The Heart of a Woman, (A True Woman)
By Baroness Emmuska Orczy
Louisas, believe me, do no such things. The Mays and the Floras, the Lady Barbaras and Lady Edithas, look beatific and charming when clasping their lily-white hands together and raising violet eyes to the patterned ceiling paper above them. They exclaim: “Oh, my hero and my king!”
But Louisas would only look ridiculous if they behaved like that . . . Louisa Harris, too! . Louisa, the eldest of three sisters, the daughter of a wealthy English gentleman with a fine estate in Kent, an assured position, no troubles, no cares, nothing in her life to make it sad, or sordid or attractive. . . Louisa Harris and romance!.. Why, she was not even pretty. She had neither violet eyes nor hair of ruddy gold. The latter was brown, and the former were grey. . . . How could romance come in the way of grey eyes and of a girl named Louisa?
For instance, can you conceive of one of those adorable detrimentals of low degrees and empty pockets which have a way of arousing love in the hearts of the beautiful daughters of irascible millionaires? Can you conceive such an exciting personage as falling in love with Louisa Harris?
I confess that I cannot. To begin with, dear, kind Squire Harris was not altogether a millionaire and not at all prickly, and penniless owners of romantic personalities were not on his visiting list.
Therefore, Louisa, living a prosy life of luxury, got up every morning, ate a copious breakfast, walked out with the dogs, hunted in the autumn, skated in the winter, did the London season, and played tennis in the summer, just as hundreds and hundreds of other well-born, well-bred English girls of average means, positions, and education hunt, dance, and play tennis throughout the length and breadth of this country.
There was no room for romance in such a life, no time for it. . . . Life itself was so complete already—so whole of the humdrum of daily rounds, of everyday tasks, that the heart which beat with such ordinary regularity in the seemingly ordinary breast of a very ordinary girl did so all unconscious of the intense pathos which underlay this very ordinary existence.
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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 councilor, 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, of perfect friendship and communion of thought.”
Baroness Emmuska Orczy
