The Fortunate Isles: Life and Travel in Majorca, Minorca and Iviza

On the broad ledge of the veranda, on either side of the short flight of steps leading down to the garden, were great green flower-pots. Three held pink ivy-leaved geraniums, one contained a cactus that had exactly the appearance of four prickly sea-urchins set in mould, the others were empty.

The garden measured nineteen paces by twenty-two. Raised paths of concrete divided it into eight beds. The four larger encircled the quaint draw-well; the four smaller were in a row, two on either side of the veranda steps. The beds held a number of fruit trees. There was a sturdy lemon that bore both fruit and blossom, and three orange-trees; one carrying about sixty mandarin oranges. And besides a second vine there were seven almond-trees and two apricots. A shrub in whose racemes of hawthorn-scented blossom bees were busy, we had never before seen. Later we learned that it was the loquat.

Some rose bushes, which obligingly flowered all winter, a jasmine, a tall scented verbena, a long row of sweet peppers, two clumps of artichokes, and sundry tufts of herbs completed our vegetable kingdom.

Majorca is a paradise for the gardener – or would be, were the rainfall more assured – for the climate varies so little that almost anything can be planted at any season.

The day we took possession of the house I sowed some rows of dwarf peas. In a week they were above the ground and continued to flourish exceedingly, until brought to a standstill by the long-continued drought. The rain in January set them a-growing again, and from early February till April we had dishes of green peas from our own ground.

At the foot of the garden, separated from it by a high stone wall, were two small dwellings. One was empty. In the other there resided a cobbler named Pepe, his wife, and a lean red kitten.

The sudden arrival of us foreigners proved an event of extraordinary interest in the circumscribed lives of the pair, and of the skinny kitten, who developed into quite a handsome cat on our scraps. Mr. and Mrs. Pepe had no veranda, but from their patch of garden a tiny staircase led to a mirador– a species of roof watch-tower – from which they had a capital view of the town, the port, and of their neighbours.

As in these sunny November days we lived with the wide glass doors open to the veranda, there was so much to observe in our doings that for the first week at least of our stay Pepe's customers must have been neglected; for morning, noon, and night he was at his post of supervision. As we sat at table we got quite accustomed to seeing his squat figure outlined against the sky as he undisguisedly watched our movements. Sometimes he even carried his quaint spouted wine-bottle and hunk of rye bread up to the mirador, and enjoyed his breakfast with a vigilant eye on us.

Pepe had a taste for gardening, and grew chrysanthemums and carnations in the few feet of soil attached to his dwelling. Sometimes, with due ceremonial, he presented us with one of his striped carnations. And one day, when I was in the garden, he hastened down from his post of observation to reappear, smiling broadly, at our side gate, bearing the gift of a sturdy root of French marigold. We showed our appreciation of the compliment by sending him a boot to mend; and, courteous preliminaries having been thus exchanged, we continued to live on terms of distant amity. The marigold I promptly planted in one of the empty green flower-pots, where throughout the winter it bore a constant succession of its brown and orange velvet flowers.

A family from Andalusia – a father, mother, and four children – occupied the house adjoining ours. They seemed good-tempered, easy-going folks, living a happy careless life in this land of sunshine. Their somewhat extensive garden was well kept and fruitful.

The father, like so many of the residents in these islands, was a bird-fancier. And when, on sunny mornings, assisted by his children, he had carried out the dozens of cages containing his pets, and had hung them on his pomegranate-trees, and on the pergola, where the purple convolvulus twined about branches heavy with golden oranges, our world was vocal with their song.

At the foot of their garden was a flourishing little poultry-yard, in which, with laudable success, they reared chickens and ducks and rabbits. They supplied us regularly with eggs, and when any of the live stock was ripe for the pot we always had the first offer of purchase.

The method of procedure was to catch the beast – plump rabbit, young rooster, or whatever it chanced to be – and to carry it, suspended by the legs and vigorously protesting, to the door of our casa to exhibit its proportions, and to inquire if we would like to purchase. On the sale being effected, as it usually was, for the quality of their live stock was unequalled, the victim would be taken away, to reappear half an hour later stripped of fur or feather, and with its members decorously dressed for cooking.

Early in the year the Andalusian family was increased by one – a fine boy. A few weeks after, the mother paid me a state visit to receive congratulations and exhibit the baby. Going into the studio, I said:

"Our neighbour has brought her new baby to show us."

The Man waved me away with a protesting paint-brush.

