Baroness Orczy's The Scarlet Pimpernel

A Publishing History

Sally Dugan

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317176169
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism for Comparative Literature
• Index: Literature

Since its publication in 1905, The Scarlet Pimpernel has experienced global success, not only as a novel but in theatrical and film adaptations. Sally Dugan charts the history of Baroness Orczy's elusive hero, from the novel's origins through its continuing afterlife, including postmodern appropriations of the myth. Drawing on archival research in Britain, the United States and Australia, her study shows for the first time how Orczy's nationalistic superhero was originally conceived as an anarchist Pole plotting against Tsarist Russia, rather than a counter-revolutionary Englishman. Dugan explores the unique blend of anarchy, myth and magic that emerged from the story's astonishing and complex beginnings and analyses the enduring elements of the legend. To his creator, the Pimpernel was not simply a swashbuckling hero but an English gentleman spreading English values among benighted savages. Dugan investigates the mystery of why this imperialist crusader has not only survived the decline of the meta-narratives surrounding his birth, but also continues to enthrall a multinational audience. Offering readers insights into the Pimpernel's appearances in print, in film and on the stage, Dugan provides a nuanced picture of the trope of the Scarlet Pimpernel and an explanation of the phenomenon's durability.

Chapter 1
From Red Carnation to Scarlet Pimpernel

It is a tribute to the success of the Scarlet Pimpernel myth that it is difficult to imagine the stories being set in any historical period other than the French Revolution. However, Orczy’s foppish eighteenth-century English aristocratic hero made his first appearance in fiction as an anarchist Pole plotting against Tsarist Russia. This transformation illustrates two themes central to this book: firstly, the lengths to which Orczy was prepared to go to please an audience; secondly, her own complex relationship to nationalism.

This chapter will examine the process by which Orczy took her central idea, of a secret band of men identified by a single flower, and worked and reworked it to suit the market. Thus ‘The Red Carnation’, set in late nineteenth-century Vienna, became ‘The Sign of the Shamrock’, also contemporary, and set in the various exotic European locations served by the Orient Express. It only reached its incarnation in print as The Scarlet Pimpernel, set in revolutionary France, after achieving success on the stage. Orczy’s willingness to invest the time in such a fundamental rewrite indicates her pragmatic approach, as do her other experiments with stories of varying genres, set in wildly differing political and historical backgrounds.

However, it would be simplistic to see this as merely an everyday tale of opportunism. For in the process of transforming her work to make it marketable, Orczy was also exploring her own national identity.

A Hungarian Aristocrat

As a Hungarian, Orczy shared the cultural uncertainties of the Magyar people. The country’s geographical position and chequered political history mean its inhabitants have traditionally been unsure where they belong.1 This, in Orczy’s case, was compounded by being uprooted at an early age from her native land. Her origins as a Hungarian aristocrat have far-reaching implications for any study of The Scarlet Pimpernel and its precursors. For although she was very young when her family left Hungary, the circumstances of their abrupt departure left lasting scars. Her father, Baron Bodog Orczy, had tried to introduce machinery on his estate, and – by Orczy’s own account – workers reacted by setting light to the crops.2 This peasant revolt gave her a deep fear of mob power, which found expression in numerous episodes in the Scarlet Pimpernel series.3 A childhood spent wandering the capitals of Europe also gave her an innate sympathy with the plight of the aristocratic émigré.

Emmuska Magdalena Rosalia Maria Josepha Barbara Orczy was born at Tarna-Örs on 23 September 1865 into a landowning family.4 The Orczys were among a group of gentry who had received land and titles in the eighteenth century as a reward for diplomatic or military service.5 Rising expectations of luxury had left them – like many others in their position – land rich but cash poor.6 Bodog Orczy’s solution to this problem was mechanisation, and he built a steam mill and imported agricultural machinery from Germany. However, his determination to push through changes on his estate at Tisza-Abád demonstrated how little he understood his workers. On a night just before harvest time, when family and friends were indoors partying, the peasants lit the touch paper of revolt. Field upon field of crops were destroyed, and while the steam mill was left standing, it was clear that it could never be operated.

Although by her own account the young Emmuska was only three at the time, stories about that cataclysmic night in July 1869 formed the backdrop to her childhood.7 Both in fiction and in her autobiography – written towards the end of her life – she painted vivid pen-portraits of the scene: the titled guests raiding the ancestral dressing up box; the women strutting around in satin coats and breeches; the men camping it up in bodices and hooped skirts or pretending to be peasants; the grey-haired butler in scarlet corselet and pink petticoat solemnly pouring wine; the cries of the frightened horses in the stables and the angry red sky.8 Whether she actually remembered such details, or was simply embroidering on family legend, is beside the point. Her grasp of the catastrophic consequences of an aristocracy out of touch with its people is clear. It would not be a huge imaginative leap from Hungary to revolutionary France.

Following his ill-fated agricultural experiment, Baron Orczy moved with his family to Budapest. Here, he embarked on a new career as a composer and conductor and was appointed Intendant (Administrator) of the National Theatres (Links, p. 18). However, his enthusiasm for modernising brought further conflict – this time, with the Hungarian musical establishment (Links, pp. 19–20). He resigned his post in 1873 and the family never again lived in Hungary, although they continued to visit for holidays.9 After spells in Brussels and Paris – where the young Emmuska was educated by nuns – they came to England in late 1880 or 1881.10

Orczy’s oft-repeated claim that she spoke not a word of English when she first arrived in London at the age of 15 is probably poetic licence. Her maternal grandfather, Count Wass, had been part of the circle of Louis Kossuth, the Hungarian patriot and Anglophile.11 In the manuscript of her autobiography, Orczy admitted that both parents spoke enough English ‘to make themselves understood in shops or with servants’.12 However, this sentence – which undoubtedly detracted from the myth she had created – was cut from the published version.

