Baroness Emma Orczy was a famous Anglophone Hungarian novelist and literary figure who is perhaps best known for her books that featured Sir Percy Blakeney (aka the Scarlet Pimpernel) in his merry dancing (and fundamentally good-natured) duels with the French Republican authorities during the Terror. The character of the Scarlet Pimpernel and the numerous stories and plays that Orczy wrote cataloguing his many adventures and hair-breath escapes have remained firm favourites both of the big and small screen.
As is my custom when writing about literary figures and novelists on Semitic Controversies: what I wish to point out about Orczy and her writing is the attitudes she displays towards the jews.
Now it is worth noting that Orczy was of a decidedly conservative monarchist political sheen and as such and living at the time she did: she is not likely to have been well-disposed to the jews especially given the highly significant (and very obvious) jewish involvement in the horrific 133 Days of Bela Kuhn in Hungary. Where a disproportionately jewish Bolshevik-inspired regime committed horrendous atrocities against just about every class and segment of society and passed some of the most hilarious laws in history: such as that every toilet in Hungary was classed as a public convenience on Sundays. (1)
However the amount of times we see jewish characters turn up is Orczy's novels and literary output is significant and probably reflects Orczy's own beliefs about jews.
For example in her first novel 'The Emperor's Candlesticks' she introduces an old jew in Vienna called Moses Gruenbaum: who aids a thief by putting two stolen priceless candlesticks into his shop so they would not attract undue suspicion or be found on the person or property of the thieves. It is later discovered that he is one of the main fences for getting rid of stolen goods for the Viennese criminal underworld.
We later discover Gruenbaum has a jewish partner in London called Isaac Davis (who plays a similar role to Gruenbaum in the criminal underworld there) whom he sends high profile stolen goods to (such as said candlesticks) in order to sell.
Gruenbaum is portrayed by Orczy as having a flat nose, big lips and eyes like those of a toad. Gruenbaum is also shown to be incredibly mistrustful of others and also an invertate and serial liar.
Similarly in her 'The Old Man in the Corner' Orczy describes a jew named Aaron Cohen: who is a professional financier with offices on Threadneedle Street (i.e., next to the Bank of England) in the City of London (she also refers to another morally dubious financier in the same work as having 'distinct Hebrew features').
Cohen is extremely unfit/fat and spends his evenings gambling semi-professionally. This gambling however is odd, because Cohen seems to always have an extraordinary amount of luck (i.e., Orczy is implying Cohen is systematically cheating) and regularly cleans young aristocratic airheads out of large amounts of ancestral inheritance.
It is for this behaviour that Cohen is eventually murdered and Orczy implies by the lack of moral outrage expressed by her characters that quite frankly Cohen deserved everything he got.
A not dissimilar character named Abraham Rubenstein is to be found in Orczy's 'Lady Molly of Scotland Yard'. Rubenstein is a loan shark who is blackmailing a young aristocrat for 100,000 Francs with the threat that unless he is paid said youthful noble will go to prison for seven years at his behest.
In addition an unnamed character in the same work is labelled as 'jewish in extract' and Orczy asserts through her other characters that the root of his extreme parsimony with money is this ancestry.
All these characters suggests that Orczy saw jews as being a racially alien group of people: who are careful how they spend their money. When they do spend it: it is to a very specific purpose, which is usually their own personal advancement about which they have no moral scruple what-so-ever (hence Cohen's cheating when gambling and Gruenbaum and Davis' happily dealing with criminals and selling the fenced goods on).
In the first of her novels featuring Sir Percy Blakeney ('The Scarlet Pimpernel'): Orczy refers to jews as being irascible and dishonest peddlers in France, which then accounts (she later opines) for why the French peasantry hate them so much.
Later in the same novel she has Blakeney successfully dress up and act like a jew named Goldstein to fool the agents of the Committee of Public Safety: in so doing Blakeney pretends to be obsessed with money and being willing to sell any non-jew down the river in order to save his own neck (and preferably make a substantial profit at the same time).
Thus once again we see the themes of moral unscrupulousness, cheating and an inordinate obsession with money coming to the fore.
This finds further confirmation in Orczy's 'Castles in the Air' with Orczy referring to a jewish banker (who she calls a usurer) who has profited hugely from the French Revolution and the destruction of the aristocracy. He is said to now have 'immeasurable wealth' and has married his daughter off to an aristocrat of very ancient lineage who was ruined by the same revolution.
We are also told that it is the second time he has married her off to a French aristocrat as he first husband died when his ship (bound for the Americas) sank. He then uses his money and his second son-in-law's state of extreme financial distress to control him (to the point where the jew will do anything to keep his son-in-law in control). His daughter connives in this arrangement with her father and Orczy suggests this may itself be down to her jewishness and resultant disregard of non-jews as anything other than tools for her to gain importance, social position and more wealth.
In return the jewish financier (who is shown to be obsessed with gaining social position for his daughter) uses his daughter as a kind of society star to front his financial operations among the elite of France.
In essence Orczy is here warning us about the immoral nature of the jews in regard to their advancement and the way that they will do practically anything to advance their own interests: including, but not limited to, using their daughters as pawns to advance their own agenda regardless of the impact it has on non-jews.
It is suggestive of the fact that Orczy saw jews as a dangerous subversive alien element within European society that needed to be dealt with.
References
(1) On Bela Kun and the Hungarian Soviet Republic see my articles: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/the-jewish-role-in-the-hungarian; https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/the-133-days-of-bela-kun; https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/jewish-versus-non-jewish-victims