Chapter-By-Chapter Commentary of The Scarlet Pimpernel - Part 1
This little masterpiece of a book is arguably one of my favorites of all time. Much as I love it, though, I do have to admit, Orczy's writing style can be just a wee bit much for me. Thus, most of this commentary will focus on praise for my favorite characters, and jokes aimed at Orczy whenever she gets too excited or sentimental about stuff. You have been duly cautioned. :)
Chapter I:
Paris: September 1792
With flowing, descriptive, sometimes repetitive language, Baroness Orczy introduces us to a scene of your typical day watching the “sport” at Madame la Guillotine. Happily for us, she starts as the day's events are about to wrap up. She lets us assume that everything which we associate all-too-keenly with France during the Reign of Terror had been present and accounted for that day, including those incredibly scary hags knitting and cheering at every headfall.
But she doesn't whip us into a frenzy by making us sit through an agonizing beheading of an entire family of nine, then a close-knit family of three, and then a half-blind grandfather and his five grandchildren under ten. For this I am grateful.
Instead, she presents us with a picture a little easier to peruse. A crowd forms at the West Gate to watch Sergeant Bibot's habitual unmasking of desperate aristos hoping to escape from Paris. This is another sport in which Parisians indulge, because watching Bibot tricking stupid members of the noblesse into thinking they're off free, and then yanking them back at the last second, is really, really fun, apparently. Plus, no matter how many people they had seen suffering before and under the guillotine, they could always go for a glimpse of another wretched aristocrat being stopped at the gate and stripped of his last shred of hope. These people know how to enjoy themselves, don't they?
To pass the time while the crowd waits with ripening anticipation, Orczy narrates an account of a champion of the aristocrats, the well-nigh supernatural Scarlet Pimpernel, who is beginning to make a serious nuisance of himself in France. This Englishman and his band of fearless cavaliers are whisking condemned aristos away at the last second, completely baffling all and sundry. Orczy asserts that, “There were curious rumours about these escapes; they had become very frequent and singularly daring; the people's minds were becoming strangely excited about it all.”
(Notice the two semicolons in one sentence? Authors of Orczy's day were very fond of those little punctuation marks, and used them in abundance. I myself have taken on some of their love for long, semicolon-studded sentences by osmosis alone. I'm almost sad to see the semicolon used very rarely nowadays.)
The Scarlet Pimpernel's name is derived from the symbol on his calling card, a tiny red flower shaped like a star--which, obviously, is called the Scarlet Pimpernel. Citoyen Foucquier-Tinville (whom I'm assuming is somebody important from history whom I should remember, but don't) always gets a note from the S.P. just before a few aristos disappear. Sometimes it shows up in his own pocket, without his having any idea how it got there. Oooo, spooky.
Naturally, a man this obnoxious to the revolution must have a price on his head. The Pimpernel's? Five thousand francs. How much is that in U. S. dollars? You tell me. I have no idea how much a franc is worth, even in French currency. Maybe I'll research it later on and check back with myself. The relative values of francs and dollars now are certainly different than they were in the Pimpernel's day.
Orczy finishes her narrative, and still nothing has happening at the West Gate. To keep us from falling asleep, Orczy hands the reigns over to Sergeant Bibot. Which is a good choice, as Sergeant Bibot's ego nearly rivals that of Ramses II, and pompous fools always make good reading. (For those of you who are not overly obsessed with ancient Egypt and/or excel at mixing the pharaohs up, Ramses II was the guy that got himself whooped by the Hittites in battle, only to return home and command his scribes to record that he fought like a god and whooped the Hittites all by himself. Talk about a major dose of propaganda. I would say more on the subject of Ramses, but this is Blogging The Scarlet Pimpernel, not Blogging Ramses II. Maybe I'll blog him next.)
How does the fool Bibot keep the crowd and the readers interested? By talking about the fool Citoyen Grospierre, of course. Apparently, some time before, Grospierre had allowed his vigilance to relax while he was on guard duty, and let the Pimpernel slip through his fingers. And then Grospierre lost his head.
Bibot rants on and on about all Grospierre's mistakes in the matter, which brilliant Bibot, of course, would not have made, had he been in Grospierre's position. Grospierre had allowed a cart bearing an old man, a boy, and a bunch of casks to go through the gate, after only inspecting some of the casks. Then thirteen soldiers showed up, the captain of the group seething with indignation. He yelled at Grospierre for allowing a cart smuggling the Duc de Chalis and family, driven by the Scarlet Pimpernel himself, to pass through the gate. Then the soldiers galloped after the cart.
The crowd boos and hisses and curses Grospierre, not sympathetic in the least. But I feel sorry for Grospierre, even though he was partial to the revolution. He might have been a half-decent man, whose only means of protecting and providing for his family was to make an outward show of supporting the government in power at the time. He might even have purposely skipped a few casks, hoping he wouldn't find one containing an aristo. We will never know.
