The Scarlet Pimpernel ~ Baroness Orczy ~ Fact and Fiction By Rosemary Morris

 

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“They seek him here, they seek him there,

Those French men seek him everywhere.

   Is he in Heaven? – Is he in hell?

       That damned annoying Pimpernel.”

The Scarlet Pimpernel, Baroness Orczy’s most famous character, is Percy, the gallant daredevil, Sir Percival Blakeney Bart, the hero of her novels and short stories set during The French Revolution, aptly nick-named The Reign of Terror.   

Orczy was a royalist with no sympathy for the merciless Jacobins who spared no efforts to achieve their political ambitions.  Historical accounts prove everyone in France was at risk of being arrested and sent to the guillotine. Orczy’s works of fiction about the Scarlet Pimpernel display her detailed knowledge about Revolutionary France and capture the miserable atmosphere which prevailed in that era.

Waiting for a train the author saw Sir Percy dressed in the exquisite clothes of a late 18th century gentleman, noted the monocle he held up in his slender hand, heard his lazy drawl and quaint laugh.

In August1792, Percy founded his gallant League of Gentlemen. Eventually, there was “one to command and nineteen to obey.” Percy and his league cheated French Revolutionary Government’s tool, Madame Guillotine of their prey. London’s high society speculated about the Scarlet Pimpernel’s identity.

Percy, an influential, wealthy nobleman man married Marguerite St. Just, a French actress. When he discovered she was responsible for an aristocratic family’s death, for fear she would betray him, he kept his alias secret. Loving Marguerite, despite her crime he feigned indifference, treated her coldly, shunned her company, and acted a fool’s part so successfully that he bored her. However, Marguerite discovered the truth about Percy and saved his life. After the couple’s reconciliation, Marguerite is mentioned as a member of the league in Mam’zelle Guillotine.

At the beginning of each of the series the current events are summarised. Orczy weaves fact and fiction by featuring English and French historical figures such as Robespierre, d’Herbois, the Prince of Wales, and Sir William Pitt, the younger, and historical events. For example, in Eldorado Orczy describes the Dauphin in the care of brutal shoemaker, Simon, who teaches the prince to curse God and his parents. 

In the horror, depicted in her novels, Orczy uses romance and heroism to defeat evil, as she did as a child when playing the part of a fearless prince while her sister acted the part of a damsel in distress.

Orczy spent 1900 in Paris that, in her ears, echoed with the horrors of the French Revolution.  Surely, she had found the setting for her magnificent hero The Scarlet Pimpernel, who would champion the victims of The Terror, but why did she choose an insignificant flower for Percy’s alias? It is not unreasonable to suppose a Parisian royalist organisation’s triangular cards, hand painted with roses that resemble scarlet pimpernels, fuelled Orczy’s imagination.  Further fuel might have been added by a young man called Louis Bayard with similarities to the Sir Percy Blakeney Bart’s life. And the author’s imagination might have  been ignited by nineteen-year old Louis Bayard engaged by William Wickham, the first British spymaster. Louis as elusive as Percy, also had many aliases, and fell in love with an actress. Both appeared and disappeared without causing comment.  Real life Louis’ and fictional Percy’s lives depended on being masters of disguise. 

In disguise, Percy fools his archenemy, Citizen Chauvelin, who Orczy gives the role of official French Ambassador to England in an interesting example of her distortion of historical personalities and incidents. It is doubtful whether Bernard-Francois, Marquis de Chauvelin, ever assumed a false identity as he did in Orczy’s novel, The Scarlet Pimpernel. Another example is Louis-Antoine St Just, a revolutionary, who Orczy gives the role of  Marguerite’s cousin. Louis-Antoine St Just, a young lawyer, was Maximillian Robespierre’s follower. He supported the punishment of traitors and of anyone who was a ‘lukewarm’ revolutionary.  In The Triumph of the Scarlet Pimpernel  her character, Armand St Just, Marguerite’s brother, meets with Robespierre and other Jacobins. Orczy portrays him as young, fervent, and articulate as the Louis-Antoine St Just.

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Of Further Interest, The Scarlet Pimpernel series, Links in the Chain of Life,  Baroness Orczy’s biography. A Gay Adventurer. A biography of Sir Percy Blakeney, Bart written by ‘John Blakeney’ pseudonym of Baroness Orczy’s son John Montagu Baron Orczy Barstow.

The links to online bookstores to buy Rosemary Morris’s   novels are at:

https://bookswelove.net/morris-rosemary/

 

The first three chapters of each of my novels may be read on my web site.

www.rosemarymorris.co.uk