EncyclopediaOrsay, Alfred Guillaume Gabriel, count d'
Orsay, Alfred Guillaume Gabriel, count d' (älfred' gēyōm' gäbrēel', dôrsā') [key], 1801–52, French dandy. The son of a Bonapartist general, he went to England in 1821, where he met Marguerite, countess of Blessington, and her husband. In 1827, D'Orsay married Blessington's daughter, but the union was unsuccessful. After Blessington's death D'Orsay and Marguerite became the center of a fashionable artistic and literary circle in London. D'Orsay was long the authority on matters of taste in English society. In 1849, to escape his creditors, he fled to Paris.
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