In the movie The Shop Around the Corner (1940), the character Clara Novak, a salesgirl in a leather goods shop, says, “I had just finished a book about a glamorous French actress, who, when she wanted to rouse a man’s interest, treated him like a dog. …But what I didn’t realize about this glamorous lady and me was that she was with the Comédie Française, and I was with Matuschek & Co.”
The book Clara had just finished reading was The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy. Hailed as one of the three great novels about the French Revolution (alongside A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens, of course, and Scaramouche by Rafael Sabatini), the novel is full of swashbuckling heroism. The French actress Marguerite St. Just, lately married to the lazy prince of fashion, Sir Percy Blakeney, is blackmailed by the French agent Chauvelin to discover the secret identity of the Scarlet Pimpernel, a daring and cunning hero who smuggles French aristocrats out of Paris.
Is this a wonderful book? Yes, I have read it many times. Marguerite, torn between love for the brother who raised her and admiration for the mysterious hero, is a wonderfully romantic and sympathetic character. The villain is very evil, the lady very much in distress, and the feats of daring accomplished by the Scarlet Pimpernel make the book extraordinarily enjoyable. Take four hours and find out who the Scarlet Pimpernel really is. Just be wary of falling into the trap, like Clara Novak, of wishing it all to be real.
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