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The attitude of the Valldemósans too was anything but pleasant or conciliatory to the French exiles; the expulsion of the monks was too recent for them to have become reconciled to the occupation of the monastery by lay residents, and they looked with intense suspicion on these foreigners who never came to church and who scandalised society by allowing a little girl of nine to roam the country attired in rational costume.
There were doubtless faults on both sides; if the peasants regarded George Sand as a heathen, she looked upon them as uncharitable and bigoted barbarians, and she contrasts the result of their so-called religion with the abomination of desolation of philosophy in which—as she ironically remarks—her own children were brought up.
Life in Majorca seems to have offered few attractions to the foreigner in those days; setting aside the difficulties of transit—difficulties rendered doubly trying in the case of an invalid—the discomfort of the pig-boat by which one came to Palma, and the shocking state of the roads, to which I have previously alluded—setting all this aside, the very character of the islanders seems to have been radically different when George Sand sojourned amongst them from what it is now. According to her, the Majorcans were dirty and impertinent; they cheated one shamelessly at every turn; they were calculating, selfish, and utterly heartless where their own interest was concerned; letters of recommendation to twenty Palma residents would hardly suffice to prevent a stranger from wandering homeless about the town on arrival; and if any luckless foreigner presumed to complain of the treatment he received, or so much as ventured to express disapproval at the presence of scorpions in his soup, a torrent of indignation and contempt descended on his head.
Now our own impressions of the Majorcans differed so wholly from the above description that it is difficult to realise that the writer was referring to the same people. Our experience of the island was, however, necessarily a brief and superficial one—and though I have endeavoured faithfully to record all that befell us on our travels I am open to the charge of having taken too couleur-de-rose a view, or—in the more pithy Minorcan phrase—of having unconsciously resembled “the ass of Moro, who was enchanted with everything.”
I therefore quote the following words written by one not open to this charge—the Austrian Archduke Louis Salvator, who for more than twenty years made the island his home, who travelled about among the peasants, and who probably knows the island and its inhabitants more intimately than do most of the natives themselves:—
“The Majorcans,” he writes, “are gentle, cheerful, open-hearted, compassionate, and charitable to the poor; faithful in friendship, and extremely attached to their wives and children; very hospitable, like all the Balearic peoples—this applies to rich and poor alike, who all heap kindness upon the stranger and entertain him with their best.”
How to reconcile this opinion with that of George Sand I do not know—for it is not usual for the racial characteristics of an island people to alter so completely in fifty years. I can only imagine that the French authoress must have arrived in Majorca at an inauspicious moment; that she unintentionally roused the animosity of her neighbours, and that she may have been actually unlucky in the people with whom she came in contact; while anxiety over the condition of her sick friend did not improve her temper. It must not be supposed, however, that her winter at Valldemósa was one long Jeremiad; she thoroughly enjoyed the beauty of the scenery and the flowers, and her vivid imagination, her spirit, and her sense of humour carried her through trials that would have depressed many another person.
An apology is due to her memory for the deliberate charge brought against her in Murray’s guide-book of having damaged a certain “priceless historical document” during her stay in the island. The document in question is a curious illuminated map of Europe and the north coast of Africa, made for Amerigo Vespucci in the year 1439 by a Majorcan draughtsman; and George Sand is most unjustly held up to the reprobation of all future travellers as having obtained permission to copy this map, and as having upset her inkpot over it.