Monday, October 3, 2022

Mistletoe, Art & the De Tavaras: Juicy Stuff of Scandal and Mystery

A fetching portrait of a pretty dancer led me on an epic Internet investigation of a pair of mysterious nobles- and then Art interfered and offered an intriguing solution.
There are people- you do not know any of them, people who prance across the backs of society from the day they are born- and do what they want, mostly undetected, and then dissolve into the mists of history. They do not answer to our rules or live within our paradigms. They are untouchable. They speak many languages, as they condescend to the rest of humanity. The ancient Druids were such persons, a ruling elite on the British Isles, whose symbol was the mistletoe.

Its berries white, shining like pearls, its roots penetrating into the flesh of its helpless host, mistletoe is perfectly camouflaged and out of reach, and in fact hardly ever noticed...

Mistletoe is a parasite which travels from canopy to canopy, sucking the life out of its hosts. It lives in the highest reaches of the forest, but it is not the forest. It does not care about rain or sun or geographical boundaries, and is not bothered by storms that come and destroy. It can always find a new living host, which will feed and hide it, until it too is exhausted. And there are people who operate much the same, still remnants of the ancient mistletoe people, even today.

In their youth they are the person who never has to study but makes A's. All while they tease and even torment the teachers. They are not learning what the rest of us are. We are worried about getting an education so we can be productive citizens in the forest of man. They are learning how to avoid that, and yet prevail. They are learning, while using charm and deception, about what they can get away with. And here is a slice of one of these mistletoe dynasties... found completely by accident... which is the only way anyone ever will...

I can hear them laughing, all the way across the past century since they first pulled off their ruse. Two Spanish immigrants- maybe they were Spanish, maybe they were immigrants, analyzing the American scene and lying their way to the highest strata of American society. Purportedly, he was a “count,” she a “countess.” He was a foreign diplomat, she a Daughter of the American Revolution. Or maybe they were. Whoever, whatever they were, they knew just how to present themselves, how to earn confidence, and how to achieve their goals.

Their last name was De Tavara. If you were nobility from Europe, you had to have a distinguishing “De” before your surname. De just means of. It usually came in front a place name. You were John Pardo of Toledo, not to be confused with John Pardo of Madrid. And there were De Tavaras and De Taveras spreading all over the globe at the time, from the Philippines to Peru to the United States. A study of this name will become significant as you read on.

The Tavara are a tribe in Rhodesia, but we will skim over that and call it a linguistic coincidence. The word tavara is found today stretching from Hindi to Finnish, but seems to have come from ancient sources, traced through Russian back to Proto-Slavic, and Turkic origins. It meant merchandise... goods... so a person named Tavara might well have been a merchant along the Silk Road. The name had Jewish context in India, but today it is most prominent in Mexico, probably via Spanish immigrants. In the Finnish language, used in the plural, it can also connote stuff... and is used figuratively to mean meat. And it is used colloquially to suggest the female genitalia. Hold that thought... especially the idea of de (of) tavara (vagina); a crude way to suggest an illegitimate child with a mother and no father.

But anciently, tavara signified the cream of civilization. Punjabi denotes tavara as their word for tower. In ancient times, it was towers which were built to please the Aryan Brahmans (ancestors of the Druids) and town builders of India, to symbolize Indian civilization and commerce and their authority over it. To the nearby Kannadans, it means tin or zinc or its alloys. These were precious and essential metals sought during the bronze age to make bronze, the first metal manufactured to make durable weapons and utensils. There is a town called Tavara in Bengaluru, Karnataka (south central India), which is known as a mining center. Anyone in ancient times or even today who had tavara was rich and powerful.

Originally persons branded with this ancient name and all of its associations sound very much like the profile of an ancient Kushan family, a nomadic tribe most notorious as traders of silk, slaves, horses and precious metals along the Silk Road, which transected central Asia. The Kushans have been linked to the Yue Chi of China, the Turks, and certainly the ancient ruling Aryan class of India. When the native Indians finally threw off their yoke, the Kushans and their tavaras disappeared into history. I might add, not much good has developed there since. Over the next thousand years, the Tavaras probably forgot what their name originally meant... other than their new identity as merchants- traders and opportunists.

