Bernardin de St. Pierre

by Arvède Barine

This is but a summary account of the scene, a sort of table of contents of the state of the sky on a certain evening. The second description is almost too excessive, and contains too much imagery and too many colours.

"Sometimes the winds roll up the clouds as though they were strands of silk; then they drive them to the west, crossing them over one another like the withies of a basket. They throw to one side of this network the clouds which they have not made use of, and which are not few in number. They roll them up into immense white masses like snow, and pile them up one upon another, like the Cordilleras of Peru, giving to them the forms of mountains, caverns, and rocks. Then towards the evening they calm down a bit, as if they feared to disarrange their work. When the sun goes down behind this magnificent tracery, one sees through all the interstices a multitude of luminous rays, which, lighting up two sides of each mesh, seem to illuminate it with a golden aureole, while the other two sides, which are in shadow, are tipped with superb tones of pale red. Four or five rays of light rise from the setting sun right to the zenith, and edge with a golden fringe the vaguely-defined outline of this celestial barrier, throwing their glowing reflections upon the pyramids of the airy mountains beside them, which appear gold and vermilion. It is then that you see in the midst of their numerous ridges a multitude of valleys which extend into space, and are marked at their entrance by some shade of flesh-colour or pink. The celestial valleys present in their diverse contours inimitable tones of white, which melt away into space as far as the eye can reach, or shadows which lengthen out towards the other clouds without losing themselves in them. You see here and there, emerging from the cavernous sides of these cloud mountains, streams of light which are thrown in bars of gold and silver upon rocks of coral. Here are gloomy rocks pierced through so that you can see the pure blue of heaven through their apertures; there appear long stretches of golden sands, which extend into the wondrous depths of the crimson, scarlet, and emerald-green sky. By degrees the luminous clouds become faint-coloured, and the faint-coloured fade into shadow. Their forms are as varied as their tints, and in turn they appear as islands, hamlets, hills planted with palms, great bridges across rivers, countries of gold, of amethysts, of rubies, or rather there is nothing of all this but just colours and heavenly forms, which no brush can paint, and no tongue express."

The landscapes of the Voyage to the Isle of France are for the most part very sad. Bernardin de Saint-Pierre found the Isle of France ugly and gloomy, perhaps because he had had nothing but trouble there. Throughout his narrative he tries to convey the impression of a barren, cheerless country, in some places covered with scorched grass, which makes it look "black as a coal-pit," in others paved with stones of an iron-grey colour, which form an unpleasant surface to a rugged country. Plants, which he generally loves so much, do not appeal to him there. Many are thorny, others mal-odorous, and the flowers are not pretty. He does not like the trees, they have not the superb bearing of French oaks and chestnuts, and their stiff leaves of dark green give an effect of sadness to the verdure. Here and there, however, one comes across delightful spots where the great woods are enlivened by babbling brooks, but these solitudes, the refuge for runaway slaves, are the theatre of hideous man-hunts. You see this unhappy quarry killed or wounded with gun-shots, and hear the crack of the whip in the air like pistol-shots, and cries which rend one's heart, "Spare me, master, have pity!" To the heart thus oppressed the beauties of the landscape disappear, and one only sees in it "an abominable country." Abominable country, abominable abode, abominable inhabitants, for the most part—that is, the Isle of France of the Voyage—little in all conscience to impress our minds with the idea of a beneficent Providence, careful of our needs. The author saw this, for he abandoned this part of his programme and kept to picturesque effects, producing in the end a meagre book, only a rough sketch of what he had in his head.

The volume appeared in the first months of the year 1773, and in the article of the Correspondence littéraire, by Grunin, in the end of February. The letter which accompanied the copy destined for Hennin is dated March 17: "Here at last, sir and dear friend, is some of the fruit of my garden.... Send me your opinion of my Voyage." Saint-Pierre added in another letter of the 1st of June: "My book has had a great literary success; but that is almost the only profit which I have obtained from it."

