Paul et Virginie

Paris, De l’Imprimerie de Monsieur, 1789.
1 vol. (75 x 130 mm) of 1 f., xxxv and 243 p. Red morocco, two gilt fillets bordering a gilt chain frame on the covers, decorated flat spine, green morocco title label, gilt monogram “SM” in the center of the covers, inner wheel (contemporary binding).

First separate edition.
It was edited by Pierre François Didot, the younger, with a luxury edition on choice paper from his Essonne paper mills, which he enriched with illustrations – the edition on ordinary paper does not contain any: 4 figures by Moreau le Jeune, the last in collaboration with Joseph Vernet, engraved on copper by Girardet, Halbou and Longueil.

Presentation copy, signed: “for Mademoiselle Mesnard de Conichard, by the author, De Saint-Pierre”.

We apologize for the imperfect translation generated by Deepl for the purposes of the show.

Paul et Virginie is a difficult work to define, even for its author, who saw it as a “small work”, a “fable essay” and even a “sort of pastoral”. The work was first written as a supplement to a second edition of Voyage à l’île de France, then to the third edition of Études de la nature, in which it was intended to illustrate the theses through fiction. He intended to apply “the laws of Études de la nature to the happiness of two unfortunate families” through the tragic denouement he gives to his story, shattering the dream of an idyll. In this way he set himself apart from the pastoral taste of the period, even if he applied the genre’s rules of simplicity: two young people grow up together in the enchanting and peaceful setting of the Île de France, present-day Mauritius, they fall in love, are separated by civilization, before being definitively cast aside during the drama of the Saint-Géran.

Bernardin de Saint-Pierre – who had been influenced by the stories of Daniel Defoe and his Robinson Crusoe – set sail for Martinique at the age of twelve on the ship of one of his uncles: a revelation, but also the discovery of the gulf separating imagination from reality, finding it difficult to bear the heat of the climate, the fatigue of the journey and above all the discipline of the ships. After this disappointment, his parents sent him to the Jesuit college in Caen, where he toyed with the idea of becoming a missionary for a time, then to Rouen, before entering the École nationale des ponts et chaussées in 1757. At the end of his studies, he joined the military engineering corps.

From 1773, he denounced the crime of slavery in his Voyage à l’Ile de France, à l’Ile Bourbon, au cap de Bonne-Espérance: he was one of the authors who then unambiguously opposed slavery and racism in the name of the equality of all men, especially since, as a native of Le Havre, one of the main ports through which slaves passed, he never ceased to see the ravages of slavery. He would come back to this in Paul et Virginie, making the slaves Marie and Domingue, who live in harmony with their masters, major figures in his story.

This story, with its obvious Rousseauist influences, would inspire a number of later works, from Chateaubriand’s Atala to Flaubert’s The Simple Heart.

“Like most masterpieces, this one both fulfills and refutes the genre and the fashion it illustrates.” (Jean Favre) Paul et Virginie was a great success as soon as it was published and was one of the most frequently reissued books until the beginning of the 20th century; and as proof of its immense success, Lamartine, Balzac and Flaubert made their heroines, Graziella, Véronique and Emma Bovary, readers of Paul et Virginie: “Emma was trying to find out what exactly was meant in life by the words happiness, passion and intoxication, which had seemed so beautiful to her in books. She had read Paul et Virginie and had dreamed of the little bamboo house, the Negro Domingo, the dog Fidèle, but above all the gentle friendship of a kind little brother, who would fetch you red berries from tall trees taller than church steeples, or who would run barefoot on the sand, bringing you a bird’s nest.” (Madame Bovary, [1857], p. 36).

A very fine copy, extremely rare, with a detailed and highly relevant inscription: Miss Mesnard was the daughter of a correspondent and close friend of Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, François Mesnard de Conichard (1727-1792), first clerk of the Exchequer. The latter had intervened on Bernardin de Saint-Pierre’s behalf to obtain an annual bonus on his return from Bourbon Island; the correspondence between the two men testifies to a long friendship and an almost family relationship.

It was François de Conichard to whom the author, in the fall of 1784, considered and proposed to dedicate his Études de la nature. He very elegantly refused, having “always avoided above all things to make people talk about me and I am too old to change my ways in this respect, I therefore beg you that there be no more question of this dedication […]. Let us not speak of it again, I beg you” (letter to Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, October 1784). The author respected the request and offered the dedication to another of his friends, Hennin. Nevertheless, in the third edition, published in 1788 and containing the novel Paul et Virginie in the fourth volume, Bernardin de Saint-Pierre discreetly managed to have his gratitude printed towards “my respectable friends Messrs. Hennin & Mesnard de Conichard”; and to offer this copy to the daughter of his dedicatee the following year and for this first separate edition of the novel. A letter from Mesnard to Bernardin dated April 30, 1773, mentions his daughter for the first time, and Bernardin de Saint-Pierre himself refers to “Miss Mesnard, daughter of one of my best friends and whom I saw born” in a letter to the author of the poem Le Tombeau de Virginie in 1789 (cited in Rebecca Ford, “Une correspondance amicale : Bernardin et Mesnard de Conichard”, Autour de Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, Mont-Saint-Aignan, P.U. de Rouen et du Havre, 2010).

At the time of the publication of the volume, the latter was only seventeen years old: the exact age of Bernardin de Saint-Pierre’s heroine, since Virginie left the island at the age of fifteen, only to come back two and a half years later for the tragic ending we know. A few years later, Marie-Françoise Mesnard de Conichard married Jean-François Pierre Puy de Rosny, the future Baron of the Empire.

In 1792, Bernardin de Saint-Pierre married the daughter of his printer Didot, with whom he had two children whom he named, naturally, Virginie (born in 1794) and Paul (born in 1798).
From the libraries of Marie-Françoise Mesnard de Conichard and Pierre Bergé (ex-libris; II, no. 191).

Tchemerzine V, p. 649; Cohen, 931.