Sylph' sounds uncomfortably, to me, like Cubas, the famous dancer.  Thirdly: the natal event did not happen in 1840, and she was not fourteen at the time of her soi-disant debut at the Tacon Theatre. Add a round decade, perhaps? 

Was she the danseuse who appeared at the Broadway Theatre in 1854 with a Mons Wiethoff? And who made 'a great impression by her graceful dancing' in A Midsummer Night's Dream? They played with the Durand-Lyster opera, she dancing Fenella in Masaniello. The article above would have us believe not. 

However, in 1862 I see 'Marie Zoe' travelling with the Ravel troupe and Mr B Yates, and in 1863 the 'Brilliant professional triumphs of the fascinating Spanish danseuse Mlle Zoe' are billed at the Washington Varietes on Pennsylvania Avenue, alongside the champion lady jig dance 'Mlle Lizetta' (Betty from Brooklyn?) and Professor Yates's Ballet Troupe of Female Loveliness.  Mr Yates is the man who would become Mr Zoe. And it seems that they were married (if they ever were) around this time.

Well, I have failed in winkling out the veritable details on Zoe, but I've utterly undressed the professor, of which more anon.

I see her thereafter at Jane English's Theatre (Laura Keene's) in her new scenic ballet Diana, Goddess of the Chase, but she had found the vehicle which was to serve her from dancer to dancer-actress: Madame Celeste's famous vehicle The French Spy, which allowed her to go through disguises female and male .. and featured what became her 'spesh': the 'terrific sword combat'. Her 'accidents' were reported regularly.

She became a star act, touring the best dates with her vehicle. And Mr Yates. While a tightrope-trapezist person put herself forward as 'Mlle Zoe' 'queen of the air' from Binghampton. And she added new dramas and burlesques (Susan in Black-Eyed Susan, Bertha the Sewing Machine Girl or Death at the Wheel, Nita or Life Among the Gipsies or A Woman's Devotion, as Vanderdecken in The Flying Dutchman, Esmeralda, The Mountain Devil or The Dumb Girl of Genoa &c) to her repertoire ...  'Mlle Zoe, the legitimate successor to Mlle Celeste' was still touring The French Spy, or the Battle of Algiers with its 'grand battle scene' in which she fought what was now 'a triple broadsword combat' with a Mons Latour (?Mr Castle from Connecticut?) ...

Around 1880, she disappeared from the lists ('famous as a swordsman and a dancer' has been living for five years comfortably in Long Island'), and it was eventually reported she had been consigned to the Mineola asylum ... where she was reported as endlessly going through her famous role and the combat ... she died, 'aged 54'?  Yes, she was 40 in Queens in the 1870 census, 50 in 1880 ... oh and in 1870 they both said they were born in New York ... sigh ... they had second thoughts before 1880.

The couple's home in Hempstead Village, Long Island had been bought by 'Zoe' in her earning days. And she and her mentor-trainer-husband-manager, Ben Yates, lived there until she had to be institutionalised, died, and the ugly sisters tried to get him evicted. I'd hoped that the probate records or the court procedures might have revealed Zoe's real name, but alas ...

Ben. I have done better with Ben. His fibs were a little less opaque. Ben, in spite of all protestations to the contrary, was English. He was born in deepest Surrey around 1826, one of the multiple offsprings of a glass cutter named Alexander Yates and his wife, Fanny.  They can all be seen (or most of them) in the London Road in the 1841 census. Apparently they (or most of them) emigrated the following year (22 July 1842). Alexander became a 'clerk' and died 15 August 1857.  By that time, Ben was already 'dancing'. Teaching and performing ('with Mary Charles, Mary Partington hmmmm) ...

Ben survived his wife by half a dozen years and died in Lexington Hospital 11 June 1891.

So ...

There we go. Come on historians! Genealogists! Find the ugly sisters, the Cuban father ...

I'm off for a delicious Henri Bardouin pastis, courtesy of my neighbours ...

Amazing how long you can make a birthday last!  Here's tomorrow ..!