Bearsted’s very own Baroness behind Scarlet Pimpernel
Probably few people today have actually read The Scarlet Pimpernel, the novel about the French Revolution written by Baroness d’Orczy in 1903.
But after 11 movie adaptions and several television series, surely everyone is at least familiar with the character of the daring Sir Percy Blakeney who repeatedly pops up at critical moments during
The Terror to rescue French aristocrats from the guillotine. The seemingly useless dandy, who is in fact a secret superhero, has been the inspiration for many fictional characters since, including Zorro and Batman.
The story, originally written as a stage play, was the making of the Baroness
- a displaced Hungarian who moved to Britain in 1879 to flee a peasant revolt, aged 14.
The stage play was a resounding success and ran for 2,000 performances, while the book became an international best seller. The Baroness, who insisted on always being addressed by her proper title, went on to write 50 more novels, many again featuring the Pimpernel.
She had married Montagu Barston, the son of a vicar, in 1894, and turned to writing as a way to make ends meet after the birth of their first (and only) child in 1899. Pimpernel was her third novel but first success. The wealth generated by her writing allowed the couple to have three homes: in London, in Monte Carlo and... in Bearsted.
They bought the Snowfields estate in Yeoman Lane in 1906 and had the Georgian house remodelled in 1911. At the same time they commissioned the construction of nearby Little Snowfield as a home for the Baroness’s mother. Montagu Barston became an artist and liked especially to draw cats and nudes. He also illustrated some of his wife’s books. He died in 1942 at their home in Monte Carlo, where the couple had found themselves trapped during the Second World War.
Baroness Orczy died in 1947.