The Scarlet Pimpernel

by Baroness Orczy

Several years ago I saw the 1934 movie adaptation of The Scarlet Pimpernel, which was based on the play that was in turn based on the original novel by Baroness Emmuska Magdolna Rozália Mária Jozefa Borbála Orczy de Orczi. Let's just call her Baroness Orczy for short. The movie was silly and didn't appeal much to the modern viewer, but the story itself had a lot of promise. It tells the adventurous tale of a secret organization of young English men who smuggled French aristocrats out of Paris during the bloody revolution in order to avoid more senseless killing. Their enigmatic and fearless leader was a man of mystery, known only by his assumed name: The Scarlet Pimpernel. Despite its title, the novel mostly follows the viewpoint of Lady Marguerite Blakeney, a French actress who married an English baronet. Her brother is exposed as one of the band of the Scarlet Pimpernel, and an evil French agent forces her to help him discover the identity of the Scarlet Pimpernel in exchange for her brother's life. The story has plenty of twists and turns, and while most of them are fairly obvious, they are still enjoyable. The reader figures out who the Scarlet Pimpernel is long before Lady Blakeney, and even the surprise ending isn't much of a surprise. This is straight-forward spy stuff. The bad guys are obviously bad and the good guys are obviously good. There is also a fair amount of editorializing by the author, a Hungarian who lived in both France and England. Baroness Orczy wrote The Scarlet Pimpernel around the turn of the 20th Century, and she lauds the heroic English while condemning the violent French revolutionary government. But none of this overly detracts from the exciting story.

I should also mention that, rather than reading this book, I listened to it as an audiobook. I found a particularly good Librivox recording of the book ready by Karen Savage, who mercifully knew French and did not butcher the French names and dialogue. Kudos to her and to the Librivox project.