Land of Chopin

Trav­ellers in Cata­lan Lands

So early next morn­ing, in a light open car­riage, we set out across the vega for Valldemosa. The dusty white road that ran be­tween low walls over which clam­bered hedges of prickly pear and cac­tus; the houses, with their walls shaded by deep colon­nades and marked in al­most every case by one or two tall palm trees; the olive groves; the aca­cias and fig-trees and sycamores that bor­dered the road, com­bined to make a truly African land­scape; while the ace­quias, or water-courses, hol­lowed in the tops of the walls to ir­ri­gate the thirsty fields, as well as the prim­i­tive water-wheels turned by blind­folded don­keys, made me think of the coun­try round Tunis or Tang­ier.

Grad­u­ally the moun­tains drew nearer, and as we ap­proached them looked gray and bald and dry. But when we came closer we could see lit­tle gar­dens hid­ing among the rocks, hedged in with myr­tle, car­peted with moss and bright with wild flow­ers. Higher and higher we climbed through the foot-hills, steeper and steeper grew the de­serted road, until, at an al­ti­tude of about four­teen hun­dred feet, we de­scried far above us a vil­lage with a church tower and a great pile of an­cient build­ings, long and ir­reg­u­lar in form, set upon ter­races and marked by ven­er­a­ble tow­ers: the old Carthu­sian monastery of Valldemosa. […]

We had come to Valldemosa with the prospect of a dou­ble plea­sure, for be­side our en­joy­ment of the nat­ural beau­ties of the place, we knew that a wel­come awaited us from the fam­ily who oc­cu­pied the old­est por­tion of the monastery, the part that had been the palace of King San­cho. Many well-known peo­ple—Ruben Dario, Sar­gent, Sorolla—had been their guests, and their li­brary, in an old tower that Jovel­lanos had oc­cu­pied dur­ing his exile, was filled with rare books and man­u­scripts, so we hoped that we should be plunged at once into the ro­man­tic at­mos­phere of the val­ley. This hope in­deed came true, for no sooner had we ar­rived than an evening was planned in our honor. A score of young men from the vil­lage, with their man­dolins and gui­tars, sang songs for us, es­pe­cially an an­cient type of bolero called El Parado […]

Among the guests were sev­eral who oc­cu­pied cells in the monastery. When I say “cells,” you must not imag­ine the an­choretic abodes, four by seven feet in size, in which cer­tain her­mits used to pass their lowly lives. For, when Don San­cho’s palace was given over to the Carthu­sians, the monks began the con­struc­tion of a great monastery (never quite com­pleted) planned upon so vast a scale that a stately church, two ceme­ter­ies and sev­eral clois­ter courts were en­closed within it. Each “cell” con­sisted of three vaulted cham­bers of goodly di­men­sions, one of which was the monk’s kitchen and work-room, the sec­ond his place for med­i­ta­tion and prayer, and the third his bed­room. [...]

All three of his rooms opened upon his gar­den, placed on top of a long ter­race and sep­a­rated from those of his neigh­bors by high stone walls but com­mand­ing a vast view of the val­ley, so that when he stepped from his cell he looked into un­lim­ited space upon a prospect that any poet might envy, filled with in­fi­nite va­ri­ety and mul­ti­tudi­nous de­tail: mon­ti­cles topped with pil­grim-chapels, rocks of strange and var­ied forms, and ter­races of al­mond, peach, and lemon trees that de­scended like giant steps to the nar­row open­ing in the moun­tains through which Palma and the curve of its shore could be seen. [...]

And so it is that these com­fort­able cells are now oc­cu­pied as coun­try houses by cer­tain Mal­lor­can fam­i­lies who ap­pre­ci­ate the charm of Valldemosa. To one of them at­taches a par­tic­u­larly ro­man­tic his­tory, for in it, strange to re­late, Fred­er­ick Chopin spent a win­ter with George Sand, who, ac­com­pa­nied by her two chil­dren, made a voy­age to Mal­lorca in 1838 in search of new sen­sa­tions. As de Mus­set had ac­com­pa­nied her a few years be­fore to Venice, so, on this oc­ca­sion, the young, blond Pol­ish pi­anist was her cho­sen com­pan­ion. Soon after their ar­rival, Chopin fell ill with the first symp­toms of the mal­ady that was to carry him off in the full prime of his life.