More recently, “Tavara” was actually a place, and known in Spain as a prime olive oil producing region, and thus a springboard for prosperous Spanish nobles who owned the land there. But that did not matter, because King Carlos I had established the title of Marquis de Tavara in 1541. God only knows how many descendants had come down since then, associated with that title. So this Spanish couple, the De Tavaras might well have been some of these offspring. Maybe they were. But in the U.S., it was easy enough to claim such nobility. Most importantly, it was impossible to verify.

Either way, this couple understood to some degree the advantages of claiming the name De Tavara. To Europeans it simply meant “old money.” But as this mistletoe couple crossed the Atlantic, the name meant nothing in the beginning, as it took awhile for the De Tavaras to find suitable hosts. But to these young parasites, making a name was not near as important as running the game.

Anyway, the Count De Tavara first showed up in American Newspapers in 1909, working stateside for the Red Cross in Europe. Somehow he had been made the president of the American branch of the Italian Red Cross Society, and the press reported his exchanges with President Taft, thanking America for its generosity under Taft's leadership towards their earthquake relief efforts in Sicily and Italy. A Gold Medal had been presented to Taft, along with some kind of official diploma from the Italian Red Cross. Count De Tavara had already risen to an impressive sphere of influence.

The next year the Countess De Tavara was reported to be sweeping the DAR by storm as an exciting new member, a real countess, and a beautiful representative of the best and brightest of America's elite young women. The De Tavaras were also reported to have attended a Womens Suffrage meeting, where they drew cheers for their intentions to soon take the noble cause of Womens Suffrage abroad. And their deep involvement with Red Cross fund-raising would continue. It is this focus which drew my first suspicions. They appeared to be wonderful International philanthropists. Or were they something else entirely?

Even before America had joined in the horrific conflict of WWI, in 1915 Countess Beatrice De Tavara led a crusade by the DAR to raise funds for the aid of innocent civilian victims in France. Her goal was to purchase an ambulance... in those days a horse-drawn wagon, to lend assistance to the French people in their plight while enduring the onslaught of the Kaiser. The beleaguered countess had only raised something over $600.00 among her DAR sisters when she made a second plea in their organization's magazine. She had donated rare gold buttons herself, with an estimated value of $400.00, purportedly once owned by no less than General Lafayette, ally of General George Washington and hero of the Revolution, (really?) which represented the greater part of her collected donations so far. Could DAR members please send clothes, money, even their extra gold and silver. The metals could be melted down and used to help pay for the ambulance. And no doubt her expenses as well in delivering it...

But something was awry. The countess had run into a wall of ambivalence. Her third plea in 1916 was more of a perfunctory report on her stagnant finances, which admitted that she had only raised $800.00 towards the purchase and transport of the vehicle. This after many months of gathering resources from all over the United States. Evidently, confidence in her campaign was waning. It was becoming an embarrassing dysfunction, which did not match the reports of staggering amounts raised by other American organizations.

No doubt there may have already been suspicions within the DAR about the De Tavaras, since it would be difficult to hold the countess accountable for unknown pounds of precious metals sent to her in New York that were to be melted down and combined for the acquisition of her proposed ambulance. And curiously, there seems to be no further press coverage announcing the achievement of the goal, the purchase of the ambulance or its subsequent transport to France. Others must have taken over her lackluster DAR campaign, and probably combined the DAR funds with a larger program, because there were relief efforts which accomplished amazing things during that time. Notably future president Herbert Hoover and his wife, and the popular Broadway actress and theater owner Maxine Elliott were independently leading mammoth relief programs for France and Belgium. But as they did, the countess had been reassigned to a role more fitting her management skills, and by 1917 was giving tours of the White House, still shining as an angel of mercy and a DAR star.

It was apparently a case of falling upward, that inevitable function of the “Peter Principle.” But for the Countess, at just 30 years of age, it was inexplicably the end of the line.

Then... nothing. The Countess and her husband disappeared from the scene altogether. Nothing, not a whimper was reported of the De Tavaras for sixteen years. Had they gone home to Europe after the end of “the war to end all wars”? Had they spent all of their money and energy to help repair their homeland? Had they taken the money and run?

