The Scarlet Pimpernel

Fred Terry in The Scarlet Pimpernel, 1905

The Scarlet Pimpernel is set in 1792, during the early stages of the French Revolution. Marguerite St. Just, a beautiful French actress, is the wife of wealthy English fop Sir Percy Blakeney, a baronet. Before their marriage, Marguerite took revenge upon the Marquis de St. Cyr, who had ordered her brother to be beaten for his romantic interest in the Marquis' daughter, with the unintended consequence of the Marquis and his sons being sent to the guillotine. When Percy found out, he became estranged from his wife. Marguerite, for her part, became disillusioned with Percy's shallow, dandyish lifestyle.

Meanwhile, the "League of the Scarlet Pimpernel", a secret society of twenty English aristocrats, "one to command, and nineteen to obey", is engaged in rescuing their French counterparts from the daily executions of the Reign of Terror. Their leader, the mysterious Scarlet Pimpernel, takes his nickname from the small red flower he draws on his messages. Despite being the talk of London society, only his followers and possibly the Prince of Wales know the Pimpernel's true identity. Like many others, Marguerite is entranced by the Pimpernel's daring exploits.

At a ball attended by the Blakeneys, a verse by Percy about the "elusive Pimpernel" makes the rounds and amuses the other guests. Meanwhile, Marguerite is blackmailed by Citizen Chauvelin, the wily new French envoy to England. Chauvelin's agents have stolen a letter proving her beloved brother Armand is in league with the Pimpernel. Chauvelin offers to trade Armand's life for her help against the Pimpernel. Contemptuous of her seemingly witless and unloving husband, Marguerite does not go to him for help or advice. Instead, she passes along information which enables Chauvelin to learn the Pimpernel's true identity.

Later that night, Marguerite finally tells her husband of the terrible danger threatening her brother and pleads for his assistance. Percy promises to save him. After Percy unexpectedly leaves for France, Marguerite discovers to her horror (and simultaneous delight) that he is the Pimpernel. He had hidden behind the persona of a dull, slow-witted fop to deceive the world. He had not told Marguerite because of his worry that she might betray him, as she had the Marquis de St. Cyr. Desperate to save her husband, she decides to pursue Percy to France to warn him that Chauvelin knows his identity and his purpose. She persuades Sir Andrew Ffoulkes to accompany her, but because of the tide and the weather, neither they nor Chauvelin can leave immediately.

At Calais, Percy openly approaches Chauvelin in the Chat gris, a decrepit inn whose owner is in Percy's pay. Despite Chauvelin's best efforts, the Englishman manages to escape by offering Chauvelin a pinch of snuff, which turns out to be pure pepper. Through a bold plan executed right under Chauvelin's nose, Percy rescues Marguerite's brother Armand and the Comte de Tournay, the father of a schoolfriend of Marguerite's. Marguerite pursues Percy right to the very end, resolute that she must either warn him or share his fate. Percy, heavily disguised, is captured by Chauvelin, who does not recognise him so he is able to escape.

With Marguerite's love and courage amply proven, Percy's ardour is rekindled. Safely back on board their schooner, the Day Dream, the happily reconciled couple returns to England. Sir Andrew marries the count's daughter, Suzanne.

• Sir Percy Blakeney: He is a wealthy English baronet who rescues individuals sentenced to death by the guillotine. He soon reveals himself to be a master of disguise, an imaginative planner, a formidable swordsman and a quick-thinking escape artist. With each rescue he taunts his enemies by leaving behind a card showing a small flower—a scarlet pimpernel. The identity of the Scarlet Pimpernel thus becomes a topic of widespread popular interest and the hero himself becomes the subject of an international manhunt by the French revolutionary authorities. To hide his true identity, Sir Percy presents himself in everyday life as a dim-witted, foppish playboy. His secret is kept by a band of friends known as the League of the Scarlet Pimpernel. The league operates as an undercover team in enacting Sir Percy's rescue plans.
• Marguerite Blakeney, née St Just: She is the wife of Sir Percy. She leads London society with her beauty, style and intelligence. She was an actress in Paris, where she held salons to discuss the issues of the day. She was not an aristocrat in French society. She is 25 years old.
• Armand St Just: Older brother of Marguerite, who raised her after their parents died. He is a gentleman and a republican in France, but his views of the slaughter of the aristocracy do not match the times.
• Citizen Chauvelin: Newly appointed envoy to England from Revolutionary France. He seeks the Scarlet Pimpernel, who is allowing aristocrats to escape their fate under the new regime.
• Sir Andrew Ffoulkes: Friend of Sir Percy who aids Marguerite when she realizes her mistake. He falls in love with an émigrée, a girl who had been at school with Marguerite.
• Suzanne: Daughter of Comte de Tournay, also a friend of Marguerite's; she is the love interest of Sir Andrew Ffoulkes.

