The Laughing Cavalier (novel)

Infobox Book |
name = The Laughing Cavalier
title_orig =
translator =


image_caption = Cover of the 20th Edition - 1941
author = Baroness Orczy
illustrator =
cover_artist =
country = United Kingdom
language = English
series =
genre = Adventure, Historical novel
publisher = Hodder & Stoughton
release_date = 1913
english_release_date =
media_type = Print (Hardback & Paperback)
pages = 406 pp
isbn = NA
preceded_by = NA
followed_by = The First Sir Percy

Set in Holland in 1623/1624, "The Laughing Cavalier", by Baroness Orczy, revolves around Percy Blake, a foreign adventurer and ancestor of the Scarlet Pimpernel who goes by the name "Diogenes".

Diogenes, we are told by Orczy, is the real subject of the famous painting by Franz Hals. The son of an English Nobleman and a Dutch woman, his father abandoned his mother after Diogenes was born, and he was brought up by Hals in Haarlem. He has spent his life fighting in various battles as a mercenary for hire, but now, along with his two sidekicks - fellow 'philosophers' - Socrates and Pythagoras, he is back in Haarlem, penniless and looking for entertainment.

The book is followed by "The First Sir Percy".

Plot summary

March 1623. The Lord of Stoutenburg is a man on the run. His father, John of Barneveld, was falsely accused of treason and sent to the gallows by the Stadtholder, Maurice of Nassau, Prince of Orange in 1619 while his brother the lord of Groeneveld has since been arrested and executed for plotting to avenge their father's death by killing the Prince.

Meanwhile, Stoutenburg, now a fugitive for his part in the plot, is determined to get his revenge.

While on the run, Stoutenburg asks for shelter from Gilda Beresteyn, the daughter of a rich merchant. Gilda was once in love with Stoutenburg, but has never forgiven him for abandoning her to make a more profitable marriage. Despite her reservations she lets him into her room for a short time and feeds him, but eventually she sends him away again for she knows her father, who is a friend of the Prince of Orange, will not approve.

Nine months later and Gilda is walking across Haarlem, with her serving men, to the New Year's eve service. On route she witnesses three foreign adventurers intervening on behalf of a Spanish woman, who is being attacked by a mob by the Postern gate.

After the fracas is over, Gilda speaks to the poor strangers about their gallant actions and is strangely taken by Diogenes and his twinkling eyes. Yet despite kissing her hand, he refuses any offer of assistance and only succeeds in offending her by requesting that he be given her leave to go to the Lame Cow to quench his thirst.

Gilda continues to church, where rather than listening to the service she sits and fumes about the behaviour of the mysterious stranger. Determined to spend some time praying, she stays behind afterwards in the empty church but is disturbed by a secret meeting between Stoutenburg and his allies (including her brother Nicolaes), when Stoutenburg, fuelled by rage, shouts out his plans to murder the Prince.

Her brother follows her out of the church and it soon becomes apparent that Gilda has overheard everything. She begs her brother to reconsider his part in the evil plot, but he refuses and instead asks her to swear that she will not tell their father. She also refuses, but Nicolaes still tells the rest of the group that she can be trusted not to betray them.

Stoutenburg is not convinced and persuades Nicolaes that he has to arrange for Gilda to be taken away for a few days, so they can complete their plans to kill the Stadtholder before she can tell anyone.

Beresteyn, who has seen Diogenes in the lame cow, follows the adventurer to Franz Hals' house, where he has gone to be painted, and hires him to kidnap his sister for a large sum. After seeing her portrait, Diogenes recognises her as the lady he had spoken to the night before.

With the help of the Spanish woman he saved from the mob, Diogenes bundles Gilda and her maid into a sledge and takes her out of Haarlem. He leaves her under the care of his fellow philosophers for the night and returns to Haarlem, as he has promised Hals that he will sit for him so he can finish the painting.

Afterwards, he accompanies Hals to the lame cow, where he meets Gilda's distraught father. Nicolaes is furious at Diogenes' appearance back in Haarlem, but can say nothing for fear of giving away his role in his sister's kidnapping.

One thing leads to another and before he knows it, Diogenes has promised Gilda's father that he will find his daughter and personally return her to him, for which Mynheer Beresteyn insists he will give the adventurer half of his considerable fortune.

