[FOOTNOTE: August Leo, a Paris banker, "the friend and patron of many artists," as he is called by Moscheles, who was related to him through his wife Charlotte Embden, of Hamburg. The name of Leo occurs often in the letters and conversations of musicians, especially German musicians, who visited Paris or lived there in the second quarter of this century. Leo kept house together with his brother-in-law Valentin. (See Vol. I., p. 254.)]
Chopin kept his intention of going with Madame Sand to Majorca secret from all but a privileged few. According to Franchomme, he did not speak of it even to his friends. There seem to have been only three exceptions—Fontana, Matuszynski, and Grzymala, and in his letters to the first he repeatedly entreats his friend not to talk about him. Nor does he seem to have been much more communicative after his return, for none of Chopin's acquaintances whom I questioned was able to tell me whether the composer looked back on this migration with satisfaction or with regret; still less did they remember any remark made by him that would throw a more searching light on this period of his life.
Until recently the only sources of information bearing on Chopin's stay in Majorca were George Sand's "Un Hiver a Majorque" and "Histoire de ma Vie." But now we have also Chopin's letters to Fontana (in the Polish edition of Karasowski's "Chopin") and George Sand's "Correspondance," which supplement and correct the two publications of the novelist. Remembering the latter's tendency to idealise everything, and her disinclination to descend to the prose of her subject, I shall make the letters the backbone of my narrative, and for the rest select my material cautiously.
Telling Chopin that she would stay some days at Perpignan if he were not there on her arrival, but would proceed without him if he failed to make his appearance within a certain time, Madame Sand set out with her two children and a maid in the month of November, 1838, for the south of France, and, travelling for travelling's sake, visited Lyons, Avignon, Vaucluse, Nimes, and other places. The distinguished financier and well-known Spanish statesman Mendizabal, their friend, who was going to Madrid, was to accompany Chopin to the Spanish frontier. Madame Sand was not long left in doubt as to whether Chopin would realise his reve de voyage or not, for he put in his appearance at Perpignan the very next day after her arrival there. Madame Sand to Madame Marliani, [FOOTNOTE: The wife of the Spanish politician and author, Manuel Marliani. We shall hear more of her farther on.] November, 1838:- -
Chopin arrived at Perpignan last night, fresh as a rose, and rosy as a turnip; moreover, in good health, having stood his four nights of the mail-coach heroically. As to ourselves, we travelled slowly, quietly, and surrounded at all stations by our friends, who overwhelmed us with kindness.
As the weather was fine and the sea calm Chopin did not suffer much on the passage from Port-Vendres to Barcelona. At the latter town the party halted for a while-spending some busy days within its walls, and making an excursion into the country-and then took ship for Palma, the capital of Majorca and the Balearic Isles generally. Again the voyagers were favoured by the elements.
The night was warm and dark, illumined only by an extraordinary phosphorescence in the wake of the ship; everybody was asleep on board except the steersman, who, in order to keep himself awake, sang all night, but in a voice so soft and so subdued that one might have thought that he feared to awake the men of the watch, or that he himself was half asleep. We did not weary of listening to him, for his singing was of the strangest kind. He observed a rhythm and modulations totally different from those we are accustomed to, and seemed to allow his voice to go at random, like the smoke of the vessel carried away and swayed by the breeze. It was a reverie rather than a song, a kind of careless divagation of the voice, with which the mind had little to do, but which kept time with the swaying of the ship, the faint sound of the dead water, and resembled a vague improvisation, restrained, nevertheless, by sweet and monotonous forms.
When night had passed into day, the steep coasts of Majorca, dentelees au soleil du matin par les aloes et les palmiers, came in sight, and soon after El Mallorquin landed its passengers at Palma. Madame Sand had left Paris a fortnight before in extremely cold weather, and here she found in the first half of November summer heat. The newcomers derived much pleasure from their rambles through the town, which has a strongly-pronounced character of its own and is rich in fine and interesting buildings, among which are most prominent the magnificent Cathedral, the elegant Exchange (la lonja), the stately Town- Hall, and the picturesque Royal Palace (palacio real). Indeed, in Majorca everything is picturesque,
from the hut of the peasant, who in his most insignificant buildings has preserved the tradition of the Arabic style, to the infant clothed in rags and triumphant in his "malproprete grandiose," as Heine said a propos of the market-women of Verona. The character of the landscape, whose vegetation is richer than that of Africa is in general, has quite as much breadth, calm, and simplicity. It is green Switzerland under the sky of Calabria, with the solemnity and silence of the East.
But picturesqueness alone does not make man's happiness, and Palma seems to have afforded little else. If we may believe Madame Sand, there was not a single hotel in the town, and the only accommodation her party could get consisted of two small rooms, unfurnished rather than furnished, in some wretched place where travellers are happy to find "a folding-bed, a straw- bottomed chair, and, as regards food, pepper and garlic a discretion." Still, however great their discomfort and disgust might be, they had to do their utmost to hide their feelings; for, if they had made faces on discovering vermin in their beds and scorpions in their soup, they would certainly have hurt the susceptibilities of the natives, and would probably have exposed themselves to unpleasant consequences. No inhabitable apartments were to be had in the town itself, but in its neighbourhood a villa chanced to be vacant, and this our party rented at once.