Whatever the truth of her linguistic achievements, events conspired to ensure that she developed the zeal of a religious convert for England and all things English. Quite apart from the original circumstances of their exile from Hungary, the family came to London under an additional shadow of sadness. Orczy’s older sister, Madeleine, had died at the age of 12 while the two girls were at school in Brussels (Links, p. 23). England thus offered the chance of a new start, away from memories of death, just as it had for refugees from revolutionary France.

Orczy’s eagerness to be accepted by her adopted country was to surface throughout her life in episodes of intense patriotism and complaints about slights – real or imagined – by the literary establishment. In the Scarlet Pimpernel series, it manifested itself in her insistence on the idea of her hero as the archetypal English gentleman, and her use of Englishness as a marketing tool. In her private life, it could even be said to have influenced her choice of husband. In Montagu Barstow, the artist son of a Yorkshire clergyman, she found an Englishman with an acute appreciation of English sensibilities. He may not have been her social equal, but his shrewd commercial judgement was a vital factor in her success.

Artist to Writer: Gauging the Audience

Faced with her father’s lack of enthusiasm for careers for women (Links, p. 51), Orczy’s initial chosen profession was that of an artist. Besides developing her visual imagination, this also helped her to understand the importance of gauging a market. She attended first the West London School of Art, then Heatherley’s, which was where she met her future husband. Founded in 1845, and still in existence, Heatherley’s claims to be the first art school to admit women on equal terms with men.13 Its original members were a breakaway group of students, reacting against the academic restrictions of the Government School of Design. Photographs taken around the turn of the twentieth century show rooms filled with classical statues, walls hung with suits of armour, and a model dressed as a cavalier.14 This background may help to explain why, when Orczy came to write fiction, her thoughts turned to historical romance.

While still in her early twenties, in 1889, Orczy won the establishment recognition she craved when the first of four paintings was accepted for Royal Academy Exhibitions – one more than she remembered in her autobiography (Links, p. 55). That this was a considerable honour is clear from the recollections of Angela Brazil, a Heatherley contemporary who later made her name as a writer of school stories. She recalled that only those studies considered to be worthy were carried through the ‘awesome portals of Burlington House’, and that most were rejected.15

W.P. Frith’s celebrated painting, A Private View at the Royal Academy, 1881 (1883), illustrates the extent to which the annual Exhibition was an essential part of the social round.16 In this canvas, viewing the faces in the gallery is clearly at least as important as viewing the art. Royal Academicians then – as now – would be guaranteed the best hanging spaces, and Orczy’s efforts were relegated to rooms at the end of the standard tour. Eleven galleries were devoted to oil painting. A Herald of Spring (1889), Love and lordship like no Fellowship (1891) and The Jolly Young Waterman (1892) were all placed in Gallery IX, and There‘S Many a Slip (1894) in Gallery X.17 However, The Jolly Young Waterman was awarded the traditional distinction of being hung ‘on the line’.18 This meant that it would be at eye level, and therefore more likely to be noticed.

The Jolly Young Waterman took as an epigram two lines from a popular ballad: ‘ And he ey’d the young rogues with so charming an air/That this waterman n’er was in want of a fare.’19 The prevailing popularity of what we would now call narrative painting – combined with the picture’s favourable placing – might be thought a guarantee of success. However, The Jolly Young Waterman was not singled out for critical comment. In its review of the Summer Exhibition of 1892, the Illustrated London News simply made the general point that Gallery IX offered ‘a happy hunting ground to purchasers who have the courage of their own convictions or a belief in their own judgement’.20 The Athenaeum, that arbiter of taste, failed to mention Orczy’s paintings in any of the four years she exhibited, and none were included for illustration either in the annual souvenir volumes produced b...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction: ‘The Baroness Orczy’, Englishness and the Scarlet Pimpernel
• 1 From Red Carnation to Scarlet Pimpernel
• 2 The Scarlet Pimpernel on Stage
• 3 Champion of Empire or Swashbuckling Hero? Marketing the Myth in Print, 1899–1939
• 4 The Dandy at War: The Scarlet Pimpernel and Print Culture, 1914–1940
• 5 Adaptations, Nostalgia and Wartime Morale
• 6 Re-Inventing the Scarlet Pimpernel, Post 1947
• Conclusion
• Appendix A: The Daily Express and ‘The Sign of the Shamrock’
• Appendix B: ‘The Sign of the Shamrock’ as an Apprentice Piece for The Scarlet Pimpernel
• Appendix C: Hodder & Stoughton: ‘The Scarlet Pimpernel Series’ (1913)
• Appendix D: The Scarlet Pimpernel Short Stories
• Appendix E: Orczy’s Publishing History: The Scarlet Pimpernel in Context
• Appendix F: Hodder & Stoughton Yellow Jacket Two-Shilling Paper Series: The First Dozen
• Appendix G: Select List of Manuscripts Relating to Orczy, Listed by Location
• Bibliography of Works Cited
• Index