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| the cover of the 1908 edition |
And, yes, that says Baroness. Because the creator of the original dual identity hero was a woman. Last week, Sarah was talking about the concept of the “fake geek girl” who is supposedly taking a thing that is just for boys and pretending to enjoy it for the attention. I didn’t mean for my post to tie in so nicely—I chose my topic before I actually knew what Sarah’s was—but this is a happy coincidence that lets me add this argument to the mix: How can it be just for boys when a woman wrote the play and subsequent adventure novels that inspired such a large part of the genre? Yeah, no, it can’t.
I’m not going to keep going with that though, because Sarah did a great job with it and this post is actually the first of a new series we will be updating intermittently on women of significance throughout history.
The famous quote goes that history is written by the victors, but there’s another facet of that is often left ignored: History is written by men. Women have contributed so much to the world as we know it, but they are frequently forgotten or their work is stolen by a man who presents it as his own. F. Scott Fitzgerald is certainly not the only example, but he’s the first I can think of off the top of my head.
NYAD’s series on historical women, then, serves to highlight women we wish we’d learnt about in school, women who impress or astound us, women we adore, women whose contributions deserve recognition. And this week, I’m starting with:
Baroness Emma Orczy was born Emmuska Magdolna Rozália Mária Jozefa Borbála Orczy de Orczi. She was born in 1865 in Tarnaörs, Hungary, the only daughter of an aristocratic Hungarian family. Her father was Baron Félix Orczy de Orczi and her mother was Countess Emma Wass de Szentegyad et Czege.
I’m not going to keep going with that though, because Sarah did a great job with it and this post is actually the first of a new series we will be updating intermittently on women of significance throughout history.
The famous quote goes that history is written by the victors, but there’s another facet of that is often left ignored: History is written by men. Women have contributed so much to the world as we know it, but they are frequently forgotten or their work is stolen by a man who presents it as his own. F. Scott Fitzgerald is certainly not the only example, but he’s the first I can think of off the top of my head.
NYAD’s series on historical women, then, serves to highlight women we wish we’d learnt about in school, women who impress or astound us, women we adore, women whose contributions deserve recognition. And this week, I’m starting with:
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| Portrait of the Baroness in June of 1920 |
Baroness Emma Orczy was born Emmuska Magdolna Rozália Mária Jozefa Borbála Orczy de Orczi. She was born in 1865 in Tarnaörs, Hungary, the only daughter of an aristocratic Hungarian family. Her father was Baron Félix Orczy de Orczi and her mother was Countess Emma Wass de Szentegyad et Czege.
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| countries of the Austro-Hungarian Empire |
Emma's early childhood was privileged and luxurious—her father was well-connected, with great composers like Wagner, Liszt, and Gounod as guests of their estate, and held a position in the court of the Austro-Hungarian Empire—but she was only three years old when her father's attempts to modernise their tenants' farming techniques led to a peasant revolt that meant her family had to flee their home. They lived in Budapest, in Brussels, and in Paris, before finally moving to London when she was fifteen.
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| Orczy, 13, in 1878 |
Emma was an artistic person her whole life. She studied music briefly (but unsuccessfully) while her family lived in Paris, and once they reached London, she attended the West London School of Art and, later, Heatherley's School of Fine Art. Some of her paintings have been exhibited at the Royal Academy in London.
It was at the West London School of Art that she met and fell in love with Montague MacLean Barstow, who would become her husband and creative collaborator. Their marriage would last almost 50 years, from 1894 to Montague's death in 1942. In her autobiography, Emma describes their relationship as "one of perfect happiness and understanding of perfect friendship and communion of thought." They had one child: John Montague Orczy-Barstow was born in 1899.
Together, Emma and Montague translated and illustrated Hungarian folktales to supplement their small income, and this proved successful enough to allow Emma to write her first novel, The Emperor's Candlesticks, which was rejected as too short. Emma returned to shorter works, writing a series of detective stories for the Royal Magazine, and gained a small following, before regaining her confidence with the longer form and her next novel, In Mary's Reign was published in 1901.
Emma was a prolific writer throughout her life, but it was with The Scarlet Pimpernel that her legacy lies. The Scarlet Pimpernel was first produced as a play (co-written with her husband) in London's West End. Emma had written the same story as a novel, but it wouldn't be published until 1905, after the play proved to be such a hit. She wrote over a dozen sequels until the last Pimpernel book, Mam'zelle Guillotine, in 1940.
The Scarlet Pimpernel's run in London alone was four years long, despite initially drawing small audiences. It broke records, was translated into other languages and produced in other countries, and was revived multiple times. The first movie adaptation was made in 1917, and there has been an almost constant stream of both plays and films since.
