Notable New Orleanians: A Tricentennial Tribute

Born in 1829 New Orleans, Gottschalk grew up in a Creole household with a grandmother and
a nurse from St. Domingue, the fount of Creole influences. His genius was to corral his surrounding
musical influences and through his creativity and inventiveness influence others. In 1842, after
a career as a child prodigy in New Orleans, the thirteen-year-old went to Paris, very much on his
own. He was already self-conscious of his talent and had set goals for his life that included making
his own living. Though not admitted to the Parisian Conservatoire, he studied with private tutors
and within a few years had made a reputation as an outstanding pianist. His first major compositions—Bamboula,
La Savane, Le Bananier, and Le Mancenillier, date to these years.
In 1853, Gottschalk returned to the United States. Travels across the country on paid piano
recitals brought him occasionally to New Orleans. The ensuing Civil War seemed to have only a
slight effect on his schedule. However, in California in 1865 he began a relationship with a student
that turned sour, led to threats, and Gottschalk’s permanent departure from the United States for
South America, especially Cuba and Brazil. Four years later he was dead at the age of forty, apparently
suffering a stroke while finishing his performance of Mortel!
His diary reveals Gottschalk as a person honest with himself. He recognized his own abilities
and criticized the fetishes of European pianists, such as the long hairstyle of Franz Liszt. Yet when
he overdid himself as he often did, playing exhausted from travel, he admitted to himself that he
cheated his audience.
Louis Moreau Gottschalk.
THE HISTORIC NEW ORLEANS COLLECTION, 1979.144.6.
1 S. Frederick Starr, Bamboula! The Life and times of Louis Moreau Gottschalk (New York, Oxford University Press,
1995), 447.
2 Starr, 447.
M ADAME E LIZABETH K ETTERING B EGUÉ
(1831-1906)
The first New Orleans chef to achieve renown as a female, Madame E. K. Begué was the central
figure of New Orleans’ late nineteenth century bistro world. That world revolved principally
around the Gascogne–born butchers in the storied French Market, where her husband Hypolyte
and other butchers worked. Born not in France but in Bavaria, Elizabeth emigrated to New Orleans
in 1858. Where she married butcher Louis Dutreuil. During the 1860s, Elizabeth and Dutreuil
opened a coffee house at the present-day site of Tujague’s Restaurant, located on Decatur Street
across from the Marché aux Boeufs (Beef Market).
Widowed after the Civil War, Elizabeth, in 1877, married Hypolyte Begué, with whom she built
their restaurant trade, renaming it Begue’s “Exchange,” a nineteenth-century word for a corner bar
and restaurant. The Begués’ primary clientele were the butchers of the market, who famously
enjoyed Elizabeth’s multi-course breakfasts commencing after ten a.m. when city ordinances
required that the market close in summer. As word spread of the hearty times there, the restaurant
acquired acclaim in newspapers and guidebooks, especially following the 1884 World’s Fair.
Begué’s food and ambiance soon brought in tourists and the well-to-do who came for her snails,
tripe, cheese, eggs, steak, brandy, and wines served in an old European ambiance. Elizabeth’s cookbook
“Madame Begué’s Recipes of Old New Orleans Creole Cookery,” published in 1900, helped
publicize New Orleans cooking nationwide. 1 Madame Begué was probably an early celebrity chef
in the sense that tourists who visited New Orleans sought out her restaurant as one that they had
read about. Her restaurant was a destination.
At Elizabeth’s death in 1906, The Daily Picayune exclaimed Madame Begué had been the
“Queen of Cooks for Over Thirty blessed Years.” 2 “The name Begué,” the Picayune continued,
“has been associated with the highest expression of epicureanism not only with the
BIOGRAPHIES
79