Bibot thinks the crowd's reaction is hilarious. He laughs at them for a bit, then explains that the captain had been lying. The captain had been the Pimpernel, and his soldiers had been the fugitives of noble blood. Tricksy soldierses, yesssssss.
The crowd gives in to ominous, awed silence. The prevalent feeling is that the Scarlet Pimpernel = the devil.
Finally, the time has come for the carts to be inspected, and the fun to begin. Curiously, this occurs exactly as Bibot is finished with his storytelling. I love it how everything runs like clockwork in books. It makes up for all the messed up timing in real life. (Me? Sarcastic? Oh, you don't say?)
Bibot goes about his work carefully and methodically, taking special care to make sure all those scary old hags with knitting needles actually are scary old hags with knitting needles. Ack! Can we stop it with the evil knitting women that watch heads fall for fun? Please? It's one of the only things I remember from my last reading of a Tale of Two Cities, and I don't like being reminded of it.
Citoyen Bibot (or, more to the point, Baroness Orczy) chooses to focus on the gruesomest one of the lot. This terrifying fossil has collected sections of the hair from the fallen heads of guillotine victims. Thank you for notifying us, Baroness Orczy, we needed to know that very much indeed.
As if she knows how much I love all things gross, the hag casually mentions that her son has smallpox--oh, wait, maybe it's the plague instead! Perhaps it could be both at once! Ain't that jist wonderful?
Faster than you can scream, “Batman!”, Bibot and everyone else quickly gives the hag plenty of room. A bit of cursing and name-calling ensues, but finally Bibot convinces the hag to make her brilliant getaway.
Oops, did I write that? I meant Bibot convinces the hag to go away. Just ignore my slip of the fingers on the keyboard.
So, the chapter ends with Bibot and the others all scared stiff of disease.
You didn't buy that, did you? Of course not.
A captain appears, this one definitely not the Scarlet Pimpernel. Unless he's like Mystique from X-Men, and can shape-shift into people Bibot knows well. And that's a theory that all those superstitious Frenchies should believe as a scientific law, if they really think the Pimpernel is the devil himself. But I digress . . .
The non-Pimpernel captain gasps out that the Comtesse de Tournay and her son and daughter were hidden in a cart driven by . . .
Zorro.
Whoops, sorry. I got my masked avengers mixed up. No Spanish dons here. (Unfortunately.)
It was the Scarlet Pimpernel. No bluffing, on my honor as a Jane Austen fanatic.
And then Bibot's face drains of all color, as he realizes for the first time that he is an even bigger fool than poor Grospierre.
Chapter I:
Paris: September 1792
With flowing, descriptive, sometimes repetitive language, Baroness Orczy introduces us to a scene of your typical day watching the “sport” at Madame la Guillotine. Happily for us, she starts as the day's events are about to wrap up. She lets us assume that everything which we associate all-too-keenly with France during the Reign of Terror had been present and accounted for that day, including those incredibly scary hags knitting and cheering at every headfall.
But she doesn't whip us into a frenzy by making us sit through an agonizing beheading of an entire family of nine, then a close-knit family of three, and then a half-blind grandfather and his five grandchildren under ten. For this I am grateful.
Instead, she presents us with a picture a little easier to peruse. A crowd forms at the West Gate to watch Sergeant Bibot's habitual unmasking of desperate aristos hoping to escape from Paris. This is another sport in which Parisians indulge, because watching Bibot tricking stupid members of the noblesse into thinking they're off free, and then yanking them back at the last second, is really, really fun, apparently. Plus, no matter how many people they had seen suffering before and under the guillotine, they could always go for a glimpse of another wretched aristocrat being stopped at the gate and stripped of his last shred of hope. These people know how to enjoy themselves, don't they?
To pass the time while the crowd waits with ripening anticipation, Orczy narrates an account of a champion of the aristocrats, the well-nigh supernatural Scarlet Pimpernel, who is beginning to make a serious nuisance of himself in France. This Englishman and his band of fearless cavaliers are whisking condemned aristos away at the last second, completely baffling all and sundry. Orczy asserts that, “There were curious rumours about these escapes; they had become very frequent and singularly daring; the people's minds were becoming strangely excited about it all.”
(Notice the two semicolons in one sentence? Authors of Orczy's day were very fond of those little punctuation marks, and used them in abundance. I myself have taken on some of their love for long, semicolon-studded sentences by osmosis alone. I'm almost sad to see the semicolon used very rarely nowadays.)
The Scarlet Pimpernel's name is derived from the symbol on his calling card, a tiny red flower shaped like a star--which, obviously, is called the Scarlet Pimpernel. Citoyen Foucquier-Tinville (whom I'm assuming is somebody important from history whom I should remember, but don't) always gets a note from the S.P. just before a few aristos disappear. Sometimes it shows up in his own pocket, without his having any idea how it got there. Oooo, spooky.
