The Scarlet Pimpernel ~ Baroness Orczy ~ Fact and Fiction By Rosemary Morris

 

To learn more about Rosemary please click on the image above.

“They seek him here, they seek him there,

Those French men seek him everywhere.

   Is he in Heaven? – Is he in hell?

       That damned annoying Pimpernel.”

The Scarlet Pimpernel, Baroness Orczy’s most famous character, is Percy, the gallant daredevil, Sir Percival Blakeney Bart, the hero of her novels and short stories set during The French Revolution, aptly nick-named The Reign of Terror.   

Orczy was a royalist with no sympathy for the merciless Jacobins who spared no efforts to achieve their political ambitions.  Historical accounts prove everyone in France was at risk of being arrested and sent to the guillotine. Orczy’s works of fiction about the Scarlet Pimpernel display her detailed knowledge about Revolutionary France and capture the miserable atmosphere which prevailed in that era.

Waiting for a train the author saw Sir Percy dressed in the exquisite clothes of a late 18th century gentleman, noted the monocle he held up in his slender hand, heard his lazy drawl and quaint laugh.

In August1792, Percy founded his gallant League of Gentlemen. Eventually, there was “one to command and nineteen to obey.” Percy and his league cheated French Revolutionary Government’s tool, Madame Guillotine of their prey. London’s high society speculated about the Scarlet Pimpernel’s identity.

Percy, an influential, wealthy nobleman man married Marguerite St. Just, a French actress. When he discovered she was responsible for an aristocratic family’s death, for fear she would betray him, he kept his alias secret. Loving Marguerite, despite her crime he feigned indifference, treated her coldly, shunned her company, and acted a fool’s part so successfully that he bored her. However, Marguerite discovered the truth about Percy and saved his life. After the couple’s reconciliation, Marguerite is mentioned as a member of the league in Mam’zelle Guillotine.

At the beginning of each of the series the current events are summarised. Orczy weaves fact and fiction by featuring English and French historical figures such as Robespierre, d’Herbois, the Prince of Wales, and Sir William Pitt, the younger, and historical events. For example, in Eldorado Orczy describes the Dauphin in the care of brutal shoemaker, Simon, who teaches the prince to curse God and his parents. 

In the horror, depicted in her novels, Orczy uses romance and heroism to defeat evil, as she did as a child when playing the part of a fearless prince while her sister acted the part of a damsel in distress.

Orczy spent 1900 in Paris that, in her ears, echoed with the horrors of the French Revolution.  Surely, she had found the setting for her magnificent hero The Scarlet Pimpernel, who would champion the victims of The Terror, but why did she choose an insignificant flower for Percy’s alias? It is not unreasonable to suppose a Parisian royalist organisation’s triangular cards, hand painted with roses that resemble scarlet pimpernels, fuelled Orczy’s imagination.  Further fuel might have been added by a young man called Louis Bayard with similarities to the Sir Percy Blakeney Bart’s life. And the author’s imagination might have  been ignited by nineteen-year old Louis Bayard engaged by William Wickham, the first British spymaster. Louis as elusive as Percy, also had many aliases, and fell in love with an actress. Both appeared and disappeared without causing comment.  Real life Louis’ and fictional Percy’s lives depended on being masters of disguise. 

In disguise, Percy fools his archenemy, Citizen Chauvelin, who Orczy gives the role of official French Ambassador to England in an interesting example of her distortion of historical personalities and incidents. It is doubtful whether Bernard-Francois, Marquis de Chauvelin, ever assumed a false identity as he did in Orczy’s novel, The Scarlet Pimpernel. Another example is Louis-Antoine St Just, a revolutionary, who Orczy gives the role of  Marguerite’s cousin. Louis-Antoine St Just, a young lawyer, was Maximillian Robespierre’s follower. He supported the punishment of traitors and of anyone who was a ‘lukewarm’ revolutionary.  In The Triumph of the Scarlet Pimpernel  her character, Armand St Just, Marguerite’s brother, meets with Robespierre and other Jacobins. Orczy portrays him as young, fervent, and articulate as the Louis-Antoine St Just.

* * *

 

Of Further Interest, The Scarlet Pimpernel series, Links in the Chain of Life,  Baroness Orczy’s biography. A Gay Adventurer. A biography of Sir Percy Blakeney, Bart written by ‘John Blakeney’ pseudonym of Baroness Orczy’s son John Montagu Baron Orczy Barstow.

