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Updated: June 18, 2025
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.
It would be interesting to know which were the compositions that Chopin produced at Valdemosa. Nor is there anything discrepant in the Ballade.
Madame Sand and her children were delighted with the unfamiliar vegetation, the palms, aloes, olives, almond and orange trees, the Arab architecture, and picturesque costumes. Valdemosa itself was splendidly situated among the mountains, in a stone-walled garden surrounded with cypress trees and planted with palms and olives.
"It was difficult to say," remarks Mikuli, "which of the two he loved most." Chopin not only, as has already been mentioned, had works of Bach on his writing-table at Valdemosa, corrected the Parisian edition for his own use, and prepared himself for his concerts by playing Bach, but also set his pupils to study the immortal cantor's suites, partitas, and preludes and fugues.
But his fortitude, which bore up heroically against his personal danger, was not proof against the dreary influences of Valdemosa in bad weather, the fogs, the sound of the hurricane sweeping through the valley, and bringing down portions of the dilapidated building, the noise of the torrents, the cries of the scared sea-birds and the roar of the sea.
Then the moon rose, large and yellow, beyond the Valdemosa Heights, and the widow Navarro, her day's work done, walked slowly up the road to visit her sister, the road-keeper's wife. Rosa sat on the bench beneath the trellis, and thought those long thoughts that belong to youth. She heard Tomaso's step long before he came in sight, for the valley is thinly populated and as still as Sahara.
To-morrow we depart for the Carthusian monastery of Valdemosa, the most poetic residence on earth. We shall pass there the winter, which has hardly begun and will soon end. This is the sole happiness of this country. I have never in my life met with a nature so delicious as that of Majorca. ...The people of this country are generally very gracious, very obliging; but all this in words...
They were getting through a certain small portion of the day, without doing any work, and without spending any money. The majority favoured the road past Valdemosa, over the Pass of Soller to Miramar and its rocky coast on the north-east side of the island, as indeed Hillyard knew the majority must. For there is no road like it for beauty in the Balearics, and few in all Spain.
...We inhabit the Carthusian monastery of Valdemosa, a really sublime place, which I have hardly the time to admire, so many occupations have I with my children, their lessons, and my work. There are rains here of which one has elsewhere no idea: it is a frightful deluge! The air is on account of it so relaxing, so soft, that one cannot drag one's self along; one is really ill.
For instance, an orange they will give you for nothing, but ask a fabulous sum for a coat- button. Under this sky you are penetrated with a kind of poetical feeling which everything seems to exhale. Eagles alarmed by no one soar every day majestically over our heads. For God's sake write, always prepay, and to Palma add always Valdemosa.
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