When the De Tavaras finally reappeared, it was all bad news. The former DAR poster girl was now a middle aged, single mother, raising an incorrigible son. In 1933, the papers flagged a story of a little ten-year old boy who ran away from home, or as explained later, got away from his aged grandmother, and went fishing in Central Park in New York... and caused quite a stir over his disappearance. The paper said light-heartedly that his name was Francis Michael De Tavara, “scion of an Italian noble line,” and that he had been found after a two day adventure. But that was not the end of it.

The boy's name was soon changed to Charles, and neighbors reported that he was abused. He had bruises, and there were reports that he was sometimes confined in a closet at home. He was taken into protective custody by New York child protection authorities, and explanations were demanded.

That was when the countess began to drop names, and spill her transitory magic. The boy had been unruly, being raised without a father. The Count had passed away before he was born. Strangely, there had been nothing in the newspapers about Count De Tavara's passing. But so engrossed in the boy's cute outing, nobody asked, what happened to the count? There were more pertinent questions. Where had the boy been? What had he done while free?

Meanwhile the countess explained that Charles was a good boy, made of good stuff, even the second cousin of the famous Civil War General, George B. McClellan. This would ring in the ears of New Yorkers, since General McClellan's son had once been the mayor of New York. Soon newspapers had it that the boy was the grandchild of the former mayor. Interestingly, the “Daughters” were now forgotten, and the countess was now claiming some kind of close kinship to the Union's prominent general. And it was a clever reset. She had done her homework, as both McClellans had been candidates for the U. S. Presidency. Of course, it was possible this woman was a relative of men who fought in both wars... that would not have been that unusual. But a countess from Spain? The story reeked of incredulity. Still the papers ate it up.

George B. McClellan Jr., son of the famous commanding general of the Grand Army of the Republic during the Civil War, and former mayor of New York (1905-1909)

Known as the “Happy Valley Case,” eventually the court gave the countess her son back, with some warnings. A true noble in spirit, she ignored them however, and he was taken away again, the next time with a vengeance, along with much of her unpaid-for furniture. The countess made a near spectacle of her public campaigns to retrieve her son, often successfully embarrassing the authorities who had grown to despise her. Even the judge in the case smelled a strange prejudice from the New York child protection authorities. For some reason, they insisted on Charles's removal from the countess, but somehow avoided the ultimate investigation of her identity. Supposedly quite wealthy, perhaps she had purchased some measure of official restraint.

Charles ran away again in 1935... and again in 1938 with broad national press coverage. Each time it was harder for the countess to win custody of him, as he turned to minor crimes and exaggerated claims about the countess's cruel behavior. All the while the newspapers were touting Charles De Tavara as the wayward young count, the grandson of former mayor George McClellan Jr., who complained that his mother beat him with a knotted rope, and tried to raise him like a girl... curling his hair a la Little Lord Fauntleroy... and he just wanted to be a normal American boy. It was a great story. The countess had achieved her fifteen minutes of fame, and stretched it out for several years.

During the boy's last disappearance, the Countess announced that she was calling in the FBI, as she suspected a kidnapping. She was apparently paranoid that someone was trying to take her son away, long before the reports of her abuse, hence the closet episodes. Perhaps she feared Spanish nobles who wanted him in Spain where he belonged? When he was finally found and held in a county juvenile facility, she captured him one last time and zoomed away in a car, never to be bothered by authorities again. But nearing 16 years of age, it would be impossible to keep the wayward youth under wraps much longer.

Surely, by now some investigative reporter must have asked, who is this peculiar mother of this unhappy, unbridled youth anyway? But the world was full of such rebellion. It was not that much of a news story. And that was because they did not know what questions to ask.

It's too bad nobody asked them. Any inquiry would have revealed that Countess Beatrice De Tavara had lied about her ancestors- from both wars. And there was no actual record of her birth, her lineage, her marriage, her husband's death, even her son's birth which according to various newspaper reports, must have been around 1922. Former Mayor McClellan had no children, and thus no grandchildren. Sadly the newspapers relished so much in embarrassing George McClellan Jr. that they never looked into her claims.

The countess's supposed parents, whose ancestry qualified her for the Daughters of the American Revolution, the McClellands of Pennsylvania, had no daughter named Beatrice; The De Tavara nobles of Spain no longer even existed, their title having been abolished in the 1880's, then reassigned to a different lineage. And suspiciously, nobody named Count Julio Pedro Luis De Tavara showed up in any official records. In fact, no one by either name could be found in any official records, none except in the published genealogy of DAR descendants. The stupid Americans had been wonderfully scammed.

