French Revolution again: The Scarlet Pimpernel

The Scarlet Pimpernel  by Baroness Orczy

published 1905

 

I recently read several novels about the French Revolution, and realized that I had been intending also to read this book – recommended by a couple of people, in the past and currently – here in the comments:

Johan22 July 2024 at 18:53

Everything I know about the French revolution I learned from the Scarlet Pimpernel. (Well, at least I am sure those books have coloured my impressions of it forever.)

Clothes In Books23 July 2024 at 17:31

Totally understandable. With me it was Biggles - if there had been a time-travelling entry with Biggles goes to the Bastille I would have known much more about the French Revolution.

So I got hold of it. It is certainly an easy read – a tense and exciting adventure, concerning the rescue of aristocrats from France. The Scarlet Pimpernel is the nom de guerre of the leader of a group of brave dashing chaps. It is impossible to spoiler this book now: Sir Percy Blakeney is the Scarlet Pimpernel, something which is theoretically only revealed a long way into the book.

Sir Percy seems to be a lazy, dandyish fop, easily dismissed and disregarded. We know better. His wife Marguerite – a Frenchwoman – has no idea that he is the brave Pimpernel. They initially loved each other deeply, but have become estranged after an incident which makes no sense (either as an inciting incident or in its ultimate sorting out).

She, trying to protect her brother, accidentally gives away information which implicates the Scarlet Pimpernel. Then she realizes what is happening:

Percy . . . Percy . . . her husband . . . the Scarlet Pimpernel . . . Oh! how could she have been so blind? She understood it all now—all at once . . . that part he played—the mask he wore . . . in order to throw dust in everybody’s eyes. [Ellipses in the original]

This is more than halfway through. She takes off to try to warn him and save everyone. There is a lot of jeopardy and exciting adventures: the structure, and the nature of the exploits are actually splendid. (Happy ending assured).

A pimpernel is a small red flower....

For a positive view of the book, do read my friend Chrissie: someone who loved The Scarlet Pimpernel as a teenager and decided to revisit it.

Are you sensing perhaps that I am working up to a big HOWEVER? It was an exciting and interesting book, but I had a huge problem with the simplicity of its views: those poor old aristos having a hard time while the wicked peasants rose up and behaved viciously and badly.

Of course the story of the Revolution is not straightforward, and no-one can read about the Reign of Terror without being horrified. But no reasonable person could read about the situation in France before the Revolution without being horrified. Nothing is black and white, but huge areas of life in 18^th century France were simply indefensible. More than 100 years later the Baroness Orczy had had plenty of opportunity to balance the history, but made not the slightest effort to do so. It’s just an adventure story, but I couldn’t enjoy the judgement, the evil peasantry, the lovely aristos in danger, without the slightest consideration of what had come before, and the realities of what those aristocrats had done to deserve their fates.

that seething revolution, three hundred miles away, in beautiful Paris, now rendered hideous by the constant flow of the blood of her noblest sons, by the wailing of the widows, and the cries of fatherless children.

There had been a lot of wailing widows and fatherless children in the lives of those who became revolutionaries.

It is quite likely that if I had read it as a teenager I would have been enchanted by it…

When I looked it up, I found that a play of The Scarlet Pimpernel – also by Orczy – had preceded the book, which was basically a novelization. Everything about it has always been phenomenally successful – the play, the book and any number of films.

The book is seen as having introduced the idea of the dual-hero: the man who has a low-level life, perhaps rather despised, while secretly being a superhero. Mild-mannered Superman or Spiderman are seen as following in a direct line.

I doubt they would be quite so popular if they were rescuing English families from the US War of Independence, with the evil Americans described as wicked and heartless.

Baroness Orczy also wrote some detective stories – short stories featuring The Old Man in the Corner. He is one of the detectives parodied in the Agatha Christie collection featuring Tommy and Tuppence: Partners in Crime. (It’s The Sunningdale Mystery)

In the revered school stories of Antonia Forest, Nick and Lawrie join the Girl Guides and help form a new patrol, for which the name chosen is Scarlet Pimpernel. (Autumn Term) – not that they are in it for long.

Illos are cigarette cards from the NYPL collection.