'...Emmuska Magdalena Rosalia Maria Josepha Barbara Orczy (pronounced Ort-zee)....was born into a rich, affluent life, [and] she used her love of romance, mystery, disguise and especially heroism to create The Scarlet Pimpernel.
'From the first, she loved London, and called England her "real, my spiritual, birthplace..."
...
'Although she was not destined to be a painter, art school did change her life forever, for it was there she met a young illustrator named Montague Barstow, the son of an English clergyman, whom she eventually married. ...
'With the complete lack of inhibition or fear that seemed to be the focus of her personality, she decided to try writing. Amazingly, she sold her first stories right away to Pearson's magazine, and the editor asked for more.....
'In 1888 she came close to a real life horror story when she and her husband, only married a week, returned home only to see the police and a crowd forming on the pavement. The legendary "Jack the Ripper" had murdered a young woman just outside the Barstows' door. It fascinated her that, in this city of light and theatre and joy, horror could lay waiting just beneath the fog. This inspired her - she wanted to create a character that would explore that darkness.
'But London in the 1890's belonged to another detective; Sherlock Holmes was wildly popular and Emmuska knew that any character she created would have to be completely different from Arthur Conan Doyle's famous detective. She conceived of an eccentric scarecrow of a man, solving crimes from the safety of a little London teashop using only the clues provided in the newspaper. She called him The Old Man in the Corner and he "was in no way reminiscent of any other character in detective fiction. I thought of him in his big checkered ulster, of his horn-rimmed spectacles, of his cracked voice and dribbling nose, and above all of his lean, bony fingers fidgeting, always fidgeting, with a bit of string."
'The Old Man was the first "arm chair detective," that is, the first detective who was never really involved with the crime, but solved the mystery from a distance. This formula was later used by many mystery writers, most famously by Rex Stout in his Nero Wolfe series.
'The Old Man In the Corner was first published in 1901 by Royal Magazine , for which Emmuska received the large amount of 60 pounds. The stories were immediately popular, and the public clamored for more....
'Orczy created other detectives, including Lady Molly of Scotland Yard, one of the first women detectives in 1910.. .
'[And of her most famous creation:] he came to her in a flash: "I first saw him standing before me - don't gasp, please - on the platform of an underground station...Now, of all the dull, prosy places in the world, can you beat an Underground railway station? But I give you my word that as I was sitting there, I saw - yes, I saw - Sir Percy Blakeney, just as you know him now...I saw him in his exquisite clothes, his slender hands hold up his spy-glass; I heard his lazy, drawling speech, his quaint laugh...it was a mental vision, of course - but it was the whole life story of the Scarlet Pimpernel that was there and then revealed to me...my thoughts were clear enough for me to tell my beloved husband about the wonder that had occurred; the birth of the Scarlet Pimpernel."
'After she had her hero in her mind, "everything else was easy." She wrote The Scarlet Pimpernel in five weeks, a time she looked on later as the happiest in her life - here at last was a "big" story that brought together all the facets of her romantic personality: her fascination with theatricality and disguise, her passion for history and especially, her love of honor and heroism.....
'In 1943, Montague Barstow died at their home in Monte Carlo. Emmuska was left "in darkness and alone." She lived with her one son and traveled between London and Monte Carlo. She published her autobiography, Links in the Chain of Life in 1947 and died weeks later at the age of 82. '
Our focus is not here on her famous novels, but a comedy of manners she wrote, titled Meadowsweet (1912). We start with her description of the exterior of a country home, one with a yard and
'all the rubbish and all the lumber that you could possibly think of — bits of iron gate and all the old hayrakes and the chicken coops that weren't wanted, and the pea-sticks that were worth keeping, and pussy's latest family that had escaped the scullery bucket, and the herd of mice and rats that had evaded the vigilance of the cat, of the owls, and of the terrier.
'And then, of course, there was the barn which belonged exclusively to the chickens, even though the chickens did not belong exclusively to it; for they were everywhere, and made their homes in every barn round the yard, and scratched up the flooring and the brick foundations, and roosted in the waggonette, and generally did as much mischief as a colony of self-respecting chickens can very well do.
'Finally, there was the barn which adjoined the museum, and which held all the superfluous rubbish and lumber which no longer could find a place inside the house. This barn — it was really a loft — had no entrance from the yard, and it was raised some seven or eight feet from the ground on brick pillars. Its only ingress gave on the museum itself, and when you stood in that room looking towards the window and the yard, the door into this loft would be in the end wall on your right at some height from the floor, and a short flight of wooden stairs led up to it.
