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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.
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