PAUL AND VIRGINIA
BERNARDIN DE ST. PIERRE
Were it not for the immense reputation of “Paul and Virginia,” a reputation which has lasted for more than a century, that book should find no place in a list of the great works of fiction.
Saint Pierre considered his work a picture of nature, a sort of prose pastoral, modelled after Theocritus; but to many it will seem rather the picture of a counterfeit or fiat nature, which was greatly in vogue at the time in an extremely artificial society and among those who had little knowledge of the genuine article. I do not mean by this to criticise the author’s description of natural scenery or natural phenomena. His picture of the Isle-de-France, and of the surroundings of the little cabins in which the events of the story occur, is beautiful and lifelike; his account of the hurricane in which Virginia perishes is realistic, and impressive; but his portrait of what human life would be in a condition of Arcadian simplicity is far from convincing. The author tells us in his preface that he intends to show that our happiness consists in living according to nature and virtue. When a definite thesis is thus proposed at the outset, the truthfulness of the portrait may easily be overlooked and the dramatis personæ may even become impossibilities.
Here are two amiable children who grow up together in two neighboring cabins “according to nature,”—that is, they can not read and write,—and yet they devote themselves to amateur theatricals and to landscape gardening. In decorating the tropical surroundings of their humble homes they make these almost as artificial as the park of Versailles. The names which they give to the choice spots are stilted and unnatural. A certain rock is called “The Discovery of Friendship.” A circle of orange trees and bananas around a small grass-plat, where Paul and Virginia go and dance, is called “Concord.” Another tree where their respective mothers meet to tell their griefs is christened “Tears Wiped Away.” A neighboring hermit (the man who afterwards tells the story) scatters appropriate Latin verses in divers other localities.
Nothing that is planted ever seems to fail. The flowers are abundant, but somehow they seem like manufactured flowers. Even their perfume suggests rather the pharmacy than the field, and we see nothing of any thorns.
A few of the scenes between Paul and Virginia are natural and beautiful. Perhaps the best part of the story is the description of the shy maidenly reserve which takes the place of childish affection when the girl first becomes a woman. But the bulk of the book is filled with a curious mixture of sickly sentimentality, long Sunday-school homilies, and a very commonplace philosophy. The climax is reached after Virginia, who has been sent to France to be educated by her aunt, returns to the island and perishes with the ship which is wrecked by a hurricane upon the shore. This occurs under the eyes of her lover, who makes heroic but ineffectual efforts to rescue her. According to the curiously devised plot of the author, she could escape by swimming from the sinking ship if she would accept the proffered aid of a sailor and consent to divest herself of her clothing, but her modesty is greater than her love of life. She turns away, lifts her eyes to heaven, and with appropriate gestures goes down with the ship. This may be impressive to the Gallic mind, but to many a hard-headed Anglo-Saxon it will look like rubbish. The book ends with a description of the grief of her lover, in spite of enormous doses of consolation ineffectually administered to him by a friend, and finally with the death of pretty much everybody concerned, all from broken hearts, and in a very short space of time. Thus is demonstrated the happiness which is sure to reward those who keep close to nature.
We are told that the events recorded actually occurred. It may be that the skeleton of the story is founded upon fact, but if so, I feel sure that the flesh and blood with which the imagination of the author has clothed it is quite different from that which it actually possessed.