The title character, Sir Percy Blakeney, a wealthy English fop who transforms into a formidable swordsman and a quick-thinking escape artist, established the "hero with a secret identity" in popular culture, a trope that would be seen in subsequent literary creations such as Don Diego de la Vega (Zorro), Kent Allard/Lamont Cranston (The Shadow) and Bruce Wayne (Batman).[2] The Scarlet Pimpernel exhibits characteristics that would become standard superhero conventions, including the penchant for disguise, use of a signature weapon (sword), ability to out-think and outwit his adversaries, and a calling card (he leaves behind a scarlet pimpernel at each of his interventions).[3] By drawing attention to his alter ego, Blakeney hides behind his public face as a slow thinking foppish playboy, and he also establishes a network of supporters, The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel, that aid his endeavours.[3]

The popular success of the novel is considered to be based on the myth of the aristocratic hero with a double life, along with the love story and conflict of loyalties.[1] Dugan says that "Behind the wigs and Mechlin lace cuffs lies an enduring human story of love, misunderstandings, conflict of loyalties, audacious bravery – and a dramatic double life." and this is a major part of the story's enduring popularity.[1] Another aspect is the "Englishness" of the hero in the era when the British Empire began to shrink.[4]

As a writer, Orczy often alluded to historical events and figures but adapted these freely in creating her tales.

Citizen Chauvelin, the recurring villain of the Scarlet Pimpernel series, is based to some extent on the real-life Bernard-François, marquis de Chauvelin, who survived the Revolutionary period to serve as an official under Napoleon. He was a noted liberal Deputy under the Bourbon Restoration.

Other historical figures who appear in Orczy's Pimpernel series include:

The Life and Exploits of the Scarlet Pimpernel, a fictional biography of Percy Blakeney published in 1938, named the nineteen members of the League of the Scarlet Pimpernel.[6]

• The original nine League or founder members who formed the party on 2 August 1792: Sir Andrew Ffoulkes (second in command), Lord Anthony Dewhurst, Lord Edward Hastings, Lord John Bathurst, Lord Stowmarries, Sir Edward Mackenzie, Sir Philip Glynde, Lord Saint Denys, and Sir Richard Galveston.
• Ten members enrolled in January 1793: Sir Jeremiah Wallescourt, Lord Kulmstead, Lord George Fanshawe, Anthony Holte, John Hastings (Lord Edward's cousin), Lord Everingham, Sir George Vigor, Bart, The Honorable St John Devinne, Michael Barstow of York, and Armand St Just (Marguerite's brother).

Marguerite, Lady Blakeney, is also named as a member of the League in the book Mam'zelle Guillotine, but it is not known when she was formally enrolled.

Orczy did not publish her Pimpernel stories as a strict chronological series, and in fact, the settings of the books in their publication sequence may vary forward or backward in time by months or centuries. While some readers enjoy following the author's development of the Pimpernel character as it was realised, others prefer to read the stories in historical sequence. Taking into account occasional discrepancies in the dates of events (real and fictional) referred to in the stories, the following is an approximate chronological listing of Orczy's Scarlet Pimpernel novels and short stories:

Hollywood took to the Pimpernel early and often, although most of the Pimpernel movies have been based on a melange of the original book and another Orczy novel, Eldorado. The best known of the Pimpernel movies is the 1934 The Scarlet Pimpernel starring Leslie Howard, which is considered the definitive adaptation by some.

