Palma in Boyd’s narrative is a town blessed by the weather and ideal for its leisurely inactivity. At the very beginning of the account Boyd contrasts the dim atmosphere of northern cities compared to the bright south: “We had left grey gloom in London and in Paris. Here [in Palma] all was vivid and sparkling” (Boyd, 1911, p. 4). In this scene where everything is “bright and full of movement and of cheerful sounds, it is an adorable place to be lazy in” (p. 28). It is only when the tourist arrives that Palma awakens to the rhythms of car engines and coaches ready to fetch the visitors:
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 Soller. 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 (p. 28).
The little port of Palma, unaccustomed to big masses of tourists, soon experiences “the element of the unexpected” (p. 28). This influx of visitors makes its entrance and exit through the city to penetrate in haste into the interior of the island. Palma, in the first days of organised tourism, sees its slow dynamics altered and call for rapid adaptation to the needs of the modern visitors. More hotels, hostels and car services develop in the city (Cirer-Costa, 2012). New districts such as El Terreno are part of “a planned extension of Palma, and planning already considered tourism to be a key element of the ‘urban growth machine’” (Pons et al., 2014, p. 244). Another figure, eventually, becomes visible: the winter visitor who, initially, dedicates his and her time to painting or writing. The winter dweller, like Boyd or poet Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, attracted by the prospect of a quiet yet well-conditioned city, becomes more visible as the century develops.
The interior of the island, on the other hand, offers in the first decade of the twentieth century its mysteries to the most daring type of traveller: “for the adventurous, Majorca has plenty of peaks to climb, coasts to navigate, shrines to visit, caves to explore” (Boyd, 1911, p. 88). It is far from the racket of the tram and the buzz of the city where the travellers take pleasure in. Around Deià the travellers come across a French artist who “was enthusiastic about the pictorial quality of his surroundings. ‘Deya,’ he declared, was ‘un paradis pour les peintres’” (p. 60). This pictorial quality provides the landscape or rather, the eye, with ample aesthetic references and utopian yearnings: “[W]e watched the sun sink in a golden glory over the misty blue sea. Then, lamenting the inevitable close of another perfect day, we drove back down the vagrant deviating way [to the city], feeling as though we had for a brief space been translated to a new and inspiring world” (p. 258). The oxymoronic construction of a new paradise derived from the old landscape becomes a leitmotiv and the stage of nostalgic travellers in years to come. As Edward Said comments: “the Orient is the stage in which the whole East [in this case the Balearics] is confined” (Said, 1978, p. 63). It is this scenery, suspended in time and in the fantasy of artists and poets that the future traveller, more sophisticated than the tourist, is going to seek. If the city is not quaint enough, it is not worth describing.
With Margaret D’Este and Mary Stuart Boyd the concepts of city and island start to become two distinctive and separate representational entities. Palma, the city, equals comfort, hotels, and continental food together with good weather. As Boyd puts it, in the city “[t]he sunshine and soft air foster indolence” (Boyd, 1911, p. 28). The beach as a space of solace and leisure has not made its appearance yet. The unknown countryside, however, is of scant interest for the tourist. The discoverer, the photographer, or the artist—as D’Este and Boyd claim themselves to be—goes to unknown places. Boyd, as a self-appointed discoverer, directs her steps to places “where there was no attraction” (p. 111). When she travels through this peripheral space, Boyd likes to point to their joy in finding that their “journey ended in a place where German waiters were unknown” (p. 9). Travelling away from the tourist centre (and marking the margin) makes the experience—and therefore the new place—exclusive.
1918–1929: When leisure meets the city (and ‘true’ travellers flee)
If travellers to Mallorca before the First World War flirt with the idea of paradise in the margin far from the rushed rhythms of the northern cities, after the war the rural space of the island gains a utopian value (Moyà, 2012). The city represents the modern world of the machine and the industrialised world which has led civilisation to war, dehumanisation and decay (Hynes, 1990).
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 Soller. 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 (p. 28).
The little port of Palma, unaccustomed to big masses of tourists, soon experiences “the element of the unexpected” (p. 28). This influx of visitors makes its entrance and exit through the city to penetrate in haste into the interior of the island. Palma, in the first days of organised tourism, sees its slow dynamics altered and call for rapid adaptation to the needs of the modern visitors. More hotels, hostels and car services develop in the city (Cirer-Costa, 2012). New districts such as El Terreno are part of “a planned extension of Palma, and planning already considered tourism to be a key element of the ‘urban growth machine’” (Pons et al., 2014, p. 244). Another figure, eventually, becomes visible: the winter visitor who, initially, dedicates his and her time to painting or writing. The winter dweller, like Boyd or poet Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, attracted by the prospect of a quiet yet well-conditioned city, becomes more visible as the century develops.
The interior of the island, on the other hand, offers in the first decade of the twentieth century its mysteries to the most daring type of traveller: “for the adventurous, Majorca has plenty of peaks to climb, coasts to navigate, shrines to visit, caves to explore” (Boyd, 1911, p. 88). It is far from the racket of the tram and the buzz of the city where the travellers take pleasure in. Around Deià the travellers come across a French artist who “was enthusiastic about the pictorial quality of his surroundings. ‘Deya,’ he declared, was ‘un paradis pour les peintres’” (p. 60). This pictorial quality provides the landscape or rather, the eye, with ample aesthetic references and utopian yearnings: “[W]e watched the sun sink in a golden glory over the misty blue sea. Then, lamenting the inevitable close of another perfect day, we drove back down the vagrant deviating way [to the city], feeling as though we had for a brief space been translated to a new and inspiring world” (p. 258). The oxymoronic construction of a new paradise derived from the old landscape becomes a leitmotiv and the stage of nostalgic travellers in years to come. As Edward Said comments: “the Orient is the stage in which the whole East [in this case the Balearics] is confined” (Said, 1978, p. 63). It is this scenery, suspended in time and in the fantasy of artists and poets that the future traveller, more sophisticated than the tourist, is going to seek. If the city is not quaint enough, it is not worth describing.
With Margaret D’Este and Mary Stuart Boyd the concepts of city and island start to become two distinctive and separate representational entities. Palma, the city, equals comfort, hotels, and continental food together with good weather. As Boyd puts it, in the city “[t]he sunshine and soft air foster indolence” (Boyd, 1911, p. 28). The beach as a space of solace and leisure has not made its appearance yet. The unknown countryside, however, is of scant interest for the tourist. The discoverer, the photographer, or the artist—as D’Este and Boyd claim themselves to be—goes to unknown places. Boyd, as a self-appointed discoverer, directs her steps to places “where there was no attraction” (p. 111). When she travels through this peripheral space, Boyd likes to point to their joy in finding that their “journey ended in a place where German waiters were unknown” (p. 9). Travelling away from the tourist centre (and marking the margin) makes the experience—and therefore the new place—exclusive.
1918–1929: When leisure meets the city (and ‘true’ travellers flee)
If travellers to Mallorca before the First World War flirt with the idea of paradise in the margin far from the rushed rhythms of the northern cities, after the war the rural space of the island gains a utopian value (Moyà, 2012). The city represents the modern world of the machine and the industrialised world which has led civilisation to war, dehumanisation and decay (Hynes, 1990).
![large_AITAJP5058_178867_V0_801D[1].jpg](https://www.anthroworldforum.com/data/attachments/23/23645-adb0de8018acb83e8bc6e9e6b39d6934.jpg "large_AITAJP5058_178867_V0_801D[1].jpg")
