Five-minute digest
The Scarlet Pimpernel
Summary
The Scarlet Pimpernel opens in Paris in September 1792, at the height of the Revolution's Terror, where crowds gather at the city gates to watch aristocrats caught trying to flee. Sergeant Bibot boasts that no one will slip past him, yet the hideous old woman whose cart he waves through, after she hints that her grandson inside has smallpox, is the mysterious Englishman known as the Scarlet Pimpernel, and the Comtesse de Tournay and her children are hidden beneath the load. The scene shifts to the Fisherman's Rest at Dover, where Lord Antony Dewhurst and Sir Andrew Ffoulkes, members of the League of the Scarlet Pimpernel, a band of nineteen English gentlemen under an unknown leader, welcome the rescued Comtesse, her daughter Suzanne and her son the Vicomte. There they meet Sir Percy Blakeney, one of the richest men in England, a lazy, foppish dandy with an inane laugh, and his French wife Marguerite, formerly an actress in Paris and called the cleverest woman in Europe. The Comtesse snubs Marguerite because she is known to have denounced the Marquis de St. Cyr, who went to the guillotine with his sons; Percy has never let his wife explain, and their marriage has cooled into proud, mocking distance. Chauvelin, the French Republic's envoy in London, has his agents attack the two young Englishmen and steal their papers, which include a letter compromising Marguerite's beloved brother Armand St. Just. At the opera Chauvelin offers her a bargain: help him discover the Pimpernel's identity, or Armand will die. At Lord Grenville's ball she reads a burning note revealing that the leader will be in the supper-room at one o'clock, and passes this on; Chauvelin finds there only Sir Percy asleep on a sofa. Before dawn at their house in Richmond, Marguerite tells Percy the truth about St. Cyr, and he pledges that Armand will be safe, then sets off on a journey. Exploring his study, she finds a gold ring engraved with the little red flower and realises that her foolish husband is the Scarlet Pimpernel, now walking into Chauvelin's trap. With Sir Andrew she pursues him across the Channel to Calais. At the inn of the Chat Gris, Percy faces Chauvelin, disguised as a priest, and escapes by giving him snuff laced with pepper. Marguerite follows Chauvelin's soldiers by night to the hut of Père Blanchard on the coast, where Armand and the Comte de Tournay are hiding. She is seized and gagged, but the fugitives slip away to Percy's yacht, the Day Dream, and the old Jewish carter Chauvelin hired and had beaten turns out to be Percy himself. Husband and wife are reconciled, and the book ends with the wedding of Sir Andrew and Suzanne. The novel followed a stage version by Orczy and Montague Barstow and was published in 1905.
Top Lessons
The mask of folly
Percy lets all of London think him a fool so that no one will suspect the man who outwits the Revolution. The novel shows that true courage often goes unrecognised and that appearances, especially the ones society laughs at, can hide great strength.
Pride on both sides
Percy and Marguerite love each other, yet each waits for the other to give way first, and their pride nearly costs Percy's life. Their reconciliation comes only when Marguerite acts for him without thought of herself.
Loyalty under pressure
Chauvelin's bargain forces Marguerite to choose between her brother and a stranger she admires. She chooses wrongly at the ball, then spends the rest of the book risking everything to undo it, showing that a fault can be redeemed by costly action.
Rescue as a calling
The League risks its members' lives for strangers, and Lord Antony jokes that it is all for sport. The Comtesse and Suzanne suspect a nobler motive, and the novel invites readers to see the play of wit and danger as a cover for real self-giving.
Verified Quotes
“A surging, seething, murmuring crowd of beings that are human only in name, for to the eye and ear they seem naught but savage creatures, animated by vile passions and by the lust of vengeance and of hate.”
“we are a nation of sportsmen, you know, and just now it is the fashion to pull the hare from between the teeth of the hound.”
“one to command, and nineteen to obey. All of us Englishmen, and all pledged to the same cause—to obey our leader and to rescue the innocent.”
“We seek him here, we seek him there, Those Frenchies seek him everywhere. Is he in heaven?—Is he in hell? That demmed, elusive Pimpernel?”
“As for Armand, I pray you have no fear. I pledge you my word that he shall be safe.”
“Only between these two hearts there lay a strong, impassable barrier, built up of pride on both sides, which neither of them cared to be the first to demolish.”
“with his worldly inanities, his foppish ways, and foolish talk, he was not only wearing a mask, but was playing a deliberate and studied part.”
“The rest is silence!—silence and joy for those who had endured so much suffering, yet found at last a great and lasting happiness.”
Medical Lens
Medicine plays little part in the novel, but the opening escape turns on the period's terror of contagion: the disguised Pimpernel clears the barricade by hinting that the child in the cart has smallpox, and the Comtesse later remembers the old hag speaking of the plague. Smallpox was still endemic in the 1790s, a few years before Jenner's vaccine, so the bluff plays on a well-founded fear. Elsewhere there are the physical ordeals of the climax: Marguerite's exhaustion after her night march, when she can no longer stand, and the beating Percy takes in his carter's disguise.
- Ch. I
The old woman at the West Barricade mentions smallpox in her cart, and Bibot steps hastily back and lets her through.
- Ch. XXIX-XXXI
Chauvelin's soldiers beat the supposed carter, who later proves to be Percy, sore but able to carry Marguerite along the cliffs.