Private Tuition in Italian and English Singing, and the Italian Language by Madame de Marguerittes, and in French Conversation by Le Baron de Marguerittes, 111 Kensington Place, Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow, 1849
An advertisement on page three of The Glasgow Herald, on Friday the 31st of August, 1849, reads:
“PRIVATE TUITION.
Under the Patronage of Her Grace, the DUCHESS of HAMILTON,
the COUNTESS of EGLINTON and WINTON, and the
Right Honourable LADY BELHAVEN.
MADAME DE MARGUERITTES, who studied in Italy
under Madame Pasta and Signor Rubini, begs to announce that she
has returned to Glasgow, where she will again give instructions in
ITALIAN and ENGLISH SINGING. She will also resume her Private
Lessons and limited Class for the ITALIAN LANGUAGE, at her
Residence, Kensington Place, Sauchiehall Street.
LE BARON DE MARGUERITTES, who is a Parisian by birth and family,
and was attached to the Court of Charles X., begs to announce that he
has returned to Glasgow, where he will resume his Private Tuition, and
limited Classes for FRENCH Conversation, at his Residence, 111
Kensington Place, Sauchiehall Street.”
Added to an almost identical advertisement on page three of the Herald, on Friday the 7th of September, is:
“For terms &c. apply to Mr. J. Muir Wood, 42 Buchanan Street.”
A search of google books led to the following publication: Vera Brodsky Lawrence, Strong on Music: The New York Music Scene in the Days of George Templeton Strong, Volume 2, Reverberations 1850-1856, 1995. The publication includes the following information about Madame de Marguerittes, on pages 138-9:
“A passing flurry of mild interest flitted across the torpid opera horizon just as the season was fizzling out: on both February 26 and 27 [1851], the first of two unusual debutantes, Madame Giulietta Bozzi, a contralto, appeared with Truffi in Il giuramento (as she had recently done during a Maretzek season in Baltimore). Madame Bozzi’s true identity was an open and well-advertised secret: she was Madame Julie de Marguerittes, purportedly a high-caste Italian of distinguished literary repute. Dispossessed of her ancestral wealth by the political chaos in Italy, so the story went, Madame Marguerittes/ Bozzi, said to be a distinguished singer, was bravely attempting to forge a new career for herself in the New World.
“Receiving from N. P. Willis in the Home Journal (February 15, 1851) an advance send-off of an ornateness befitting her social rank,¹² Madame Bozzi as opera singer elicited disappointingly cool reactions in the general press. She was variously reported to have been musically well schooled, handsome enough, graceful enough, the possessor on an agreeable enough voice, or, as the case may be, of a disagreeable voice or an inaudible one. At any rate, her prospects in opera, commented the Tribune (February 29, 1851), offered small compensation for the social sacrifices they entailed.¹³”
Footnote 12, on page 139, reads:
“It was unfortunate, wrote Saroni (Musical Times, March 1, 1851, pp. 232-33), for Madame Bozzi to have been introduced to the public by N. P. Willis, who with his ‘profligate pen . . . serves up a lady as he would a horse, and enlarges upon her points with the freedom and unction and coarseness of a jockey.’
Footnote 13, on the same page, covers some of Madame de Marguerittes other activities in 1851, and comments:
“But by December 9, the Herald announced that Madame de Marquerittes was starting a new paper, described as a ‘transformation’ of the recently deceased Evening New Yorker. Now sporting a completely revised biography, she was described as an ‘English lady of remarkable brilliancy and talent,’ the daughter of a Dr. Granville, ‘a physician of high rank in Piccadilly, London.’ Some years before, she had married a Count de Marguerittes, a French gentleman of some distinction (present whereabouts not revealed). She had recently come to this country with letters of introduction to the ‘fashionable circles in New York, who patronized her for a short time, as they generally do all fashionable celebrities.”