Mary Boyd - The Fortunate Isles - Life and Travel in Majorca, Minorca and Iviza

At my approach the applicant, recognizing me, waved the matter aside, as though the mistake had been mine, and he was graciously pleased to ignore it.

"The houses are so many – one forgets," he said, and strutted off without loss of dignity.

On Christmas Day he paid us an extra visit, and, sending in a card with his best wishes, awaited, not in vain, a monetary expression of our good-will.

The card, which was resplendent in rainbow tints, and richly emblazoned in gold, bore a representation of a young, dapper, and exquisitely dressed vigilante who was smoking a cigar. At his feet were portrayed a noble turkey, several bottles of champagne, and other seasonable dainties. A side tableau showed the vigilante , armed with his staff of office and a huge bunch of keys, opening a street door to a belated couple who, presumably, had been locked out.

On the reverse side of the card was a long poem, which, on behalf of its presenter, claimed many good offices; notably, that he captured the evil-doer, and that, filled with fervent zeal, he watched over our repose. It concluded by stating: —

Apart from similar curious and amusing conventions, with which one has to become acquainted, the early days of housekeeping in Majorca find the foreign resident grappling with a succession of petty difficulties. Besides the differences of language, of coinage, of weights and measures, the dissimilarity of climate renders advisable, even necessary, a mode of living that would be quite unsuited to dwellers in Britain.

To begin with the morning – the customary Majorcan breakfast, which even at the best hotels consists of a glass of coffee, or a tiny cup of very thick chocolate, and tumbler of water taken with a single roll, or an enciamada , is a meal from which the ordinary Briton rises hungry. And one wonders why the Spanish landlord, whose table is so lavishly spread at other meals, should practise a false economy in the matter of breakfast. For, after all, a roll costs only a halfpenny. Dinner is invariably an early function, and an extensive one, for at their two later meals Spaniards make up for their abstinence at breakfast. Between the two o'clock dinner and supper, which is served at any time between eight and ten o'clock, there is a long blank, which the English visitor usually bridges with a cup of tea.

To return to the question of breakfast. At the Casa Tranquila we compromised the matter, and broke our fast on an unstinted quantity of coffee or chocolate and milk, taken with fruit, rolls and butter, and enciamadas . Majorcan breakfast rolls are of two kinds – the ordinary crisp ones, and, what we liked better, a soft species called panecillos de aceite .

Bacon is unknown in Majorca, though ham, of strong flavour and repellent aspect, may be had. It sells at twopence an ounce; and if you wish to astonish the vendor, you can do so by ordering more than a quarter of a pound.

We had been warned that we would be forced to do without butter while in the islands. But matters have progressed – in Palma at least – since the old butterless days. Now the better class grocers sell a peculiarly white butter that is made at Son Servera, near Artá; and almost every provision shop stocks a tinned salt butter that comes from Copenhagen. By the way, the purchaser must not be surprised when asked if it is "pig's butter" he wants. The salesman only means lard.

Cow's milk, another article of diet that used to be scarce in the islands, can easily be obtained. The price charged is almost the same as in London and the milk is much richer.

With the aid of a Spanish dictionary it had been a comparatively simple matter to make out a list of groceries with which to furnish the shelves of our empty larder. But I must confess that a first visit to a butcher's shop made me wonder if Majorcan sheep and oxen differed in construction from British animals, such odd forms did their dead flesh present.

Cold storage is unknown in Palma. The beasts are killed, cut up, and sold almost before they have had time to cool. And, if they were not invariably killed young, their flesh could hardly be so good as it is, the lamb especially being sweet and tender.

A fact that forcibly strikes anyone from a meat-eating country is the small quantities of animal food consumed. Where the wife of a British working-man might spend a shilling on beef, a Majorcan would spend twopence. Naturally the meat is sold in small pieces, and inspection is courted. The east-end butcher's printed command to his customers – "Keep your hands off the beef," would be scorned in the Balearic Isles. If you shop in native fashion, you walk about the shop, turning over and critically examining the pieces exposed within easy reach. When your selection is made you need not invest in any great quantity. If you fancy calf's head, custom does not compel you to buy a half head. You can have a pound, a half-pound, or even a slice.

If your taste turns to fowl, at your request the bird suspended by its heels is halved, quartered, or wholly dismembered. Its limbs may lack the noble proportions of a Surrey capon, but they will be well flavoured and succulent, and you can acquire a wing and slice of the breast, or a leg, or a yet smaller portion, as your fancy inclines.

We had heard that Majorcans were apt to tax foreigners by making them pay more than was customary for anything purchased, but such occurrences were quite outside our experience; though I did come across an example of Majorcan reasoning that was so amusingly illogical that I am tempted to repeat it here.

Finding in our picnicking style of housekeeping that a cold tongue was a useful thing to have in the larder, I frequently ordered one from the estimable butcher who served us. For a time the price charged was moderate. One day without warning it was increased by a half.

My Spanish unaided did not enable me to argue the matter, but Mrs. Consul chancing to be with me next time I called at the shop, I got her to inquire the reason of this sudden and unexplained change of rate.

"Yes. The tongue was a small one, and the price high," admitted the plump wife of the butcher, who acted as his accountant. "But then I had charged the señora too little for those we had supplied her with at first. And though we have many customers, each ox we kill has only one tongue. And, as I had charged the señora too little for the others, to be just to myself I was obliged to ask more than the true price for the last one!"

The method of reasoning was so delightfully irrational and absurd that I cheerfully paid the confessed overcharge, and we left the shop laughing. Probably the worthy dame wonders to this day what we found entertaining in the situation.

Many good and cheap eatables are to be had in Palma if one knows where to look for them. By degrees we found out the best place to buy the tasty little pies filled with fish, or meat, and herbs, raisins and pine-seeds, or the funny turn-overs stuffed with spinach, that all the bakers make; and discovered the confectioner who sold the nicest cakes and sweets, and where to buy freshly-baked almonds, and who had the best quince preserve.

A little investigation introduced us to articles of food that we would never have met had we continued to live in a hotel – to the cocas that so closely resemble the Scottish "cookies"; and the bizcochos , that are just crisp freshly toasted slices of the largest sized cocas .

When we arrived in October, fruit was plentiful. Delicious grapes were selling at twopence-halfpenny a kilo (about a penny a pound), and ripe purple or golden figs were eighteen a penny. As the winter advanced the price of grapes gradually rose. And though one day in early December I bought for fivepence in the market four pounds of well-flavoured yellow grapes, by the end of January the finest were a peseta (about ninepence) a kilo.