On arriving here people first have to buy some ground, then build, and afterwards send for furniture. After this, permission to live somewhere has to be obtained from Government, and after five or six years one can think about opening one's trunk and changing one's chemise, whilst waiting for permission from the Customs to have some shoes and handkerchiefs passed. For the last four days then we have spent our time going from door to door, as we do not want to sleep in the open air. We hope now to be settled in about three days, as a miracle has taken place. For the first time in the memory of man, there is a furnished house to let in Mallorca, a charming country-house in a delightful desert. . . ." {The end of footnote [26]}
At that time Spain was the very last country in which to travel with a consumptive patient. In a very fine lecture, the subject of which was _The Fight with Tubcrculosis_,[27] Dr. Landouzy proves to us that ever since the sixteenth century, in the districts of the Mediterranean, in Spain, in the Balearic Isles and throughout the kingdom of Naples, tuberculosis was held to be contagious, whilst the rest of Europe was ignorant of this contagion.
Extremely severe rules had been laid down with regard to the measures to be taken for avoiding the spread of this disease. A consumptive patient was considered as a kind of plague-stricken individual.
Chateaubriand had experienced the inconveniences of this scare during his stay in Rome with Madame de Beaumont, who died there of consumption, at the beginning of the winter of 1803.
George Sand, in her turn, was to have a similar experience.
When Chopin was convicted of consumption, "which," as she writes, "was equivalent to the plague, according to the Spanish doctors, with their foregone conclusions about contagion," their landlord simply turned them out of his house. They took refuge in the Chartreuse monastery of Valdemosa, where they lived in a cell. The site was very beautiful. By a wooded slope a terrace could be reached, from which there was a view of the sea on two sides.
[27] L. Landouzy of the Academy of Medecine, _La Lutte contre la tuberculose_, published by L. Maretheux.
"We are planted between heaven and earth," wrote George Sand.
"The clouds cross our garden at their own will and pleasure, and the eagles clamour over our heads."A cell in this monastery was composed of three rooms: the one in the middle was intended for reading, prayer and meditation, the other two were the bedroom and the workshop. All three rooms looked on to a garden. Reading, rest and manual labour made up the life of these men. They lived in a limited space certainly, but the view stretched out infinitely, and prayer went up direct to God.
Among the ruined buildings of the enormous monastery there was a cloister still standing, through which the wind howled desperately.
It was like the scenery in the nuns' act in _Robert le Diable_.
All this made the old monastery the most romantic place in the world.[28]
[28] George Sand to Madame Buloz. Postscript to the letter already quoted:
"I am leaving for the country where I have a furnished house with a garden, magnificently situated for 50 francs a month.
I have also taken a cell, that is three rooms and a garden for 35francs a year in the Chartreuse of Valdemosa, a magnificent, immense monastery quite lonely in the midst of mountains.
Our garden is full of oranges and lemons. The trees break under them. We have hedges of cactus twenty to thirty feet high, the sea is about a mile and a half away. We have a donkey to take us to the town, roads inaccessible to visitors, immense cloisters and the most beautiful architecture, a charming church, a cemetery with a palm-tree and a stone cross like the one in the third act of _Robert le Diable_. Then, too, there are beds of shrubs cut in form. All this we have to ourselves with an old woman to wait on us, and the sacristan who is warder, steward, majordomo and Jack-of-all-trades. I hope we shall have ghosts. The door of my cell leads into an enormous cloister, and when the wind slams the door it is like a cannon going off through all the monastery.
I am delighted with everything, and fancy I shall be more often in the cell than in the country-house, which is about six miles away.
You see that I have plenty of poetry and solitude, so that if Ido not work I shall be a stupid thing." {The end of footnote [28]}
The only drawback was that it was most difficult to live there.
There was no way of getting warm. The stove was a kind of iron furnace which gave out a terrible odour, and did not prevent the rooms from being so damp that clothes mildewed while they were being worn.
There was no way of getting proper food either. They had to eat the most indigestible things. There were five sorts of meat certainly, but these were pig, pork, bacon, ham and pickled pork. This was all cooked in dripping, pork-dripping, of course, or in rancid oil.
Still more than this, the natives refused, not only to serve the unfortunate travellers, but to sell them the actual necessaries of life.
The fact was, they had scandalized the Majorcan people. All Majorca was indignant because Solange, who at that time was nine years old, roamed about the mountains _disguised as a man_. Added to this, when the horn sounded which called people to their devotions in the churches, these strange inhabitants of the old Valdemosa monastery never took any more notice than pagans. People kept clear of them.
Chopin suffered with the cold, the cooking made him sick, and he used to have fits of terror in the cloisters. They had to leave hastily.
The only steamboat from the island was used to transport the pigs which are the pride and wealth of Majorca. People were only taken as an extra. It was, therefore, in the company of these squealing, ill-smelling creatures that the invalid crossed the water. When he arrived at Barcelona, he looked like a spectre and was spitting blood.
