The grand, never-ending and quite possibly pointless quest to define Dorseyland brings us next to Count Albert Guillaume d’Orsay, and my God what a specimen he is. But he’s got the same surname, close to its French root, and a story to bring biographers to their knees.

We’re heading down a slippery slope here, so hang on to something.

I came across him when Google recommended a geneological chart of dandyism drawn up by one Christian M Chensvold, the modern fop who runs Dandyism.net, a two-year-old website that plays serious but can’t possibly be sincere – the shadow of the Harvard Lampoon crosses its path too often.

Dandyism.net plunges readers giddily into a parallel universe where blokes still carry canes and wear cummerbunds, as well as silly moustaches. You get steeped in classic fairies like Beau Brummel and Oscar Wilde while being reminded constantly that dandyism may be (but they’re not always sure) alive and well and living inside Tom Wolfe, David Beckham and Puff Daddy.

This is the classique Edwardian dandy by Leyendecker, an image borrowed from the site, which, as Chensvold writes, “seeks to rescue the ‘dandy’ – the word and the man – from the dust-covered armoire of history and restore him to his rightful place as society’s leading arbiter elegantiarum”. It lauds qualities like being independently wealthy and residing in London and laments “the banality of using a Toyota Camry to shuttle around children who may, at any moment, vomit on one’s flannel”.

So what the hell am I doing here? This geneological chart, splitting dandyism into a “restrained social variety and the more flamboyant, artistic kind”, locates Count d’Orsay dead centre, with a couple of Beaus, Noel Coward, Prince Charles and other guys fluttering around him.

So I went to the cemetery in Paris and dug the old bugger up from the pyramid-shaped tomb he designed himself so we could have a little talk.

Alfred Guillaume Gabriel, Count D’Orsay was born in Paris on September 4, 1801, and turned into an amateur artist and man of fashion. Dad was a general under Napoleon and mum had blue blood, making him a grandson of the king of Württemberg.

Unlike Beau Nash and Beau Brummel, the English dictators of taste and fashion before him, d’Orsay was a thorough gentleman. In the French army Alfred served in Louis XVIII’s garde du corps, and at the regimental soirees, although he was more courted than any other officer, he always sought out the plainest girls. “No ‘wallflowers’ were left neglected when d’Orsay was present,” the Guardian reported in June.

“D’Orsay would employ two men to carry his dressing case, changed his heavily-perfumed dog-skin gloves six times a day, had his tailor make trousers for his pet pigeons and would pay a boy a guinea a pop to light his cigars.”

While still in the military he met Charles Gardiner, the first Earl of Blessington, and Marguerite, Countess of Blessington, and tagged along on their tour of Italy. The earl was a lavishly wealthy descendant of Stuarts with lots of property in England in Ireland. The countess, his second wife, was the daughter of an Irish landowner who used to terrorise his family by having his pals over for all-night orgies.

Papa married her off at 15 to an army captain who had pretty much the same morals as he did, but that was brought to a quick conclusion when the hubby drew his sword on a superior officer and was chucked out of the country. Young Margaret moved to England and renewed acquaintances with the just-widowed Earl of Blessington. Their marriage, plus helping the old boy spend his money, did wonders for her.

The meeting with d’Orsay was a bit of an earthquake – for both of them.

“The mere sound of the French officer’s voice, the mere sight of his face, the mere knowledge of his presence, stirred her as nothing had ever stirred her until that time. Yet neither he nor she appears to have been conscious at once of the secret of their liking. It was enough that they were soothed and satisfied with each other’s company. Oddly enough, the Earl of Blessington became as devoted to d’Orsay as did his wife.”

In Genoa in 1823 Alfred met Lord Byron, who was equally bowled over by d’Orsay’s “gifts and accomplishments, and to his peculiar relationship to the Blessington family”, as the Encyclopedia Britannica puts it.

Meanwhile the mysterious friendship between d’Orsay and the countess had tongues wagging. Then the earl, “entirely unsuspicious”, proposed that the count should marry Lady Harriet Gardiner, his eldest legitimate daughter by his first wife.

“He pressed the match upon the embarrassed d’Orsay, and offered to settle the sum of £40,000 upon the bride. The girl was less than 15 years of age [which seems to have been the marrying time in those days]. She had no gifts either of beauty or of intelligence, and in addition, d’Orsay was now deeply in love with her stepmother.”

Nevertheless, on December 1, 1827, the wedding went ahead, but it didn’t last long. In 1829 when Lord Blessington died, d’Orsay accompanied the widow home to England, first to Seamore Place, then Gore House, both residences becoming in turn getaways for London’s fashionable literary and artistic society. His young wife was shunted to one side while d’Orsay and the widow got on with impressing folks.

“The two were now quite free to live precisely as they would. Lady Blessington became extravagantly happy, and Count d’Orsay was accepted in London as an oracle of fashion. Every one was eager to visit Gore House, and there they received all the notable men of the time.”