All we can surmise and hope for is that poor tortured Charles De Tavara finally came of age and escaped the House of De Tavaras. Thankfully no more was heard about the countess for a few years. Then in 1941, the famous steel magnate, Charles Schwab, passed away. The countess was among several women who filed claims on his estate. Was her son Charles named for him, or even a supposed son? Had she been blackmailing him all those years, hiding him, and keeping the boy from him? We will never know, and unfortunately for her there were no funds, as Schwab had died deep in debt. The courts drug their feet, and eventually the countess found out that whatever her claim, it did not count.

This last public claim finally established Countess Beatrice De Tavara as a probable liar and possible gold digger. Or perhaps she was romantically involved with Charles Schwab, and even gave him a son, and was tragically spurned after his death. Maybe. But probably not. It must have been a con job, much like the rest of her life.

Looking back on the Countess's claims over the years, you have to give her credit for cleverness and boldness- characteristics of a real countess. One wonders: had she made bogus claims about her ancestry in the States, trying to conjure an equivalent status similar to that which her heritage would have demanded in Europe? Or was she merely a cunning scoundrel, a talented con-artist who never got outed?

Frustrated, the countess graduated from desperation to aggression. In early 1942, when a process server approached her to serve some legal documents, (probably to do with the Schwab suit) she and her body guard beat the daylights out of him. At age 60, “the widow of a Spanish count,” was arrested and convicted for assault. The aristocrat had suddenly devolved into an arrested crank. Why she was retaining a body guard is a question that will never be answered, unless she feared Mr. Schwab's stingy attorneys. Surely her son must have been gone by then, no longer a useful bargaining chit. And given the state of the world, engaged in another world war, maybe she feared being deported to whatever European country she might have actually come from, soon to be under Nazi occupation. Or worse, being placed in isolation like Japanese Americans.

And that was the last word ever heard from the De Tavaras. Until now. A few months ago I purchased a lovely old photograph from a dealer in Prescott, Arizona. It was of a beautiful woman from the early 1900's, dressed in what appeared to be a Spanish Flamenco dress. Actually it was quite arresting. On the back was a hand-written name, someone about whom I had no knowledge- “Countess Beatrice De Tavara.” A vintage photograph of a pretty lady, obviously an entertainer from the turn of the last century, fit my collection, so I got it... and began to try to understand who she was. And the countess was some piece of work!

Cabinet card made by Otto Sarony. He was New York's most famous and prestigious portrait photographer, representing two generations of expert artistry in capturing the stars of the Victorian and Edwardian eras. The expensive costume worn and the photography studio chosen suggest wealth and confidence.... and fame.

Only my photograph, the one shown above, a one-of-a-kind "cabinet card," connected Countess Beatrice De Tavara with the entertainment world. So I held a unique clue to her true identity. I still cannot be sure, but what I learned made this article worth writing.

In 1903, a rollicking Spanish Flamenco dance company came to America, led by the notorious Rosario Guerrero. Guerrero was a European super star. She had danced all over Europe, posed for hundreds of photos, some in the nude, and flirted with European royalty. Then she brought her sexually charged show to the States, thus establishing herself as a worldwide phenomenon; a sex symbol on the level with Menken, or Madonna. And one of her associates was a petite young thing, first advertised as “Dolores Tavara,” and later as “Lolita Tavara,” after she went out on her own.

Lolita Tavara seemed to adapt well to the States, whereas Guerrero performed around the country for over a year and then left in a huff. At some point, pretty Lolita had broken away from Guerrero and was almost immediately offered important parts in prominent New York productions, such as The Yankee Consul. She accepted the gigs and toured with these shows throughout the Northeast and Mid-west. She got front and center billing in New York, Chicago, Boston and Philadelphia and received glowing reviews, and became the American spokesperson for her genre, which was growing in popularity. America was hers for the taking.
No doubt Lolita Tavara's success infuriated the Spanish star who had brought her to the states. But something stopped her cold in her tracks. Was it guilt? Perhaps threats from the jealous Guerrero? In 1905, not long after Guerrero's departure, she announced to her deflated fans that she would accept no more parts, and with her pockets full of American largess, she too was headed home to Spain- and apparent obscurity.

