Frederick Chopin, as a Man and Musician — Complete

by Frederick Niecks

Madame Sand to M. A. M. Duteil; Valdemosa, January 20, 1839:—

...This [the slowness and irregularity of the post] is not the
only inconvenience of the country. There are innumerable ones,
and yet this is the most beautiful country. The climate is
delicious. At the time I am writing, Maurice is gardening in his
shirt-sleeves, and Solange, seated under an orange tree loaded
with fruit, studies her lesson with a grave air. We have bushes
covered with roses, and spring is coming in. Our winter lasted
six weeks, not cold, but rainy to a degree to frighten us. It is
a deluge! The rain uproots the mountains; all the waters of the
mountain rush into the plain; the roads become torrents. We found
ourselves caught in them, Maurice and I. We had been at Palma in
superb weather. When we returned in the evening, there were no
fields, no roads, but only trees to indicate approximately the
way which we had to go. I was really very frightened, especially
as the horse refused to proceed, and we were obliged to traverse
the mountain on foot in the night, with torrents across our legs.

Madame Sand to Madame Marliani; Valdemosa, February 22, 1839:—

...You see me at my Carthusian monastery, still sedentary, and
occupied during the day with my children, at night with my work.
In the midst of all this, the warbling of Chopin, who goes his
usual pretty way, and whom the walls of the cell are much
astonished to hear.
The only remarkable event since my last letter is the arrival
of the so much-expected piano. After a fortnight of
applications and waiting we have been able to get it out of
the custom-house by paying three hundred francs of duty.
Pretty country this! After all, it has been disembarked
without accident, and the vaults of the monastery are
delighted with it. And all this is not profaned by the
admiration of fools-we do not see a cat.
Our retreat in the mountains, three leagues from the town, has
freed us from the politeness of idlers.
Nevertheless, we have had one visitor, and a visitor from
Paris!—namely, M. Dembowski, an Italian Pole whom Chopin
knew, and who calls himself a cousin of Marliani—I don't know
in what degree.
...The fact is, that we are very much pleased with the freedom
which this gives us, because we have work to do; but we
understand very well that these poetic intervals which one
introduces into one's life are only times of transition and rest
allowed to the mind before it resumes the exercise of the
emotions. I mean this in the purely intellectual sense; for, as
regards the life of the heart, it cannot cease for a moment...

This brings us to the end of the known letters written by Chopin and Madame Sand from Majorca. And now let us see what we can find in George Sand's books to complete the picture of the life of her and her party at Valdemosa, of which the letters give only more or less disconnected indications. I shall use the materials at my disposal freely and cautiously, quoting some passages in full, regrouping and summing-up others, and keeping always in mind—which the reader should likewise do—the authoress's tendency to emphasise, colour, and embellish, for the sake of literary and moral effect.

Not to extend this chapter too much, I refer the curious to George Sand's "Un Hiver a Majorque" for a description of the "admirable, grandiose, and wild nature" in the midst of which the "poetic abode" of her and her party was situated—of the grandly and beautifully-varied surface of the earth, the luxuriant southern vegetation, and the marvellous phenomena of light and air; of the sea stretching out on two sides and meeting the horizon; of the surrounding formidable peaks, and the more distant round-swelling hills; of the eagles descending in the pursuit of their prey down to the orange trees of the monastery gardens; of the avenue of cypresses serpentining from the top of the mountain to the bottom of the gorge; of the torrents covered with myrtles; in short, of the immense ensemble, the infinite details, which overwhelm the imagination and outvie the poet's and painter's dreams. Here it will be advisable to confine ourselves to the investigation of a more limited sphere, to inspect rather narrow interiors than vast landscapes.

As the reader has gathered from the preceding letters, there was no longer a monastic community at Valdemosa. The monks had been dispersed some time before, and the monastery had become the property of the state. During the hot summer months it was in great part occupied by small burghers from Palma who came in quest of fresh air. The only permanent inhabitants of the monastery, and the only fellow-tenants of George Sand's party, were two men and one woman, called by the novelist respectively the Apothecary, the Sacristan, and Maria Antonia. The first, a remnant of the dispersed community, sold mallows and couch-grass, the only specifics he had; the second was the person in whose keeping were the keys of the monastery; and the third was a kind of housekeeper who, for the love of God and out of neighbourly friendship, offered her help to new-comers, and, if it was accepted, did not fail to levy heavy contributions.

The monastery was a complex of strongly-constructed, buildings without any architectural beauty, and such was, its circumference and mass of stones that it would have been easy to house an army corps. Besides the dwelling of the superior, the cells of the lay-brothers, the lodgings for visitors, the stables, and other structures, there were three cloisters, each consisting of twelve cells and twelve chapels. The most ancient of these cloisters, which is also the smallest, dates from the 15th century.

It presents a charming coup d'oeil. The court which it
encloses with its broken-down walls is the ancient cemetery of
the monks. No inscription distinguishes these tombs...The
graves are scarcely indicated by the swellings of the turf.

In the cells were stored up the remains of all sorts of fine old furniture and sculpture, but these could only be seen through the chinks, for the cells were carefully locked, and the sacristan would not open them to anyone. The second cloister, although of more recent date, was likewise in a dilapidated state, which, however, gave it character. In stormy weather it was not at all safe to pass through it on account of the falling fragments of walls and vaults.