“The count’s charming manner, brilliant wit and artistic faculty were accompanied by benevolent moral qualities, which endeared him to all his associates,” the eBrit says, while admitting that his painting (his portrait of Napoleon is seen here) and sculpture may have been “wanting in the finish that can only be reached by persistent discipline”.

His portrait of the Duke of Wellington was Wellington’s favourite, however, and Lady Blessington wrote novels about “high life”, though only her “Conversations with Lord Byron” is regarded as being of any lasting value.

At Gore House d’Orsay met Benjamin Disraeli and Edward Bulwer-Lytton. Disraeli actually asked Alfred to be his second in a duel. D’Orsay declined, “on the grounds of being a foreigner”, but Disraeli evidently took no offence, dedicating his novel “Henrietta Temple” to the count and modelling one of the characters on him.

In 1849, thanks to the lady’s hand-over-fist spending and damn the debts, d’Orsay went bankrupt. The Guardian claims “he once avoided arrest by telling the police to wait while he dressed. He then spent so long at his mirror the cops gave up and went home.”

The broke couple went to Paris, he fleeing a bootmaker’s £500 bill, she having auctioned off everything she owned.

Lady Blessington died a few weeks later, age 60. Alfred struggled on with his art, but was haemorraghing friends, among them Prince Louis Napoleon, president of the Second Republic, to whom he had long given money and advice. The payback came when Louis staged a coup and promoted himself to emperor – Alfred was appointed national director of fine arts. But by then he was stricken with cancer of the spine. He died a few days afterward, on August 4, 1852. He was just shy of 51.

A biography, “Last of the Dandies: The Scandalous Life and Escapades of Count D’Orsay”, ought to be reviving the bastard, though.

Author Nick Foulkes, formerly of the London Evening Standard’s ES magazine and a contributing editor at GQ, basically says that “what d’Orsay wore today, society would wear tomorrow”, but as the title suggests, there’s plenty of tittle.

Foulkes avers he was “supected of having an affair” with Lord Blessington too, and thus, “bisexual, flamboyant and outrageous, d’Orsay was said to have ruined the cream of British aristocracy”. He also claims the count set up a racing course in Notting Hill and a gambling den in St James’s, so, you know, what a guy!

John Mills (not the actor) wrote a book a few years ago called “D’Horsay – or, the Follies of the day – By a Man of Fashion” in which d’Orsay was disguised behind some sort of Dutch name, the Marquis d’Horsay. There’s also “History of the Perfumes of Orsay” by Monique Cabre, “The legend of the knight of Orsay, perfumes of a dandy”, but that sounds even worse.

There’s an eatery in the old part of Quebec City, “a five-minute walk from the Château Frontenac” (yes, we’re in Canada now), that has a top hat as its logo, and it claims that this kind of top hat was actually named for our count.

Other than that, Restaurant Pub D’Orsay appears to serve an utterly droll, fajita-friendly menu but promises “ample linen … an immense antique stone fireplace and a breathtaking view of both City Hall and the Quebec Basilica”.

Back to this modern dandy business, and a bit more about Dandy.net. Fencing champion, ballroom dancer and choreographer Chensvold says that, “when not polishing his boots with champagne”, he “enjoys smoking a pipe and motoring in his custom roadster”. Website columnist Michael Mattis “enjoys fine pinots, silk scarves and alpine sports” while working “on the fringes of the Hollywood entertainment industry”. Contributor Nick Willard claims that he “has been described as ‘resplendent’ and ‘utterly dashing’ by women who’ve had too much to drink”.

These guys worship Beau Brummell, who, in the estimation of the Guardian “had three hairdressers to groom him, one for the sideburns, one for the forelock and one for the back of the head”, and “two glovers, one for the thumb and one for the fingers”. He died incontinent in a mental hospital.

In surveying the phenomenon for Guardian, Simon Mills quoted Baudelaire as saying that true dandies should have “no profession other than elegance … no other status but that of cultivating the idea of beauty in their own persons … The dandy must aspire to be sublime without interruption; he must live and sleep before a mirror.”

Oscar Wilde, Mills writes, “would hail a cab just to cross the street”. Neil Monroe “Bunny” Roger went into battle with the British Rifle Brigade in WWII wearing a chiffon scarf and brandishing a copy of Vogue. Among the still living, Bryan Ferry once jeopardised a world tour by destroying his passport because he didn’t like the photo. Sean “P Diddy” Combs, discovering he’d gone to Europe without his favourite neckties, sent his butler, Farnsworth Bentley, back to New York in a first-class seat to get them.

Finally, for a truly lasting impression of what it’s like to be a dandy, visit this website and learn self-defence with a walking stick.

And if you still have any strength left, by all means see Dandy.net’s British cousin, The Flaneur.