Lolita Tavara never returned to the American stage. She does not seem to have ever danced again on the European stage either, at least under that name. Was she a real De Tavara? Or had she married one? Was that even her real name? All we have is this photograph... which after my research, using my “Q-5” technique, has established that the dancer in the old photograph is at least mathematically the exact same person as those pictured in the 1930's newspapers as Countess Beatrice De Tavara. The writer of the label on the back of my photograph was not making some random, or ill-informed guess. They knew that Countess Beatrice De Tavara had once been a a very beautiful performer. The strange part is that she never performed under that name.

This intrigued me even more. Somebody, whomever originally owned this cabinet card, knew of a connection never reported in any American newspaper. The countess had a secret. Perhaps many of them.

After a quick perusal of old post cards for sale on the Internet from the French Moulin Rouge era, this post card showed up from a dealer in Portugal. My Q-5 technique says it is the countess. Hand written on the back reads "Madame G. Vieux LCotaire," which translated into Madam G. the old coster. Coster being a word which has fallen into disuse in English, but which meant street seller... and which could have easily meant street walker. Looking more like a French corset advertisement (ugh!), Madam G. is ostensibly selling flowers... ridiculously dressed in form-fitting leotards, but has them draped all over bosom, and fondles her hair as if to offer her clientele a feel. This may have been the kind of lifestyle and reputation the countess was escaping when she came to America. What young woman would not cross the ocean and lie like a rug to break way from this and obtain a new lease on life?

But was this pretty Beatrice De Tavara the same person as Lolita Tavara who performed in the comic operas of 1903-1905? Probably, but we can never prove it. Still, that possibility certainly helps explain why the subterfuge around her identity. If she wanted to stay in America, Lolita had to reinvent herself. She had to separate herself from the bawdy dancing, the French sex trade, and the icky stain of the entertainment industry. She may have been a hit on stage, but what about when she grew tired of the highly physical demands of Flamenco? What if she wanted to settle down and live a respectable life? What if her husband, some kind of obscure count, or a noble wanna-be, did not want the life of a vagabond, or enjoy the social status of a pimp?

Perhaps with some research, and the assistance of her lover, they became the count and countess, with all of the assumed pedigrees and their presumed privileges. Perhaps they never left for Spain, but went to work instead on their makeovers. All they had to do was to make claims which were nearly impossible to verify, then suggest themselves into the highest of American society, which was ready to accept them, largely because of their exotic titles. Even today, people with foreign accents are trusted more than any other on American television.

And yet with those titles, today we cannot find the De Tavaras in the public record, other than the Red Cross campaigns, or those child custody scandals, and a lawsuit against a prominent captain of American industry- all events plagued with confused Media coverage, which never uncovered their deceptions.

Was the DAR money raised during WWI ever used for its intended purpose? Why did Beatrice De Tavara abandon her DAR affiliation and ludicrously claim the kinships with New York mayor George B. McClellan Jr., and later Charles Schwab? What happened to the count, a dignitary who once had awarded the President of the United States? Who was this couple who seemed to mix effortlessly with the elites of the Gilded Age, weaving in and out of countries as naturally as migrating ducks? What was their key? What were they hiding? What were they after?

In all my searching I found a stunning coincidence... if that was what it was. There was a Portuguese branch of the De Taveras (with an E instead of an A in the middle) who ended up as aristocrats in the Philippines. They “mixed” with the natives, and their children were sent away to school in Paris in the 1880's. There the De Tavera's daughter was courted by a rising star in the French art scene, a native Filipino artist named Juan Luna, who had come to France to study and seek his fortune. Luna soon married her and took her back to the Philippines. Juan Luna was a very prolific man, in every way, and had several female interests in France. As to be expected, some were his female models, and even today art historians are still speculating on who the subjects of some of his most famous paintings were. And here is the coincidence: Our “Beatrice De Tavara” could easily have been the woman in several of his masterpieces.

