Comte Jehan Marie Joseph Côme
De Marsay
Male
France
1868-08-03
Bosmont-sur-Serre, Hauts-de-France, France
1945-03-22
Paris, France
As well as being a career soldier in the French Army, Count Jehan de Marsay was a renowned travel writer. The following is a translation and slight adaptation of a short biographical piece on him featured in the French-language website www.librest.com:
“The eldest son of Count Édouard de Marsay and Countess Isabelle de Marsay (née d’Angot de Ménilterre), Jehan de Marsay, an officer of the Legion of Honor, was born at the Château de Ris, in Bossay, Touraine.
“After a brilliant scholastic career and having attended the Saint-Cyr military school, he served in the infantry before resigning in 1898. Why this change of direction? Quite simply to be free to pursue his dream: to discover the world.
“Indeed, Jehan de Marsay, who remained single, was not cut out for a quiet life. He was courageous and a go-getter, as evidenced not only by his letters, but also by his service record during the First World War, where three citations in the army testify to his courage. He served, among other things, in the Second Foreign Regiment and two Zouave regiments, as a battalion commander. He was appointed reserve lieutenant-colonel in 1923 and retired in 1924.”
The aforementioned website also features a review of Volume 2 of one of the Count de Marsay’s books, La Tarentule de Voyages/The Travelling Tarantula (1904). An English translation of this review can be found below:
“Count Jehan de Marsay, a tireless globetrotter, crossed northern India in 1903. This was one of the stages of his new adventures. Having just returned from Indochina in April 1899, the adventurer weighed anchor and embarked on the Victoria on October 12, 1899.
“He crossed the Indian Ocean, stopping in Ceylon and Japan. With his keen sense of observation, he captured the customs and events of the countries he visited, from beautiful Japanese geishas to the fighting in China. He met and accurately judged Paul Doumer, then governor of Indochina.
“Returning from this tour of the Far East in 1900, he left Paris again in 1902 for an extraordinary journey through lands and mountains, from Greece to the Caucasus, Persia and India, on the pretext that ‘the life we lead in France is of little consequence’. Baku, the ‘black city,’ lives in the fever of oil exploitation. ‘A place that Dante’s inferno lacks,’ he comments.
“Cold, heat, precipices, deserts… imperturbable, he continues his journey, always curious, to Australia, where ‘the young society ladies society are terribly flirtatious…’ What is this adventurer looking for? Perhaps to forget ‘what a poorly organized journey that of life is and how God shows himself inferior in this respect to James Cook. Never to be able to stop, never to be able to return!’”
1901 - 1908
0
9
2
Round 2
Comte de Marsay 1 *
S. Smet
6-3
6-4
Quarterfinals
Clarence Cecil (Clarry) Pell 1 *
Comte de Marsay
6-0
6-2
Round 2
Jean-Charles Worth 1 *
Comte de Marsay
6-3
6-1
Round 1
Pedro Stanley Augusto de Heeren 1 *
Comte de Marsay
6-3
6-4
Round 1
Pierre Verdé Delisle 1 *
Comte de Marsay
6-1
6-3
Round 1
Comte de Marsay 1 *
F. Fitzgibbon
5-7
6-1
6-2
6-1
Round 2
Arthur Knox Cronin 1 *
Comte de Marsay
6-0
6-0
6-0
Round 1
Max Decugis 1 *
Comte de Marsay
w.o.
Round 1
H.S. Jolly 1 *
Comte de Marsay
6-2
6-0