'But, of course, you don't want to hear just now about the yard, or the barn, or the chickens; your concern, like mine, is of Uncle Jasper's museum, of which I desire to tell you.
'Well, suppose that you — instead of knocking at the front door of Old Manor Farm, which, perhaps, would have been more polite, even if more bold — had skirted the house, and were now standing in the yard, with the barns to your right and left and also behind you, you would be facing that same little stone porch of which I have already told you, and no doubt you would be wondering how the columns, being askew, contrived to uphold the quaint architrave.
'The stone was of a delicate mellow colour, a grey made up of golds and greens, and in spring it was covered with the pale mauve of the wistaria and in the summer with the deep purple of the clematis, for these two climbers joined tendrils over the porch and never quarrelled, the wistaria always making way for the clematis when the time came, and the clematis keeping small and unobtrusive whilst the wistaria wanted plenty of room.
'The door under the porch gave direct on the museum, and if you entered it this way you had a splendid view of the place. You saw the tall bookshelves opposite to you, with rows upon rows of books; you saw the wooden steps leading up to the loft on your left, and all round you saw cases on the walls filled with all kinds of eggs; you saw the table in the centre of the room, with Uncle Jasper's wig upon its stand, and the huge microscope, with its brass fittings shining like gold.
'Then in the dark corners at either end you saw the skeleton of beasts such as you had never seen before, and antlers and horns of every shape and size. I could not, in fact, tell you what you did not see; there was a stuffed alligator, that hung by a chain from the ceiling, and stuffed lizards, that peered at you from every point; and I could not even begin to tell you about the stuffed birds, for they were literally everywhere — on the tops of the bookcases and in cases on the wall, on the tables, the chairs, and the sofas. There were little birds and big birds, song birds and birds of prey, British birds and tropical birds, and birds from the ice regions, white birds, grey birds, red birds, and birds of every tone and colour.
'And, believe me, that by far the most extraordinary bird in the whole museum sat in a tall-backed chair, covered in large-flowered tapestry, and had name Jasper Hemingford.
'I suppose it was this constant handling of birds and being with birds that made Uncle Jasper look so like a bald-headed stork. For all day would he sit, with glue-pot and stuffing and I don't know what other implements, turning limp, dead birds into erect, defiantlooking ones, with staring eyes that were black in the centre and yellow round the rims, and could be bought by the thousand in a shop in London city.'
Having set the scene, we turn to an irrelevant plot detail, which yet sheds light on late Victorian England.
'"We can't always help the flies getting into sweet things this time of year, Cousin Barnaby," she remarked meekly, "and I try to keep all jam and fruit well covered. It was you, if you remember, who left the raspberry jam uncovered after you had helped yourself at breakfast."
'"It was not I who put the fly into it subsequently. But let that pass. I am not one to complain, and all I want is peace. We'll let the fly pass, Caroline, but there is another item to which I think your attention should be called, and that is the presence of a parcel of kittens underneath my bed. Now, even your own fault-finding and criticising disposition could not tax me with being the cause of the increase in your cat's family, nor yet with persuading her to deposit that increase under my bed."
'"Poor pussy! she looks upon your room, Cousin Barnaby, as her special stronghold. The dogs never go in there, and she feels that her little family is safe."
'"Well! I have had the little family swept up into a basket and ordered Susan to deliver them over to Topcoat, with strict injunctions to drown the lot."
'"You haven't done that, Barnaby?"
'"Indeed, I have, and if Topcoat knows his business the drowning will have been effectually done by now."
'"Oh!"
'When Aunt Caroline was speechless it meant that she was very indignant indeed. She was quite speechless now, even though a few words did appear to be struggling upwards, out of her heart, and perished in the attempt. She collected all the socks and stockings into her basket, put down her needle and her thimble, and, still unable to speak, she flounced out of the room, to ... Topcoat .... the outdoor man, the one who swept the gutters, and kept the yard tidy, and attended to the horse and the waggonette.
'If Topcoat had drowned the entire family of kittens without asking Aunt Caroline's permission and merely at the bidding of Barnaby Crabtree, well then Topcoat should be told that he was no longer a servant of Mr. Hemingford,....
'But then Topcoat had not drowned the .... family of kittens.
'Still he got his scolding just the same: it would serve for another time, when he would be sure to deserve it....'
Yes a different world, over a century ago, and yet, it is our own.
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