Her novels were racy, mannered melodramas, usually historical fiction, and described by critic Mary Cadogan as "highly wrought and intensely atmospheric." Espionage, police work, and upper-class heroes were common themes. Emma was politically conservative, and a firm believer in the "superiority of the aristocracy."
During the First World War, Emma formed the Women of England's Active Service League. It was an unofficial organisation, which aimed to recruit female volunteers to active service of the war effort. She hoped that the 20,000 women who joined her could "persuade every man [they knew] to offer his service to his country."
Later in life, Emma and Montague bought an estate in Monte Carlo, Monaco, where they lived until World War II and Montague's death. She moved back to London alone, and continued to write until her own death in 1947; she was 82 years old.
Incredibly, Emma and her work can be credited as the inspiration for more than future fictional characters. During the Second World War, a Swedish diplomat called Raoul Wallenberg saw a modernised Scarlet Pimpernel remake: British anti-Nazi film Pimpernel Smith, in which a professor rescues people from Nazi concentration camps. Raoul told his sister, “I want to do exactly what he did,” and went on the save somewhere between 15,000 and 100,000 Hungarian Jews from July of 1944 and January 1945.
It goes to show the power of fictional work and also the stranger-than-fiction coincidences of the real world, because if Emma, a Hungarian, hadn't written The Scarlet Pimpernel, then those thousands of Hungarian Jews might not have survived.
It was at the West London School of Art that she met and fell in love with Montague MacLean Barstow, who would become her husband and creative collaborator. Their marriage would last almost 50 years, from 1894 to Montague's death in 1942. In her autobiography, Emma describes their relationship as "one of perfect happiness and understanding of perfect friendship and communion of thought." They had one child: John Montague Orczy-Barstow was born in 1899.
Together, Emma and Montague translated and illustrated Hungarian folktales to supplement their small income, and this proved successful enough to allow Emma to write her first novel, The Emperor's Candlesticks, which was rejected as too short. Emma returned to shorter works, writing a series of detective stories for the Royal Magazine, and gained a small following, before regaining her confidence with the longer form and her next novel, In Mary's Reign was published in 1901.
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| Richard E. Grant as Sir Percy in 2000 (BBC) |
The Scarlet Pimpernel's run in London alone was four years long, despite initially drawing small audiences. It broke records, was translated into other languages and produced in other countries, and was revived multiple times. The first movie adaptation was made in 1917, and there has been an almost constant stream of both plays and films since.
Her novels were racy, mannered melodramas, usually historical fiction, and described by critic Mary Cadogan as "highly wrought and intensely atmospheric." Espionage, police work, and upper-class heroes were common themes. Emma was politically conservative, and a firm believer in the "superiority of the aristocracy."
During the First World War, Emma formed the Women of England's Active Service League. It was an unofficial organisation, which aimed to recruit female volunteers to active service of the war effort. She hoped that the 20,000 women who joined her could "persuade every man [they knew] to offer his service to his country."
Later in life, Emma and Montague bought an estate in Monte Carlo, Monaco, where they lived until World War II and Montague's death. She moved back to London alone, and continued to write until her own death in 1947; she was 82 years old.
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| Raoul Wallenberg |
It goes to show the power of fictional work and also the stranger-than-fiction coincidences of the real world, because if Emma, a Hungarian, hadn't written The Scarlet Pimpernel, then those thousands of Hungarian Jews might not have survived.
So, in summary, Baroness Emma Orczy:
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| badass |
- was a prolific and successful author, whose work continues to inspire to the present day with multiple remakes and adaptations in film, television, and on the stage.
- married the love of her life and had a long, happy marriage with a man she connected with personally and creatively.
- invented the genre of dual identity heroes. (Feel free to thank her for the Justice League, X-Men, Avengers, etc etc etc, y'all.)
- and was indirectly responsible for the rescue of possibly up to 100,000 Hungarian Jews from the Nazis in WWII.
If you don't think she's pretty fucking awesome, I don't even know what to do with you.
___________
Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emma_Orczy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scarlet_Pimpernel
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scarlet_Pimpernel
http://www.gradesaver.com/author/emmuska-orczy/
http://classiclit.about.com/od/orczybaronessemmuska/p/aa_eorczy.htm
http://ascarletpimpernelblog.blogspot.com.au/2013_10_01_archive.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pimpernel_Smith
http://ascarletpimpernelblog.blogspot.com.au/2013_10_01_archive.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pimpernel_Smith
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