Films

In 1923, Fred Terry and Julia Nelson bought the sole performance right to a stageplay based on The Scarlet Pimpernel. Orczy sued the two in an attempt to claim a separate right of performance for films, but was unsuccessful. As a result of the case, people who controlled a stage performance right under the English Copyright Act were entitled to create films with the same right.[7]

Dustin Farnum (right) in The Scarlet Pimpernel (1917)

• The Scarlet Pimpernel (1917; silent) starring Dustin Farnum, Winifred Kingston and William Burress
• The Laughing Cavalier (1917; silent)
• The Elusive Pimpernel (1919; silent) starring Cecil Humphreys, Maire Blanche and Norman Page
• The Triumph of the Scarlet Pimpernel (1928) starring Matheson Lang
• The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934) starring Leslie Howard, Merle Oberon and Raymond Massey
• The Return of the Scarlet Pimpernel (1937) starring Barry K. Barnes, Sophie Stewart and Francis Lister
• "Pimpernel" Smith (1941), (aka Mister V in the US) starring Leslie Howard, Mary Morris and Francis L. Sullivan
• Pimpernel Svensson (1950) starring Edvard Persson, Aurore Palmgren and Ivar Wahlgren
• The Elusive Pimpernel (1950), aka The Fighting Pimpernel in the US, starring David Niven, Margaret Leighton and Cyril Cusack
• Don't Lose Your Head (1966) (aka Carry On Pimpernel—US) starring Sid James, Kenneth Williams and Jim Dale
• The Elusive Pimpernel (1969) starring Anton Rodgers, Diane Fletcher and Bernard Hepton

The novel has been parodied or used as source material in a variety of media, such as films, TV, stage works, literature, and games:

