The First Sir Percy: An Adventure of the Laughing Cavalier
By Baroness Emmuska Orczy
A moonless night upon the sandy waste — the sky a canopy of stars, twinkling with super-radiance through the frosty atmosphere; the gently undulating ground like a billowy sea of silence and desolation, with scarce a stain upon the smooth surface of the snow; the mantle of night enveloping every landmark upon the horizon beyond the hills in folds of deep, dark indigo, levelling every chance hillock and clump of rough shrub or grass, obliterating road and wayside ditch, which in the broad light of day would have marred the perfect evenness of the wintry pall.
It was a bitterly cold night in mid-March in that cruel winter of 1624, which lent so efficient a hand to the ghouls of war and disease taking a toll on human lives.
Not a sound broke the serene majesty of this forgotten corner of God’s earth, save perhaps at intervals the distant, melancholy call of the curlew or, from time to time, the sigh of a straying breeze, which came lingering and plaintive from across the Zuyder Zee. Then, for a while, countless particles of snow, fanned by unseen breaths, would arise from their rest, whirl and dance a mad fandango in the air, gyrate and skip in a glistening whirlpool lit by mysterious rays of steel-blue light, and then sink back again, like tired butterflies, to sleep once more upon the illimitable bosom of the wild. After which Silence and Lifelessness would resume their ghostlike sway.
To right and left, and north and south, not half a dozen leagues away, humanity teemed and fought, toiled and suffered, unfurled the banner of Liberty, laid down life and wealth in the cause of Freedom, conquered and was down-trodden and conquered again; men died that their children might live, women wept, and lovers sighed. But beneath that canopy dotted with myriads of glittering worlds, intransmutable and sempiternal, the cries of battle and quarrels of men, the wail of widows and the laughter of children appeared futile and remote.
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Baroness Emmuska Orczy
Baroness Emma Orczy (full name: Emma Magdalena Rozália Mária Jozefa Borbála Orczy de Orci) ( 23 September 1865 – 12 November 1947), usually known as Baroness Orczy (the name under which she was published) or to her family and friends as Emmuska Orczy, was a Hungarian-born British novelist and playwright.
Biography.
She is best known for her series of novels featuring the Scarlet Pimpernel, the alter ego of Sir Percy Blakeney, a wealthy English fop who turns into a quick-thinking escape artist to save French aristocrats from “Madame Guillotine” during the French Revolution, establishing the “hero with a secret identity” in popular culture. Opening in London’s West End on 5 January 1905, The Scarlet Pimpernel became a favourite of British audiences. Some of Orczy’s paintings were exhibited at the Royal Academy in London. She established the Women of England’s Active Service League during World War I to empower women to convince men to enlist in the military.
Orczy was born in Tarnaörs, Hungary. She was the daughter of the composer Baron Félix Orczy de Orci (1835–1892) and Countess Emma Wass de Szentegyed et Cege (1839–1892). Her paternal grandfather, Baron László Orczy (1787–1880), was a royal councillor and knight of the Sicilian order of Saint George; her paternal grandmother, Baroness Magdolna, born Magdolna Müller (1811–1879), was of Austrian origin. Her maternal grandparents were Count Sámuel Wass de Szentegyed et Cege (1815–1879), a member of the Hungarian parliament, and Rozália Eperjessy de Károlyfejérvár (1814–1884). Emma’s parents left their estate for Budapest in 1868, fearful of the threat of a peasant revolution. They lived in Budapest, Brussels, and Paris, where Emma studied music unsuccessfully. Finally, in 1880, the 14-year-old Emma and her family moved to London, England, where they lodged with their countryman, Francis Pichler, at 162 Great Portland Street. Orczy attended the West London School of Art and then the Heatherley School of Fine Art. Although not destined to be a painter, it was at art school that she met a young illustrator named Henry George Montagu MacLean Barstow, the son of an English clergyman; they were married at St Marylebone parish church on 7 November 1894. It was the start of a happy marriage, which she described as “for close on half a century, one of perfect happiness and understanding, perfect friendship and communion of thought.”
Baroness Emmuska Orczy