Naturally, a man this obnoxious to the revolution must have a price on his head. The Pimpernel's? Five thousand francs. How much is that in U. S. dollars? You tell me. I have no idea how much a franc is worth, even in French currency. Maybe I'll research it later on and check back with myself. The relative values of francs and dollars now are certainly different than they were in the Pimpernel's day.
Orczy finishes her narrative, and still nothing has happening at the West Gate. To keep us from falling asleep, Orczy hands the reigns over to Sergeant Bibot. Which is a good choice, as Sergeant Bibot's ego nearly rivals that of Ramses II, and pompous fools always make good reading. (For those of you who are not overly obsessed with ancient Egypt and/or excel at mixing the pharaohs up, Ramses II was the guy that got himself whooped by the Hittites in battle, only to return home and command his scribes to record that he fought like a god and whooped the Hittites all by himself. Talk about a major dose of propaganda. I would say more on the subject of Ramses, but this is Blogging The Scarlet Pimpernel, not Blogging Ramses II. Maybe I'll blog him next.)
How does the fool Bibot keep the crowd and the readers interested? By talking about the fool Citoyen Grospierre, of course. Apparently, some time before, Grospierre had allowed his vigilance to relax while he was on guard duty, and let the Pimpernel slip through his fingers. And then Grospierre lost his head.
Bibot rants on and on about all Grospierre's mistakes in the matter, which brilliant Bibot, of course, would not have made, had he been in Grospierre's position. Grospierre had allowed a cart bearing an old man, a boy, and a bunch of casks to go through the gate, after only inspecting some of the casks. Then thirteen soldiers showed up, the captain of the group seething with indignation. He yelled at Grospierre for allowing a cart smuggling the Duc de Chalis and family, driven by the Scarlet Pimpernel himself, to pass through the gate. Then the soldiers galloped after the cart.
The crowd boos and hisses and curses Grospierre, not sympathetic in the least. But I feel sorry for Grospierre, even though he was partial to the revolution. He might have been a half-decent man, whose only means of protecting and providing for his family was to make an outward show of supporting the government in power at the time. He might even have purposely skipped a few casks, hoping he wouldn't find one containing an aristo. We will never know.
Bibot thinks the crowd's reaction is hilarious. He laughs at them for a bit, then explains that the captain had been lying. The captain had been the Pimpernel, and his soldiers had been the fugitives of noble blood. Tricksy soldierses, yesssssss.
The crowd gives in to ominous, awed silence. The prevalent feeling is that the Scarlet Pimpernel = the devil.
Finally, the time has come for the carts to be inspected, and the fun to begin. Curiously, this occurs exactly as Bibot is finished with his storytelling. I love it how everything runs like clockwork in books. It makes up for all the messed up timing in real life. (Me? Sarcastic? Oh, you don't say?)
Bibot goes about his work carefully and methodically, taking special care to make sure all those scary old hags with knitting needles actually are scary old hags with knitting needles. Ack! Can we stop it with the evil knitting women that watch heads fall for fun? Please? It's one of the only things I remember from my last reading of a Tale of Two Cities, and I don't like being reminded of it.
Citoyen Bibot (or, more to the point, Baroness Orczy) chooses to focus on the gruesomest one of the lot. This terrifying fossil has collected sections of the hair from the fallen heads of guillotine victims. Thank you for notifying us, Baroness Orczy, we needed to know that very much indeed.
As if she knows how much I love all things gross, the hag casually mentions that her son has smallpox--oh, wait, maybe it's the plague instead! Perhaps it could be both at once! Ain't that jist wonderful?
Faster than you can scream, “Batman!”, Bibot and everyone else quickly gives the hag plenty of room. A bit of cursing and name-calling ensues, but finally Bibot convinces the hag to make her brilliant getaway.
Oops, did I write that? I meant Bibot convinces the hag to go away. Just ignore my slip of the fingers on the keyboard.
So, the chapter ends with Bibot and the others all scared stiff of disease.
You didn't buy that, did you? Of course not.
A captain appears, this one definitely not the Scarlet Pimpernel. Unless he's like Mystique from X-Men, and can shape-shift into people Bibot knows well. And that's a theory that all those superstitious Frenchies should believe as a scientific law, if they really think the Pimpernel is the devil himself. But I digress . . .
The non-Pimpernel captain gasps out that the Comtesse de Tournay and her son and daughter were hidden in a cart driven by . . .
Zorro.
Whoops, sorry. I got my masked avengers mixed up. No Spanish dons here. (Unfortunately.)
It was the Scarlet Pimpernel. No bluffing, on my honor as a Jane Austen fanatic.
And then Bibot's face drains of all color, as he realizes for the first time that he is an even bigger fool than poor Grospierre.