Did he really have a great success? It is doubtful as regards the masculine public. Hennin kept an obstinate silence on the subject in his letters, to the great disgust of the author, who had the bad taste to persist, and who wrote to him two years later: "Why do you not talk to me of my Voyage?" Duval, his friend at St. Petersburg, insinuated among his compliments a few words on the passages which suggested "an imitation of Rousseau, of Voltaire, or of Montesquieu." Grunin did not understand it at all. Here is the essential part of his notice: "M. de Saint-Pierre is not wanting in wit, still less in feeling; this last quality appears to be his especial and distinctive characteristic. The greater part of the work consists of observations made at sea, and details of natural history. That struck me as very superficial." Nothing about the style, nor the descriptive scenes, of which the number ought, one would think, to have arrested his observation. Grunin took the Voyage for a scientific work and found it bad; its originality entirely escaped him. It was the same thing with Leharpe, who does not even mention Bernardin de Saint-Pierre in his Cours de Litterature, that is to say that he took little notice of secondary works. Then Sainte-Beuve, who collected his information with so much care, has contradicted himself about the effect produced by the Voyage to the Isle of France. One reads in his first article upon Bernardin de Saint-Pierre: "This narrative had a well-deserved success,"[11] and in his second article, written thirteen years later: "The work received very little notice."[12]

It is curious to compare the indifference of the men towards Bernardin de Saint-Pierre's attempt, with the enthusiasm of the women for the young unknown author who had spoken to them of the colour of the clouds and the melancholy of the great forests. Women arrive at a conclusion much more quickly than men when it is a question of feeling. The women who read the Voyage to the Isle of France understood at once that there was something in it beyond mere observations made at sea and natural history details, more even than sentimental tirades upon the negroes. They divined that they were being introduced to new joys, and they hastened to seek them under the guidance of the sympathetic master who interpreted Nature to them, her beauties, her gentleness, and her passion. The interest which they took in this first work, not very attractive as a whole, was a sort of miraculous instinct on their part.

The Voyage to the Isle of France had hardly appeared before Bernardin de Saint-Pierre set to work again, in spite of all his protestations against ever becoming an author. His diffidence had disappeared. He felt himself to be full of courage and spirit, and it was not to his success that he owed this, but simply to a visit which he chanced to pay, and which was in its consequences the great event of his career. "In the month of May, 1772, a friend having proposed to take me to see J. J. Rousseau, he conducted me to a house in the rue Plâtrière, nearly opposite to the Post Office. We ascended to the fourth story and knocked at the door, which was opened by Mme. Rousseau, who said to us, 'Enter, gentlemen, you will find "my husband" in.' We passed through a tiny ante-room, in which were neatly arranged all the household chattels, to a room where J. J. Rousseau was sitting, in a frock-coat, with a white cap on his head, occupied in copying music. He rose with a smile, offered us seats, and returned to his work, giving his attention all the while to the conversation."[13]

Rousseau was sixty in 1772; his infirmities, his morbid ideas on the subject of persecution, and his disputes with Hume, had put the finishing touch to his reputation as a dangerous lunatic. His visitor was struck with the sad expression underlying his "smiling air." But he was irresistible when he was not roused. Bernardin de Saint-Pierre joyfully yielded to this all-powerful fascination. He felt that he had found the master in literature who had been wanting to him, he who was to give him the right impulse and direction, and that by oral teaching, so much more fruitful than written instruction.

"Near him," he continues, "was a spinet, on which from time to time he tried over some airs. Two little beds, covered with coarse print, striped blue and white like the hangings of his room, a chest of drawers, a table, and a few chairs completed his furniture. On the walls hung a map of the forest and park of Montmorency, where he had lived, and a print of his old benefactor the king of England. His wife was seated sewing; a canary sang in its cage suspended from the ceiling; some sparrows came to pick up bread-crumbs from the window-sills on the side of the street, and on those of the ante-room one saw boxes and pots full of plants such as Nature chose to sow there. The whole effect of this little household was one of cleanliness, peace, and simplicity, which gave one pleasure."

It suggests one of those interiors of Chardin, where the neat little mistress of the house in white cap and apron is busy about the children's dinner. It is the most charming picture we possess of Rousseau at home.