Alfred d'Orsay

Alfred Guillaume Gabriel Grimod d'Orsay, comte d'Orsay (4 September 18014 August 1852) was a French amateur artist, dandy, and man of fashion in the early- to mid-19th century.

Biography

Early life and family He was born in Paris, the second son of Albert Gaspard Grimaud, Comte d'Orsay, a Bonapartist general. His mother was Baroness Eleonore von Franquemont, an illegitimate daughter of the Duke of Württemberg and the Italian adventuress Anne Franchi. His elder brother died in infancy. Military service, stay in London In 1821, he entered the French army of the restored Bourbon monarchy (against his own Bonapartist tendencies), attending the coronation of George IV of Britain in London that year (staying until 1822) and serving as a Garde du Corps of Louis XVIII. While in London he formed an acquaintance with Charles Gardiner, 1st Earl of Blessington and Marguerite, Countess of Blessington, which quickly ripened into intimacy. Scholars have speculated both that the Countess and d'Orsay had an affair, and that the infatuation was purely between the Earl and d'Orsay. While contemporaries remarked on the young man's effeminacy, the evidence for either relationship is inconclusive.

The following year the couple visited d'Orsay at Valence on the Rhone, and at the invitation of the earl he accompanied the party on their tour through Italy. Marriage On 1 December 1827, Count d'Orsay married Lady Harriet Gardiner, a girl of fifteen, the daughter of Lord Blessington by his previous wife. The union, if it rendered his connection with the Blessington family less ostensibly equivocal than before, was in other respects an unhappy one, and a legal separation took place in 1838,

Archives His correspondence with Disraeli and his wife, and his letters to Lord Lichfield, are held in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. 25 letters from d'Orsay to Charles Stewart, 3rd Marquess of Londonderry (dated 1851), concerning the publication of newspaper articles in France relating to Abd-el-Kadir and to French politics and literary life in general, are held in the County Durham record office at Ref No. D/Lo/C 74. His letters to Bulwer-Lytton are held in the Hertfordshire Archives and Local Studies centre, Hertford.