First of all, I am not the least impressed with the assumptions or assertions of the art “experts” so far. For generations they accepted the popular lore that a lovely, sensual portrait known as “Paz” (Peace) was Juan Luna's ill-fated wife.
Besides the fact that it looked nothing like her, and Juan Luna murdered her and her mother one day while in a jealous rage, Filipinos have venerated the bedded, dreamy-eyed siren for over one hundred years.
The portrait supposedly had survived the De Tavera family art burning frenzy after the murder of the two beloved women of their family. The grieving aristocrats were almost driven mad when the Philippine court refused to hold Juan Luna responsible for his bloody deeds, because he was from a supposed lesser, “primitive race,” and could not be blamed for his actions. He was released to resume his profession and his status as a Philippine national hero. This is important, because it is easy with this kind of history to understand why someone related to Juan Luna, or this tragedy, might try to distance themselves. It is easy to imagine that, if you were the lover of such a man, and bore him a child, and you had a choice, you might not want to give your child the stained Luna brand.

From a prominent Madrid noble family, the Marquesa de Monte Olivar posed for this portrait by Juan Luna, and probably several more. No doubt Luna had a formula for drawing faces, which explains why they all might be proportioned the same... and exactly the same. But that cannot explain why they also match a probable stranger from America! A stranger who (perhaps) has been brought back into the family via the power of the Internet... and her use of an ancient name which had been tragically grafted into the mind-boggling Luna family story.

Studying the similarities of several Luna master works, I am quite confident that they were all done using the same woman for the model, and that would have been the Marquesa de Monte Olivar. Only one painting is known for sure to be her, but there are several which I have “Q-5'ed” and found to be mathematically the same. [ to understand "quintangulation" or the Q-5 digital imaging process, scroll down to the next article on this blog ] All of these paintings were done around 1884- about the same date that Beatrice was born. And dismissing the idea of a coincidence for just a moment, the acorn, as they say in Texas, did not fall far from the tree. Young Beatrice, as represented in my cabinet card, could be Paz. Of course that would be impossible, but it may be a clue as to her real family. If the Marquesa had borne a child of Luna's it might well have been sent to an orphanage, or some willing family... maybe a group of near relatives, who were willing to take responsibility; perhaps some the the noble De Tavera clan, who were well established in Parisian society.

A young person like this might be raised in a bizarre netherworld, their true identity obscured for obvious reasons, (child of a murderer and an adulterer) yet schooled in privilege and elitism. Still, she would have no real claim on any dynasty... not the Lunas or the Monte Olivars, not even those kindly De Taveras (or whomever) who adopted her. She would have been groomed and skilled in the arts, and would have been familiar with the ins and outs of the nobles of Europe. And when she came of age, she might well have joined the Guerrero dance company and fled to a place where she might enjoy social freedom, and a fresh start, and the opportunity to reinvent herself.

Or... it is all just another uncanny coincidence, which I seem to have a frustrating nose for! It could be. But when I look into the eyes of Paz, large and set unusually wide apart, Jackie Kennedy wide, her perfect mouth too small to utter anger or ugliness, I can imagine just how beautiful a daughter of hers might be... too beautiful to send to an orphanage. Perfect to adopt for some idyllic young couple.

And then when I “Q-5” Beatrice De Tavara with her possible Filipino father, one Juan Luna, their facial proportions line up perfectly. Another incredible coincidence I guess. My scenario may not be so, but it would sure explain the countess's paranoid jealousy which kept her son captive, and her violent temper when her world was threatened by a relatively harmless county employee. Beatrice De Tavara acted just like Juan Luna. Ruthlessly ambitious, insolent towards convention, violently jealous, and intolerant of opposition. And somehow ever capable of avoiding suffering the legal consequences of her wildest notions. And somehow knowing that, lifts this case out of the realm of coincidence, and places it squarely on the front burner of unraveling scandals.

Somehow, the American vanguard of the noble De Tavara family had completely vanished by the end of WWII. Only the photograph in my collection speaks of a beautiful dancer's past, which left it as a meager tangible record, and without any appearance on any American census, or even a grave; not enough data or proof of her existence to even require the space with essential dates (born/died) between parenthesis, so standard in genealogical records. But no matter, in America, the “benefit of the doubt” ruled the social hierarchy and covered the field. To some degree, it still does. And the “De Tavaras,” true adaptive mistletoe people, by all accounts and counts and no counts, had a field day.

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