French Places - the literature, art, culture and history of France
George Sand and the Spanish winter
George Sand is best known today because one of her many lovers was Chopin. But my mother worshipped her as a female pioneer of the "bohemian tourism" we were innocently practicing, without imagining it could one day be given that name.
In much harsher circumstances than we had to face, Sand ventured from Paris to spend the winter of 1838 in rugged Spain. She defied the rigid conventions of her day by travelling in the company of a man who was not her husband, and, also, by not following the beaten paths used by people of her social class, when they travelled at all.
This great - I say "great" for lack of a better word - Frenchwoman is known by an English-sounding man's name, simply because she realized that, under the inappropriately feminine one she was given at birth, Amandine-Aurore-Lucie Dupin, she would never go anywhere as a writer. Female authors were not taken seriously, so she signed her first works with the name of her sweetheart, a journalist called Jules Sandeau.
But she soon anglicized this pseudonym, since in the 19th century it was chic to be English. Thus, she changed Jules to George (rather than Georges) and lopped the eau from the surname.
From then on, for "George Sand", life was a succession of popular novels about the misery of married women and the working classes, and, in her later years, best-selling animal stories for children, two of which were François le Champi and La Petite Fadette. She smoked cigars, held a literary salon and had tortured love affairs with brilliant men such as the romantic poet Alfred de Musset; Prosper Merimée, the archaeologist who saved many of France's medieval monuments, and, of course, the divine Pole.
Just up Joan’s alley, one might say! In case you have forgotten, Joan was my mother.
Chopin feared the effects of the Paris winter on his tuberculosis, so the couple set off for the island of Mallorca, about which they had favourable reports. They hoped to rent a charming and inexpensive villa where they could write books and music, in the sun.
The journey got off to an unromantic start, because the only vessel which sailed to the island from Barcelona was a freighter for pigs whose slime permeated everything. And instead of finding the affordable villa of their dreams, they were forced to pay an exorbitant price for several cells in a disused monastery. Sand spent most of her time on the island trying to find food for them to eat, but Chopin, in spite of the discomfort, was able to compose some of his finest pieces.
After Sand returned to France, three terrible months later, she wrote what for the modern reader is her most entertaining book, “A Winter in Mallorca”. It tartly tells how the islanders ostracized her and Chopin as if they were visiting demons. They were horrified to see a woman dressed in a man’s riding breeches and smoking cigars, dragging along a hollow-cheeked, effeminate man, as well as her two children and his piano.
They were stoned by the neighbours, cheated by the merchants, and – worst of all – trapped in their dank cells by the incessant rain and gales which soon replaced the autumnal sunshine.
One only has to visit Valldemosa today to fall under the site’s spell, especially now that it has become a shrine to the memory of the famous couple. As the island’s main tourist attraction it has been beautifully restored, with Chopin's piano once more in its place and his music piped into the cells. But living in it 150 winters ago must have been harrowing.
Sand was so scathing about the bigotry, backwardness and greed of the islanders that, when a copy of her book eventually reached them on the pig boat and was read by the few dignitaries who could do so, the lawyer’s guild took action to sue her for calumny. But ironically, in our times, this masterpiece of invective is sold, in four or five languages, in every souvenir shop on the island, and at the monastery too.
Such is today’s craze for identifying tourist sites with famous figures that it seems to matter little if anyone knows who the figures really were or, for that matter, what they really felt about the place in question. All people want to know about them, it seems, is that they were famous and they were there! In the 19th century the islanders hated Sand for the book she wrote, but their modern-day descendants owe her a great deal, partly because so few of the tourists who buy it bother to read it.
As for Chopin, thanks to the cold and humidity he returned home sicker than ever. He was not long in shaking off the overbearing and homely Sand – to whom, it transpired during their stay, he secretly preferred her budding daughter - and died of his ailment a few years later.
xxx