The links to online bookstores to buy Rosemary Morris’s   novels are at:

https://bookswelove.net/morris-rosemary/

 

The first three chapters of each of my novels may be read on my web site.

www.rosemarymorris.co.uk

 

Baroness Orczy by Rosemary Morris

 

To learn more about Rosemary's work please click the cover.

 Baroness Orczy

 

I am a fan of Baroness Orczy, who is remembered for her novels about Sir Percy Blakeney, baronet, aka the Scarlet Pimpernel. Curious about her life and times I wrote this blog, which I hope you will enjoy.

 

     Baroness Orczy was born in Tarna Ors, Hungary, on September twenty-third, eighteen hundred and sixty-five to Countess Emma Wass and her husband Baron Felix Orczy. Her parents frequented the magnificent court of the Austrian Hungarian Empire where the baron was well known as a composer, conductor, and friend of famous composers, among others, Liszt, and Wagner.

Until the age of five, when a mob of peasants fired the barn, stables and fields destroying the crops, Emma Magdolna Rozália Mária Jozefa Borbála “Emmuska” Orczy, enjoyed luxury in her father’s magnificent, ancestral chateau. Later she described it as a rambling farmhouse on the banks of the River Tarna. She and her family lived there in magnificent ‘medieval style.’  Throughout her life the exuberant parties, the dancing and the haunting gypsy music lived on in her memory.

After leaving Tarna Ors forever, the Orczys went to Budapest. Subsequently, afraid of a national uprising, the baron moved his family from Hungary to Belgium.

Emmuska attended convent schools in Brussels and Paris until eighteen hundred and eighty when her the baron settled his family in Wimpole Street, London.

 In six months, fifteen-year-old Emmuska learned English for which she won a special prize. Afterward, she attended the West London School of Art and then Heatherby’s School of Art. Baron Orczy tried hard to develop his daughter’s musical talent, but Emmuska chose art, and had the satisfaction of her work being exhibited at The Royal Academy. Subsequently, she became an author.

She fell in love with England and regarded it as her spiritual birthplace, her true home. When people referred to her as a foreigner, she said there was nothing English about her, and that her love was all English, for she loved the country

In eighteen hundred and ninety-four Emmuska married Montague Barstow, an illustrator, whom she met had net at Heatherby’s. In her own words, their marriage was happy and joyful.

The newlyweds enjoyed opera, art exhibitions, concerts, and the theatre.

Emmuska’s bridegroom encouraged her to write. In eighteen hundred and ninety-five 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 nineteen hundred 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 her husband returned to England, while waiting for a train, Emmuska saw her most famous hero, Sir Percival Blakeney, dressed in exquisite clothes. She noted the monocle held up in his slender hand, heard his lazy drawl, and quaint laugh. Emmuska told her husband about the incident. In five weeks, she wrote The Scarlet Pimpernel. More than a dozen publishers rejected it. They wanted modern, true-life novels. Undeterred Emmuska and Montague turned the novel into a play. The critics did not care for it when it opened at the New Theatre, London in nineteen hundred and four, but the audiences loved it, and it ran for two thousand performances. 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 sequels, among which are Lord Tony’s Wife, in nineteen hundred and seventeen, The League of The Scarlet Pimpernel in nineteen hundred and nineteen, and other historical and crime novels. Her loyal fans repaid her by flocking to the first of several films about her gallant hero. Released in nineteen hundred and thirty-five, it was produced by her compatriot, Alexander Korda, starred Lesley Howard as Percy, and Merle Oberon as Marguerite.

 Emmuska and Montague moved to Monte Carlo in the late nineteen hundred and tens where they remained during the Nazi occupation during the Second World War.

Montague died in nineteen hundred and forty-three leaving Emmuska bereft. She lived with her only son and divided her time between London and Monte Carlo. Her last novel Will-O’theWisp and her autobiography, Links in the Chain of Life were both published in nineteen hundred and forty-seven shortly before her death at the age of eight-two on November the twelfth, in the same year.

A lasting tribute to the baroness is the enduring affection the public still has for her brave, romantic hero, Sir Percival Blakeney, master of disguise.

 The links to online bookstores to buy Rosemary Morris’s   novels are at:

 https://bookswelove.net/morris-rosemary/

 The first three chapters of each novel may be read on my web site.

 www.rosemarymorris.co.uk

Baroness Orczy by Rosemary Morris

 

To enjoy more of Rosemary's work please click on the image above.

