Literary firsts: The Scarlet Pimpernel

A dashing, mysterious hero performing astonishing feats; a league of secretive collaborators; masterful disguises; a meek, mild-mannered alter ego; a clear visual symbol left as a calling card... All of these things are common tropes of the classic comic book superhero, but I'm not here to talk about Superman or Batman, but their predecessor: the Scarlet Pimpernel, created by Baroness Emma Orczy decades before.

The Pimpernel first saw life as a stage play in 1903, followed by a novelisation in 1905 that kickstarted a whole series about the hero's exploits. The highly adventurous features of The Scarlet Pimpernel were eagerly picked up by other writers throughout the 20th century, particularly Zorro creator Johnston McCulley and subsequent creatives like Stan Lee who started popularising larger-than-life, ultra-powerful heroes in the burgeoning medium of comic books—the superpowers came about as a later addition to the archetype. There's something deeply Romantic* about a hero with a secret identity, especially when they're able to outwit their antagonists with seeming effortlessness. Each disguise, witty comeback, and narrow escape is a thrill for the reader, and the little red flowers the Pimpernel uses as a calling card and namesake are as iconic as a slashed Z, stylised S, or bat silhouette have come to be in the decades since.

(*I'm referring here to the adventure-heavy literary movement rather than lovey-dovey stuff, although plenty of people find secret identities rather attractive in that sense as well.)

Unlike many of the modern superheroes we may be familiar with, Orczy sets her stories against the very real backdrop of the Reign of Terror following the French Revolution, from which the Scarlet Pimpernel rescues poor, helpless French aristocrats. (The stories are very sympathetic to the upper classes, which is somewhat to be expected when they're written by a Hungarian baroness living in exile in England.) Percy Blakeney, the man behind the pimpernel, leads these escapades with the help of a group of nineteen other English aristocrats, who together with Blakeney form The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel. These men are sworn to secrecy about their activities, and even Blakeney's wife Marguerite has no idea who he really is. Instead, she knows him as the foppish dandy he presents himself to the world as. It's an effective disguise, which includes Blakeney composing a very catchy (and cheeky) little rhyme about his alter-ego which has echoed down the years:

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.

We love the tension of dramatic irony in a superhero story, and The Scarlet Pimpernel is dripping with it. It's also full of swashbuckling adventure, high stakes, and a lot of heroics. Percy Blakeney may not have any special powers beyond his social class and money, but neither does Batman, after all. In my eyes, and in the eyes of many others (including, incidentally, Stan Lee himself), he is every inch a superhero.