After the wedding, she continued to perform in musical theatre in London's West End and then the U.S. After squandering their wealth, the two divorced in 1902, and she later married a series of other financially unsuccessful, but often adventurous, men.

Her father, an American Civil War veteran, was either the son or nephew of Caleb Yohé, proprietor of the Eagle Hotel, where she was born.

[3][4] As a young girl, Yohé entertained the hotel's guests by dancing and singing in the lobby and recounting childhood stories.

[5] At around the age of ten, Yohé was sent to Europe for a refined education, studying in Dresden and later at the Convent of the Sacré Coeur in Paris.

[12][13] In March 1887, she appeared in McCaull's Broadway production of Lorraine, composed by Rudolph Dellinger to a libretto by Oscar Walther, which was adapted in English by William J.

[15] Later in 1887, with McCaull at the Chicago Opera House, she sang "Bid Me Good-By and Go" in the musical comedy Natural Gas by Henry Grattan Donnelly.

[18] Yohé's unique vocal quality attracted the attention of the manager of the Chicago Opera House, and she was engaged to play princess Zal-Am-Boo in Alfred Thompson's extravaganza Arabian Nights, which premiered on June 2, 1887.

[23] In 1893, Yohé made her London debut as Martina in The Magic Opal by Isaac Albéniz, and the following year she played the title character in the musical The Lady Slavey, composed by Gustave Adolph Kerker, with a book by Sir George Dance, in which she sang "What's a Poor Girl to Do".

[4] The next year she played the title role in the comic opera Dandy Dick Whittington, at the Avenue Theatre, written by George Robert Sims and composed by Ivan Caryll.

"[25] In 1896, Yohé played the title role in the musical The Belle of Cairo at the Royal Court Theatre in London.

[32][33] The following is transcribed from a 1908 article in Bystander magazine: ...Miss May Yohé, ex-musical-comedy star and ex-duchess-presumptive, is, to earn her daily bread, reduced almost to the lowest depths.

In the early 'nineties, rather pretty, beautifully made, and possessed of two most valuable assets, a fine voice and unlimited assurance, May Yohé came to London, and in a very short time had won front place in a musical-comedy chorus.

In Little Christopher Columbus her singing of "Oh, honey, ma honey," took the town by storm, and brought to her feet one of the greatest parlis [sic] of the day, Lord Francis Hope, brother and heir of the Duke of Newcastle, the owner of a vast, but already half-dissipated fortune, and of Deepdene (an English estate).

Already Lord Francis had been a bankrupt, but a year after the marriage his remaining wealth, his lands, the famous Hope Diamond, and all his pictures and heirlooms were frittered away by the combined efforts of the young couple.

In 1900 they made a tour of the world, and on their way home fell in with Captain [Putnam] Bradlee Strong,[b] at that time one of the handsomest and most popular men in the United States Army, and a special favorite with President McKinley.

A few days later, Captain Strong arrived in London, heard with surprise, and denied with disgust, his wife's preposterous story.

For a time May Yohé was forgotten, but a year ago it was announced that she had married Mr. Newton Brown, a friend of her childhood, and described by his bride as "still the same lovely boy.

[40] At the time of her marriage to Hope, there had been reports in the press implying she had been married twice before: first, in San Francisco to the son of a General Williams, and next in Massachusetts to a local politician.

In July of that year, Strong, who had served as Assistant Adjutant General in the Philippines, resigned his commission once it was reported in the press that he had been asked to leave by the manager of the California Hotel in San Francisco where the couple registered as H. L. Hastings and wife.

[45] Even though Major Strong had resigned his commission some months earlier, the War Department in Washington D.C. announced on March 22, 1902, the same day of Yohé's divorce, his nomination for promotion to lieutenant colonel by brevet for his service in the Philippines.

[53][54] Their union was short-lived, for in May 1909 a San Francisco newspaper reported that Yohé had given up for adoption a baby boy she had with a new husband, a British Columbia miner by the name of Murphy.

[55][56][57] In the mid-1930s, an actor named Robert Thomas, the adopted son of Edward and Rosa, tried in vain to prove that his birth father was Putnam Bradlee Strong.

[32][70] Over the early years of their marriage, the two traveled to Singapore, India, China and Japan,[71] eventually settling in South Africa.

[74] In the early 1920s, after auctioning off some valuable possessions and returning from a South American trip,[75] Yohé and her husband toured the vaudeville circuit in the U.S. with an act based on the less-than-successful 1921 movie serial The Hope Diamond Mystery, which she helped write and promote.

[81] At the time of her death, Yohé's most prized possession was a large photograph of Edward VII, taken while he was still the Prince of Wales, and signed "To May, 1898".