Baroness Emma Orczy

    

I am a fan of well written historical fiction which recreates past times.  Baroness Orczy’s books are among my favourite novels, and I became curious about the author’s life and times.

 

 

Baroness Orczy

 

Best remembered for her hero, Percy Blakeney, the elusive scarlet pimpernel, Baroness Orczy was born in Tarna Ors, Hungary, on September 23, 1865, to Baron and Baroness Orczy.  Her parents frequented the magnificent court of the Austrian Hungarian Empire where the baron was well known as a composer, conductor and friend of Liszt, Wagner, and other composers.

Until the age of five, when a mob of peasants fired the barn, stables and fields destroying the crops, Emma Magdolna Rozália Mária Jozefa Borbála “Emmuska” Orczy, enjoyed every luxury in her father’s magnificent, ancestral chateaux, which she later described as a rambling farmhouse on the banks of the River Tarna.  The baron and his family lived there in magnificent ‘medieval style’.  Throughout her life, the exuberant parties, the dancing, and the haunting gypsy music lived on in Emmuska’s memory.

After leaving Tarna Ors forever, the Orczys went to Budapest.   Subsequently, in fear of a national uprising, the baron moved his family from Hungary to Belgium.  Emmuska attended convent schools in Brussels and Paris until, in 1880, the baron settled his family in Wimpole Street, London.

 Fifteen-year-old Emmuska, learned English within six months, and won a special prize for doing so.  Later, she first attended the West London School of Art and then Heatherby’s School of Art, where she met her future husband, Montague Barstow, an illustrator.

Emmuska fell in love with England and regarded it as her spiritual birthplace, her true home.  When people referred to her as a foreigner, she replied there was nothing foreign about her, she her love was all English, for she loved the country.

Baron Orczy tried to develop his daughter’s musical talent. Emmuska chose art and had the satisfaction of her work being exhibited at The Royal Academy. Later, she turned to writing. 

In 1894 Emmuska married Montague, and, in her own words, the marriage was ‘happy and joyful’. 

The newlyweds enjoyed opera, art exhibitions, concerts, and the theatre.  Emmuska’s bridegroom was supportive of her and 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 her husband returned to England, it was while waiting for the train that Emmuska saw her most 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 within five weeks had written The Scarlet Pimpernel.

     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 35 years, Emmuska wrote sequels to The Scarlet Pimpernel such as, Lord Tonys Wife, 1917, The League of The Scarlet Pimpernel 1919, but other historical and crime novels.  Her loyal fans repaid her by flocking to the first of several films about her gallant hero.  Released in 1935, it was produced by her compatriot, Alexander Korda, starred Lesley Howard as Percy, and Merle Oberon as Marguerite.

 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.  Her last novel Will-O’theWisp and her autobiography, Links in the Chain of Life were published in 1947 shortly before her death at the age of 82 on November 12, in the same year. Raise your glass and drink a toast to them.

 

http://bwlpublishing.ca/morris-rosemary

 

www.rosemarymorris.co.uk

 

Baroness Orczy and The Scarlet Pimpernel ~ Fiction and Fact by Rosemary Morris

 To learn more about Rosemary please click on the image above.

 I am a fan of well written historical fiction which recreates past times. After I read Baroness Orczy’s novels about her gallant hero, the scarlet pimpernel, I became curious about the author’s life and times.

 

Baroness Orczy

and

The Scarlet Pimpernel Fiction and Fact

 

                                          “They seek him here, they seek him there,

                                          Those French men seek him everywhere.

                                          Is he in Heaven? – Is he in hell?

                                          That damned annoying Pimpernel.”

 

The Scarlet Pimpernel, Baroness Orczy’s most famous character, is Percy, the gallant daredevil, Sir Percival Blakeney Bart.  He is the hero of her novels and short stories set in The French Revolution, so aptly nick-named The Reign of Terror.   

Orczy was a royalist with no sympathy for the merciless Jacobins who spared no efforts to achieve their political ambitions.  Historical accounts prove everyone in France was at risk of being arrested and sent to the guillotine.  Orczy’s works of fiction about the Scarlet Pimpernel display her detailed knowledge about Revolutionary France and capture the miserable atmosphere which prevailed in that era.

When writing about her novel The Laughing Cavalier, Percy’s ancestor, Orczy described Percival’s “sunny disposition, irresistible laughter, a careless insouciance and adventurous spirit”.

