Marguerite Caetani
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
24 June 1880
Marguerite Caetani | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | Marguerite Gilbert Chapin 24 June 1880 |
| Died | 17 December 1963 (aged 83) Cisterna di Latina, Lazio, Italy |
| Title | Princess of Bassiano |
| Spouse | Roffredo Caetani |
| Children | 2 |
| Relatives | Cornelia Van Auken Chapin (half-sister) Katherine Garrison Chapin (half-sister) Schuyler Chapin (half-nephew) |
Marguerite Gilbert Caetani, Princess of Bassiano, Duchess of Sermoneta (née Chapin; 24 June 1880 – 17 December 1963),[1] was an American-born publisher, journalist, art collector, and patron of the arts. She married an Italian aristocrat and became the founder and director of the literary journals Commerce (fr) (in France) and Botteghe Oscure (in Italy).
A daughter of Lelia Chapin (née Gilbert; 1857–1885) and Lindley Hoffman Chapin (1854–1896), Marguerite was born on 24 June 1880 in Waterford, Connecticut into a wealthy and cultured New England family.[2] After her mother's death in 1885, her father remarried to Cornelia Garrison Van Auken in 1888, with whom he had Cornelia Van Auken Chapin, a sculptor, Katherine Garrison Chapin (a poet who was the wife of the U.S. Attorney General Francis Biddle),[3] and Lindley Hoffman Paul Chapin (father of Schuyler Chapin, the General Manager of the Metropolitan Opera).[4]
A direct descendant of Puritan settler Deacon Samuel Chapin, her paternal grandfather was Abel Chapin, a son of U.S. Representative Chester W. Chapin, president of the Boston and Albany Railroad.[2] Her maternal grandparents were Frederic E. Gibert and Margaret E. (née Reynolds) Gibert.[5]
Orphaned by her parents at a young age, she went to Paris in 1902 to study singing with the tenor Jean de Reszke.
