Before I could read, I admired the
pictures in my story books. At five-years-old learned to read and, in later
life, shared my favourite children’s fiction. For example, at Christmas, I gave
my two older granddaughters A Little Princess and The Secret Garden.
Recently, I visited old favourites among
which are Baroness Orczy’s series about The Scarlet Pimpernel then researched
the life of this talented novelist, the whose life was as interesting as her
novels.
Baroness
Orczy – Her Life and Times
Best remembered for
her hero, Percy Blakeney, the elusive Scarlet Pimpernel, Baroness Emmuska Orczy
was born in Tarna Ors, Hungary, in 1865 to parents who frequented
the magnificent court of the Austrian Hungarian Empire.
Emmuska enjoyed every luxury in her
father’s magnificent ancestral chateaux, where she lived until 1870 when a mob
of peasants burned the barn, stables and fields. Yet, throughout her life, the lively
parties, the dancing and the haunting gypsy music lived on in Emmuska’s memory.
Fearing a national uprising, the baron
moved his family from Hungary to Belgium, and, until her family settled in
London, Emmuska attended convent schools in Brussels and Paris.
Emmuska fell in love with England which
she regarded as her spiritual birthplace, her true home. When people referred to her as a foreigner,
and said there was nothing English about her, she replied ‘my love is all
English, for I love the country’.
Baron Orczy tried hard to develop his
daughter’s musical talent, but she chose art and had the satisfaction of her
work being exhibited at The Royal Academy.
Later, she turned to writing.
At Heatherby’s School of Art, Emmuska met
her future husband, Montague Barstow, an illustrator. In 1894 they married,
and, in her own words, the union was ‘happy
and joyful’.
Her bridegroom encouraged her to write. In
1895 her translations of Old Hungarian Fairy
Tales, The Enchanted Cat, Fairyland’s Beauty and Uletka and The White
Lizard, edited with Montague’s help, were published. Inspired by thrillers she
watched on stage, Emmuska wrote mystery and detective stories. The first
featured The Old Man in the Corner. For
the generous payment of sixty pounds the Royal Magazine published it in
1901. Her stories were an instant
hit. Yet, although the public could not
get enough of them, she remained dissatisfied.
In her autobiography Emmuska wrote: ‘I felt inside my heart a kind of stirring
that the writing of sensational stuff for magazines would not and should not,
be the end and aim of my ambition. I
wanted to do something more than that.
Something big.’
Montague and Emmuska spent 1900 in Paris
that, in her ears, echoed with the violence of the French Revolution. Surely,
she had found the setting for a magnificent hero to champion the victims of
“The Terror”. Unexpectedly, after she and Montagu returned to England, while
waiting for a train Emmuska saw her famous hero, Sir Percival Blakeney, dressed
in exquisite clothes. She noted the monocle
held up in his slender hand, heard both his lazy drawl and his quaint
laugh. Emmuska told her husband about
the incident and wrote The Scarlet Pimpernel
in five weeks.
Very
often, although the first did not apply to Emmuska and Montague, it is as difficult
to find true love as it is to get published. A dozen publishers or more
rejected The Scarlet Pimpernel. The publishing houses wanted modern,
true-life novels. Undeterred Emmuska and Montague turned the novel into a play.
The critics did not care for the play,
which opened at the New Theatre, London in 1904, but the audiences loved it and
it ran for 2,000 performances. As a
result, The Scarlet Pimpernel was published and became the blockbuster of its
era making it possible for Emmuska and Montague to live in an estate in Kent,
have a bustling London home and buy a luxurious villa in Monte Carlo.
During the next thirty-five years, Emmuska
wrote not only sequels to The Scarlet Pimpernel but other historical and crime
novels. Her loyal fans repaid her by
flocking to the first of several films about her gallant hero. The first
directed by her compatriot, Alexander Korda, was released in 1935.
Emmuska and Montague moved to Monte Carlo in
the late 1910’s where they remained during Nazi occupation in the Second World
War.
Montague died in 1943 leaving Emmuska
bereft. She lived with her only son and
divided her time between London and Monte Carlo. At 82, her last novel Will-O’theWisp
and her autobiography, Links in the Chain of Life, were published in 1947
shortly before her death.
A lasting tribute to the baroness is the
enduring affection the public has for her brave, romantic hero, Sir Percival
Blakeney, master of disguise.
The Captain and The
Countess
London. 1706
Why
does heart-rending pain lurk in the back of the wealthy Countess of Sinclair’s
eyes?
Captain
Howard’s life changes forever from the moment he meets Kate, the intriguing
Countess and resolves to banish her pain.
Although
the air sizzles when widowed Kate, victim of an abusive marriage meets Edward
Howard, a captain in Queen Anne’s navy, she has no intention of ever marrying
again.
However,
when Kate becomes better acquainted with the Captain she realises he is the
only man who understands her grief and can help her to untangle her past.
Novels
by Rosemary Morris
Early
18th Century novels. Tangled
Love, Far Beyond Rubies, The Captain and The Countess
Regency
Novels. False Pretences, Sunday’s Child,
Monday’s Child, Tuesday’s Child, Wednesday’s Child
Mediaeval
Novel. Yvonne Lady of Cassio. The Lovages
of Cassio Book One
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