"No," he said. "Don't buy it. Send her away. I don't mind the ducks and the chickens, but I absolutely refuse to eat the baby!"

Life in the Casa Tranquila, as we had christened our winter home, was a pleasant irresponsible matter compared with existence in ceremonial Britain. Social pleasures we undoubtedly had, but no social duties. Housekeeping ran on the simplest of lines. Maria, the woman who had been key-keeper of the house while it was empty, came in to do the rough work. Apolonia, a smiling, rubicund old dame, with a keen sense of humour, acted as laundress. It was all so easy and unconventional and open-airy that we never quite got over the impression that we were enjoying a prolonged camping-out, and that it was by accident that our roof was of tiles and not of canvas.

Our morning began with the arrival of a baker who brought the bread, rolls, and enciamadas for the day's consumption. We did not use the milk of goats, though, twice daily, a little flock, with tinkling bells, their udders tied up in neat bags of check cotton for protection against the unauthorised raids of their thirsty kids, was driven past our door to be milked before the eyes of each customer. A sprightly matron served us morning and evening with the milk of a cow, which her husband spent his days herding on any stray patches of herbage in the district.

Each day at noon, Mundo, the greengrocer, called with a donkey-cart containing quite a comprehensive assortment of fruit and vegetables. Three kinds of potatoes he always brought – new, old, and sweet – pumpkins that were sold in slices, egg-plants, garlic strung in long festoons, spinach, cauliflowers, sweet peppers, curious fungi, purple carrots, sugar beans; all at astonishingly low prices. I shall always remember the November day when, in a moment of forgetfulness, I asked for a whole pennyworth of tomatoes, and was afterwards confronted by the difficulty of disposing of so many.

A popular article of diet seemed to be the gigantic radishes, in which not only Mundo but all the little shops appeared to do a big trade. We puzzled long over the way in which they could be used before making the chance discovery that they are cut in round slices and eaten raw with soup or meat, as one would eat bread.

III

PALMA, THE PEARL OF THE MEDITERRANEAN

As a place of winter residence for those who like sunshine, and are not enamoured of society, Palma could hardly be excelled.

For one thing, the town is just the right size. It is not so small as to allow the visitor to feel dull, or so large as to permit him to become conscious of his own insignificance.

While Palma is bright and full of movement and of cheerful sounds, it is an adorable place to be lazy in. The sunshine and soft air foster indolence; and though there is no stagnation, everybody takes life easily in this walled city by the southern sea. There is no bustle, no need to hurry. What is not accomplished to-day can be done to-morrow. And if to-morrow finds it still undone – why, what is the future made up of, if not of an illimitable succession of to-morrows?

When the ancients christened Palma "the Pearl of the Mediterranean," they gave it a title that to this day it deserves.

Something of the resplendence of the town is due to the warm-coloured stone of which it is built – a stone that shades from the palest cream to warm amber. Every stroll we took through its mediæval streets, every walk along its antique ramparts, every saunter down the mole, made us more and more in love with its beauty, which we seemed always to be viewing under some new condition of light or atmosphere.

The Man never wearied of the crooked secret-looking streets and fine buildings of the old, old city. By day or night they held for him an inexplicable charm. He was always discovering some new "bit" – a quaint patio, a Moorish arch, an antique gateway, a curious interior, a sculptured window.

And the streets were always full of life. A cluster of officers in full dress chattering on the Borne; a company of soldiers marching to the strains of an inspiriting band; a priest, under a great rose-coloured silk umbrella, on the way to administer extreme unction to someone sick unto death – all the spectators falling on their knees as the solemn little procession passed by; or a party of queerly attired natives of Iviza, just arrived by the thrice-a-week boat, and curiously foreign both in speech and appearance, though their island home was only sixty or seventy miles distant; or a string of carriages whose occupants were on the way to a morning reception at the Almudaina, the old Moorish palace, now the residence of the Captain-General.

Everything in the place was new to us, and the feeling of novelty never waned.

As for the Boy, from the moment of our arrival his interest centred in the port. Its constantly changing array of shipping, and the fine sun-tanned buccaneers who did business on its blue waters, supplied him with endless congenial subjects for pictures.

The port of Palma nestles, one might almost say, right into the heart of the city. The chief promenade, the Borne, ends on its brink. The Cathedral and the Lonja dignify its banks.