Diogenes is now in a conundrum, for he is a man of his word and therefore has to find a way to fulfil his contract with Nicolaes to deliver Gilda to the house of a Jewish banker in Rotterdam, as well as meeting his promise to return her to her father.

One word from Gilda could send him to the scaffold, yet despite her vehement verbal attacks on him, he is starting to have deep feelings for her, something which won't go down well with Stoutenburg, who is still determined to marry her.

An Apology by Baroness Orczy

"Does it need one?"

"If so it must also come from those members of the Blakeney family in whose veins runs the blood of that Sir Percy Blakeney who is known to history as The Scarlet Pimpernel-- for they in a manner are responsible for the telling of this veracious chronicle."

"For the past eight years now-- ever since the true story of The Scarlet Pimpernel was put on record by the present author-- these gentle, kind, inquisitive friends have asked me to trace their descent back to an ancestor more remote than was Sir Percy, to one in fact who by his life and by his deeds stands forth from out the distant past as a conclusive proof that the laws which govern the principles of heredity are as unalterable as those that rule the destinies of the universe. They have pointed out to me that since Sir Percy Blakeney's was an exceptional personality, possessing exceptional characteristics which his friends pronounced sublime and his detractors arrogant-- he must have had an ancestor in the dim long ago who was, like him, exceptional, like him possessed of qualities which call forth the devotion of friends and rancour of enemies. Nay, more! there must have existed at one time or another a man who possessed that sunny disposition, that same irresistible laughter, that same careless insouciance and adventurous spirit which were subsequently transmitted to his descendants, of whom the Scarlet Pimpernel himself was the most distinguished individual."

"All these were unanswerable arguments, and with the request that accompanied then I had long intended to comply. Time has been my only enemy in thwarting my intentions until now-- time and the multiplicity of material and documents to be gone through ere vague knowledge could be turned into certitude."

"Now at last I am in a position to present not only to the Blakeneys themselves, but to all those who look on the Scarlet Pimpernel as their hero and their friend--the true history of one of his most noted forebears."

"Strangely enough his history has never been written before. And yet countless millions must during the past three centuries have stood before his picture; we of the present generation, who are the proud possessors of that picture now, have looked on him many a time, always with sheer, pure joy in our hearts, our lips smiling, our eyes sparkling in response to his; almost forgetting the genius of the artist who portrayed him in the very realism of the personality which literally seems to breathe and palpitate and certainly to laugh to us out of the canvas."

"Those twinkling eyes! how well we know them! that laugh! we can almost hear it; as for the swagger, the devil-may-care arrogance, do we not condone it, seeing that it has its mainspring behind a fine straight brow whose noble, sweeping lines betray an undercurrent of dignity and of thought."

"And yet no biographer has-- so far as is known to the author of this veracious chronicle-- ever attempted to tell us anything of this man's life, no one has attempted hitherto to lift the veil of anonymity which only thinly hides the identity of the Laughing Cavalier."

"But here in Haarlem-- in the sleepy, yet thriving little town where he lived, the hard-frozen ground in winter seems at times to send forth a memory-echo of his firm footstep, of the jingling of his spurs, and the clang of his sword, and the old gate of the Spaarne through which he passed so often is still haunted with the sound of his merry laughter, and his pleasant voice seems still to rouse the ancient walls from their sleep."

"Here too-- hearing these memory-echoes whenever the shadows of evening draw in on the quaint city-- I had a dream. I saw him just as he lived, three hundred years ago. He had stepped out of the canvas in London, had crossed the sea and was walking the streets of Haarlem just as he had done then, filling them with his swagger, with his engaging personality, above all with his laughter. And sitting beside me in the old tavern of the "Lame Cow," in that self-same tap-room where he was wont to make merry, he told me the history of his life."

"Since then kind friends at Haarlem have placed documents in my hands which confirmed the story told me by the Laughing Cavalier. To them do I tender my heartfelt and grateful thanks. But it is to the man himself-- to the memory of him which is so alive here in Haarlem-- that I am indebted for the true history of his life, and therefore I feel that but little apology is needed for placing the true facts before all those who have known him hitherto only by his picture, who have loved him only for what they guessed."

"The monograph which I now present with but few additions of minor details, goes to prove what I myself had known long ago, namely, that the Laughing Cavalier who sat to Frans Hal for his portrait in 1624 was the direct ancestor of Sir Percy Blakeney, known to history as the Scarlet Pimpernel."

EMMUSKA ORCZY
Haarlem, 1913