• It was parodied as a 1950 Warner Bros. cartoon short featuring Daffy Duck, The Scarlet Pumpernickel. An action figure of the Scarlet Pumpernickel was released by DC Direct in 2006, making it one of the few—if not the only—toys produced based on the Pimpernel.
• In 1953, following Jack Kyle's performance for the Ireland national rugby union team against France in that year's Five Nations Championship, sportswriter Paul MacWeeney adapted lines from the work to salute Kyle.[12]
• The Scarlet Pimpernel was parodied extensively in the Carry On film Don't Lose Your Head, which featured Sid James as the Black Fingernail, who helps French aristocrats escape the guillotine while hiding behind the foppish exterior of British aristocrat Sir Rodney Ffing. It also features Jim Dale as his assistant, Lord Darcy. They must rescue preposterously effete aristocrat Charles Hawtrey from the clutches of Kenneth Williams' fiendish Citizen Camembert and his sidekick Citizen Bidet (Peter Butterworth).[13]
• The Kinks 1966 song "Dedicated Follower of Fashion" contain two lines from the book; "they seek him here, they seek him there"; these lyrics also appear in the 1993 film In the Name of the Father when Gerry Conlon (played by Daniel Day-Lewis) returns home to Belfast in hippy style clothing that he got from London's Carnaby Street.[14]
• In the third series of Blackadder, Blackadder the Third, the episode "Nob and Nobility" revolves around Blackadder's disgust with the English nobility's fascination for the Pimpernel. Tim McInnerny reprises a version of his "Sir Percy" character from the previous two series, who is the alter-ego of the Pimpernel.
• In The Desert Song, the heroic "Red Shadow" has a milquetoast alter ego modelled after The Scarlet Pimpernel.[15]
• The character was parodied in a lengthy comedy sketch on The Benny Hill Show (series 11, episode 1, 1980). Portrayed by Hill himself, the "Scarlet Pimple" spent just as much of his time unsuccessfully pursuing women as he did rescuing people. When one woman repeatedly shuns his advances, he leaves in a huff and actually refuses to rescue the next woman being sent to the guillotine.
• The Canadian comedy team of Wayne and Shuster created a comedy sketch in 1957 based on the Scarlet Pimpernel called "The Brown Pumpernickel" in which, instead of a red flower as his calling card, the hero would leave behind a loaf of pumpernickel.[16][17]
• in 1972, Burt Reynolds portrayed the "Lavender Pimpernel" in the season 5 episode 20 episode of The Carol Burnett Show.
• Sir Percy and Marguerite are mentioned as members of an 18th-century incarnation of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen in the graphic novels of that title by Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill and make a more significant appearance in The Black Dossier, in the accounts of both Orlando and Fanny Hill, with whom Percy and Marguerite are revealed to have been romantically involved.
• A series of novels by Lauren Willig, beginning with The Secret History of the Pink Carnation (2005), chronicle the adventures of the Scarlet Pimpernel's associates, including the Purple Gentian (alias of Lord Richard Selwick), spies in the Napoleonic era.[18]
• Steve Jackson Games published GURPS Scarlet Pimpernel, by Robert Traynor and Lisa Evans in 1991, a supplement for playing the milieu using the GURPS roleplaying game system.[19]
• Writer Geoffrey Trease wrote his adventure novel, Thunder of Valmy (1960; US title Victory at Valmy) partly as a response to Orczy's Pimpernel novels, which he argued were giving children a misleading image of the French Revolution.[20] Thunder of Valmy revolves around the adventures of a peasant boy, Pierre Mercier, during the start of the Revolution, and his persecution by a tyrannical Marquis.[20]
• Famed British barrister Sir Desmond Lorenz de Silva, QC is often referred to by Fleet Street papers as "the Scarlet Pimpernel", because of his uncanny penchant for getting off clients facing the death penalty outside the UK.[21]
• American band Tenacious D referenced it in their song "Beelzeboss", sung by the devil.
• Writer Diana Peterfreund took inspiration from the Scarlet Pimpernel for her book Across the Star Swept Sea. The main character, Persis Blake, pretends to be a shallow aristocrat while actually being the notorious spy 'The Wild Poppy'.
• In the 2014 videogame Assassin's Creed: Unity, protagonist Arno Dorian may encounter a man known as the "Crimson Rose", the leader of the "Crimson League", a royalist organization which saves aristocrats from the guillotine. However, it is later discovered that Crimson Rose is a Templar, and he and the League are wiped out by Arno.
• Writer Dewey Lambdin includes an homage to the Scarlet Pimpernel in his book King, Ship, and Sword, in the character of a foppish Sir Pulteney Plumb who was known as 'The Yellow Tansy'.
• Philip José Farmer's Tarzan Alive: A Definitive Biography of Lord Greystoke includes the Scarlet Pimpernel as a member of the Wold Newton Family. Farmer suggests that Sir Percy was present when the Wold Cottage meteorite fell near Wold Newton, Yorkshire, England, on December 13, 1795. Win Scott Eckert wrote two Wold Newton short stories featuring the Scarlet Pimpernel, both taking place in 1795: "Is He in Hell?" and "The Wild Huntsman." Eckert also constructed a "fictional genealogy" for the Pimpernel in his essay "The Blakeney Family Tree."
• In the Phineas and Ferb episode "Druselsteinoween", multiple characters dress as the Scarlet Pimpernel for a Halloween party in a castle. This is used for comedic effect as one of the Pimpernels uses the others as decoys to avoid his father, who disapproves of his son's girlfriend because she's the daughter of his sworn enemy.
• In the Ducktales (2017) episode "Friendship Hates Magic" the Scarlet Pimpernel is parodied as the Scarlet Pimperbill, which Launchpad McQuack mistakes for Darkwing Duck due to the very similar design of the two characters.
• In the comic strip "Doonesbury", the character called "the Red Rascal" has a story line which parodies the original.

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• Blakeney Manor, additional information and digital copies of all books.
• Public Domain Reading (audio rendition) in MP3 format (based on Project Gutenberg text)
• The Scarlet Pimpernel at Project Gutenberg
• The Scarlet Pimpernel public domain audiobook at LibriVox