The gay life of the harbour lies open to the casual observer. Under the ramparts, by the side of the public road, old men in red caps and suits of velveteen that the sun has faded to marvellous hues sit at their placid occupation of net-mending. There, too, when the falucas are moored at the edge of the wharf, come the families of the fishermen to join them at lunch – the women bringing down wine and bread and the men supplying a tasty hot dish from the less saleable items of their catch. Sometimes a cloth is spread, and then the al fresco repast assumes quite a ceremonious air.

Stern on to the muelle, the long breakwater that partitions off the water of the harbour from the open bay, lie the larger craft: the most important of which are the white-painted steamers of the Isleña Marítima, the fleet of boats belonging to a Majorcan Company that carry mails and passengers between the island and Spain or Algeria.

Once Palma was a great maritime centre. Now little foreign shipping does business in her port. But though the bulk of the traffic is local, an open port always holds the element of the unexpected.

Sometimes a leviathan-like liner, making a holiday tour of Mediterranean ports, anchors by the wharf, and her tourists, eager to make the most of the hours at their disposal, hasten on shore to pack themselves into every available form of conveyance and drive off, enclosed in a pillar of dust of their own raising, to enjoy a hasty glance at Valldemosa, Miramar and Sóller. When at sunset they steam out of the harbour it is with the pleasantly erroneous conviction that they have exhausted the attractions of the island.

Once a fine ship that sharp eyes recognized as the private yacht of the Czar of Russia quietly entered the bay, and after a brief stay, during which her voyagers held no intercourse with land, as quietly departed. And after a spring gale a Greek sailing ship, her main-mast gone, was towed in by a French tug. Sometimes it was the capture of a smuggler's faluca caught in the act of trying to run a cargo of contraband tobacco that furnished the excitement.

On the frequent feast days Palma was gay with flags. Every Consulate in the town – and they were many – mounted its special banner. The gun-boats sported strings of bunting out of all proportion to their size, the merchantmen flew their ensigns, and though the business of the town was transacted with its customary air of casual lightheartedness, the never-lacking holiday feeling was intensified.

One November feast day the Boy, who was painting at the port, discovered among the decorated craft a ship flying the British flag; a closer inspection revealed her to be the Ancona of Leith, just arrived with a cargo of coal. Nearer home I doubt if the proximity of a Leith collier would have appealed strongly to our patriotism. In that southern latitude things were different. A sudden and fervent desire to hear our own northern accent awoke within us, and, incited by our adventurous son, we determined to board the Ancona and pay our respects to her captain.

It was a glorious morning, one of those wonderful mornings when the world seems newly born, that we three went down the mole. Lying beyond the schooner from Sóller, and the pailebot from Valencia that was shipping a cargo of empty wicker-cased wine flasks, we came to the Ancona.

Three railless plank gangways connected her with the wharf, and down two of the planks Majorcans in their elaborately bepatched blue linen suits were carrying straw baskets of coal. We ventured up the third. Our gangway ended on a six-feet-high platform situated on the verge of a hold still brimful of coal. As we hesitated on our perch, wondering what to do next, a bronzed man in slippers appeared. It was the first mate.

"It's a fine day," the Man gave colloquial greeting. "Is the skipper on board?"

"Ay. It's a real bonnie day," the mate made truthful reply. "No. He's just gone up the quay to see the ship's agents."

The homely words, the familiar accent, fell like music on our ears. A few words of explanation brought the mate to our elevated platform, where he spoke with the inherent appreciation of the Scot of the beauty of the town.

"Ay. It's a bonnie place this. I think it's as pretty a place as I've seen. No. We've been busy on board and I haven't had time to see the town yet. But I'm enjoyin' the view fine from here. The captain? Oh, you couldn't miss him. You're sure to come across him. He's just up on the front."

So, in quest of a compatriot whom we couldn't miss, we set off up the street. And sure enough, before we had proceeded very far we met the captain face to face.

If the captain of the Ancona was surprised at being accosted by a trio of complete strangers, he was too much a Highland gentleman and a man of the world to reveal any astonishment. In five minutes we were all on a friendly footing, our nationality the firm basis of good-fellowship; a little later we were all seated outside the Lirico, over tall glasses of vermouth and seltzer, recalling familiar scenes and discovering mutual acquaintances.

The captain was at a loose end. We were going to the fruit market, to the bookseller's, to the Cathedral. So he came too.

In the market, as he saw me buy big bunches of yellow grapes at twopence-halfpenny a kilo (nearly two and a quarter pounds) his face lit up – "I'll be for sending the steward up here," he said.