Baroness Orzy - Her Life and Times - By Rosemary Morris

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About Rosemary Morris

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 18^th 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

www.rosemarymorris.co.uk

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

My sinuous path to writing by J. S. Marlo

J. S. Marlo BWL Author Page

Many people I meet are curious to know how I became a writer, but I’m afraid the answer often disappoints them—or isn’t quite what they expect to hear.

I would love to say I obtained a degree in English literature, journalism, or creative writing (such a degree would come handy on a daily basis), then wrote and published stories. Instead, I followed a different path, a path I never dreamed would lead to writing and publishing.

As a teen, when I was bored during math class, I scribbled short stories, imagined new scripts for my favorite TV shows, or rewrote the ending of books I read, but without any writing expectations. It was pure fun. A hobby. A secret passion. I believed my path forward was lit with numbers, not words. I wanted to become an accountant, a statistician, a mathematician, or an actuary. I obtained a degree in business and finance, and for nearly twenty years, numbers ruled my world with little room for words.

 Then one summer day, I underwent a routine surgery but developed a severe infection following major complications. I spent many months in bed. To save my sanity, my husband gave me a laptop so I could interact with the outside world.

Well...I found a writing site. At first, I was a reader, then I gathered the nerve (or maybe it was the meds) to post the opening scene of a story. Next thing I knew I started getting comments about my scene, so I posted another one. Writing my daily scene gave me purpose and pleasure amid the pain. What had started as an escape became a torch at the end of a long tunnel, a flame that rekindled that secret passion buried deep inside me. In time, I healed and re-entered the world of the living, but I couldn’t ignore or re-bottle that passion I unleashed. In the following six years, I wrote and shared over two dozen stories—fun stories that served as learning tools for POV, floating body parts, show vs tell, character development...

Thanks to the encouragement I received, I started writing a special story, a story about a female scuba diver who investigates a Ford Model T sunk at the bottom of a lake, a story I kept to myself and showed to no one. After I finished it, I submitted it in a contest sponsored by a new publisher. In my wildest dreams I never imagined it would land me my first publishing contract.

Writing is a precious gift I rediscovered under difficult circumstances, and it changed my life for the better. The journey is ongoing as I write almost every day and sometimes way too late at night. So far, I’ve published eight novels, I’m midway through a ninth, and I’m geared up to start a new romance paranormal series later this year.

So, how did I become a writer? Quite literally by accident.

Thanks for joining me. Have a wonderful day!
JS

 J. S. Marlo's Website

Priscilla Brown writes about love tokens

For details on this and my other contemporary romance novels, check my Books We Love author page:

www.bwlpublishing.ca/authors/brown-priscilla-romance-australia

On a recent visit to the National Museum of Australia in Canberra, I spent some time studying the exhibition of  convict love tokens. Created between 1762 and 1856 by convicts in England around the time of their sentencing to transportation to Australia, the tokens were given to family and friends as remembrances of their loved ones so far away. On the whole, the tokens in the exhibition remain in reasonable condition. 

Using both sides of ordinary coins, the convicts prepared the surfaces for engraving by beating them flat and smooth, then used pinpricks to stipple the text and often decoration. A large copper coin known as the 'cartwheel penny' first minted in 1797 was a popular choice. The tokens display various lettering styles from simple and rough to elaborate and elegant; some messages are printed in lower case, some in upper, and others written in cursive script. The name of the convict, his or her date (most tokens were formed by men, with some by women), and the name of the loved one appear together with a few words; embellishment is often incredibly detailed on such a small surface. Hearts are frequently portrayed, while many creators, clearly artistic, depicted people and their clothing, flowers, birds, animals, ships and other objects possibly important or relevant to both convict and recipient. Defacing coins of the realm was a crime; to replace the image of King George III with their own work perhaps gave the already sentenced offenders a surreptitious pleasure.

As a romance writer, I like my characters to give each other small 'tokens' as reminders of their love when they have to part, either temporarily as in the recently released Silver Linings, or as in Hot Ticket when they believe the parting must be for ever. In Silver Linings, jewellery designer Cassandra fashions a stylish silver pendant for 

Alistair, while he makes an intricate wooden jewellery box for her. Hot Ticket's Callum collects owl images and 

small sculptures. and he knits (no, he is not the nerd Olivia originally suspects); he gives her a top he's designed and knitted. She finds for him a life-size owl.

 

A major part of my story creation is developing personalities. Among several aspects, I like working out the characters' interests and, in their backstories, how they came to have these. This can  involve a lot of research (for the above stories, the only interest I knew anything about was knitting); this for me is an enjoyable though often time-consuming part of being a writer.

Happy reading! Priscilla

http://bwlpublishing.ca

https://priscillabrownauthor.com

Source: National Museum of Australia