As I mentioned in my previous article in Baroness Orczy, in Vintage Script, Percy revealed himself to Orczy while she was waiting for a train at an underground station.  She saw him dressed in exquisite clothes that marked him as a late eighteenth century gentleman, noted the monocle he held up in his slender hand and heard both his lazy drawl and quaint laugh.  Inspired by their meeting she wrote The Scarlet Pimpernel in five weeks.

On the second of August 1792, Percy founded his gallant League of Gentlemen composed of nine members.  When ten more members enrolled in January 1793 there was “one to command and nineteen to obey.” Percy and his league saved innocents from the French Revolutionary Government’s tool, Madame Guillotine.

London society speculated about the identity of The Scarlet Pimpernel but, with the possible exception of the Prince Regent, only the members of Percy’s league knew his true identity.

     Percy, a man of wealth and influence well-acquainted with the Prince Regent, heir to the throne, married Marguerite St. Just, a French actress.  Until Percy discovered Marguerite was responsible for an aristocratic family’s death, he was an adoring husband.   Percy kept his alias, The Scarlet Pimpernel secret from Marguerite for fear she would betray him.  Still loving Marguerite despite her crime, he feigned indifference, treated her coldly, shunned her company and acted the part of a fool so successfully that he bored her.  However, Marguerite discovered the truth about Percy and saved his life.  After the romantic couple’s reconciliation, Marguerite is mentioned as a member of the league in Mam’zelle Guillotine.

At the beginning of each of Orczy’s novels about The Scarlet Pimpernel and his league, the current events of the French Revolution are summarised.  Thus, Orczy weaves fiction and face by not only featuring English and French historical figures such as Robespierre, d’Herbois, The Prince of Wales, and Sir William Pitt, the younger, but by making use of historical events.  For example, in Eldorado Orczy describes the Dauphin in the care of the brutal shoemaker, Simon, who teaches the prince to curse God and his parents. 

Amid horror, Orczy uses romance and heroism to defeat evil, as she did as a child when playing the part of a fearless prince while her sister acted the part of a damsel in distress.

Orczy spent 1900 in Paris that, in her ears, echoed with the horrors of the French Revolution.  Surely, she had found the setting for her magnificent hero The Scarlet Pimpernel, who would champion the victims of The Terror.   But why did she choose such an insignificant flower for Percy’s alias?   It is not unreasonable to suppose a Parisian royalist organisation’s triangular cards, which were hand painted with roses that resemble scarlet pimpernels, fuelled Orczy’s imagination. 

Further fuel might have been added by a man called Louis Bayard, a young man with similarities to the real life Scarlet Pimpernel, although he might not have been motivated by Percy’s idealism

William Wickham, the first British spymaster, engaged the nineteen-year old Louis Bayard.  In the following years, Louis proved himself to be as elusive as Percy. Like Percy, Louis had many aliases. Not only did Orczy’s fictional hero and Louis fall in love with actresses, but both also appeared and disappeared without causing comment.  Real life Louis’s and fictional Percy’s lives depended on being masters of disguise. 

In disguise, Percy fools his archenemy, Citizen Chauvelin, who Orczy gives the role of official French Ambassador to England.  It is an interesting example of her distortion of historical personalities and incidents for them to feature in her works of fiction.  In fact, it is doubtful that Bernard-Francois, marquis de Chauvelin ever assumed a false identity as he did in Orczy’s novel, The Scarlet Pimpernel, about Percy and his League of Gentlemen, among whom are such fictional but memorable characters such as Armand St Just, Marguerite’s brother, Sir Andrew Ffoulkes, Lord Hastings, and Lord Tony Dewhurst.

Another example of Orczy weaving fact and fiction is Louis-Antoine St Just, a revolutionary, who she describes as Marguerite’s cousin.  Louis-Antoine St Just, a young lawyer, was Maximillian Robespierre’s follower. He supported the punishment of traitors as well as that of anyone who was a ‘luke-warm’ revolutionary.  In The Triumph of the Scarlet Pimpernel Marguerite’s brother, the fictional, Armand St Just, meets with Robespierre and other Jacobins.  Orczy portrays him as young, fervent, and articulate as the real life Louis-Antoine St Just.

Throughout the history of publishing countless authors, who became famous and whose work is still enjoyed as books, films, plays and t.v. dramatizations, found it difficult to place their work.  Orczy’s most famous novel was no exception.  Percy took the leading role in her play called The Scarlet Pimpernel and captured the audience’s hearts. Subsequently the novel was published, and Percy became famous.  His fame increased with each sequel about his daring exploits.

 

http://bookswelove.net/authors/morris-rosemary

 

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