Brydone, in a once popular volume, 'A Tour through Sicily and Malta,' published in 1773, wrote: 'As Malta is an epitome of all Europe, and an assemblage of the younger brothers, who are commonly the best, of its first families, it is probably one of the best academies for politeness in this part of the globe. The Knights and Commanders have much the appearance of gentlemen and men of the world. We met with no character in extreme; the ridicules and prejudices of every particular nation are by degrees softened and worn off by familiar intercourse and collision with each other.'
Maltese society of today reflects in a faint measure the features drawn by
this observant Englishman of a Malta of the past; and though the Auberges are
no longer filled by 'gentlemen and men of the world' drawn from seven nations,
it still preserves a distinctly cosmopolitan strain in the descendants of refugees,
many of whom fled from persecution in their own lands to the haven offered under
the independent sovereignty of the Grand Masters. For instance, a Maltese priest
known to the writer includes among his ancestors a lady called O' Kelly, whose
family sailed from Gal way in the seventeenth century to escape the Penal Code
then in force against Roman Catholics; and today, under the British flag, there
dwells in Malta a queen in exile a lady who claims to be the rightful holder
of an Eastern throne. The Order of St. John in its palmy days attracted from
the Continent many artists, musicians, merchants, traders, bankers, and members
of learned professions, as did British rule in the early years of the last century,
affording in Malta a security not found elsewhere during the Napoleonic wars.
Many of these settlers attained to honourable positions in the island, and the
descendants of these Spaniards, Germans, Italians, French, and Greeks, still
in many cases pursue the businesses and professions of their ancestors.
Malta in consequence offers a great variety in its social life: a diversity
of temperament, traditions, and manners, interesting to the visitor who believes
that the greatest study of mankind is man. To this potpourri of nationalities
must be added the birds of passage from the liners, yachts, and ships of the
foreign navies touching here for a few days. The kaleidoscopic scenes of a reception
at the Palace or a ball at the 'Borsa,' witnessed for the first time, will leave
an impression not easily forgotten. Besides the usual personages 'His Excellency
and Staff'; the Maltese nobles; the officers of the fleet and garrison in their
gay uniforms; Monsignori and Cathedral Canons in picturesque robes and buckled
shoes; 'honourable members' of Council, Crown officials, and innumerable Consuls
in the gorgeous dress of their respective Governments one may see in addition
some of those casual visitors to whom a diplomatic 'A.D.C.' has been careful
to issue invitations. These may include officers of the Italian, French, German,
or American navies; possibly a Cabinet Minister cruising in the Mediterranean
during the parliamentary recess; some great proconsul returning from our dominions
beyond the seas; a French official bound for Tunis; a 'cavaliere' from Rome;
a distinguished Orientalist studying the Maltese language; a Turkish Pasha or
an Egyptian politician; a Chinese gentleman from the awakening East on his way
to England to study our Constitution these, in all manner of costumes and colours,
with the blaze of foreign ribbons and orders, the babble of ten different tongues,
little suggest the uneventful round of life in a Crown colony.
This cosmopolitan element finds its way into the hospitable Maltese drawing-rooms,
where may be enjoyed, in the afternoons, music, tea, and conversation, this latter
being conducted in either Maltese, English, or Italian, and possibly French,
for this language is often spoken in Maltese families. And such drawing-rooms
balconied, cool, shaded, lofty, spacious, marble-floored and frescoed, filled
with family treasures and ancestral pictures, including an occasional Knight,
the latter in powdered perruque and the eight-pointed cross, smiling blandly
from his frame in complete disregard of the set-to between Christian and Muslim
of which we catch a glimpse through the indispensable pillar and curtain in the
background of the painting; probably, too, a canvas of an old Maltese dame in
a starched muslin head-dress, with rosary in hand, prayer-book and crucifix on
the table beside her, and, if she be a 'baronessa,' certainly a bell wherewith
to summon to her 'la serva' for in those good old days the more aristocratic
they were the more helpless seemed the fairer sex to be. The drawing-room, in
keeping with these old-world figures, is furnished with stately settees and stiff-backed
gilded chairs in fine faded old brocade; statues, tapestries, come possibly from
Flemish looms with those more famous ones of St. John's; beautiful collections
of antique silver; plenty of old books, including the ' Lives of the Saints,'
many old prints, with enough views of Valletta and the Grand Harbour to fill
all the pictorial geographies in the world.
It is customary to offer guests paying afternoon calls a liqueur called rosolin,
made in Malta, which is sometimes served in quaint silver liqueur-cups, some
of which the collector of old silver may be lucky enough to find in the old curiosity
shops in Strada Santa Lucia, at the back of St. John's. In these pleasant surroundings
you may chat, in either of the four languages mentioned, with, perhaps, a charming
signorina who was your partner at a Club dance on the previous evening, discussing
all things from the merits of the new prima donna to that never failing conversational
sheet-anchor in Malta the state of the passage in the penny steamers to Sliema.
Into this Maltese circle the English residents rarely intrude, nor do the wives, sisters, cousins, and aunts, of the fleet and garrison who have come for a winter season to the sunny South whether deterred by the linguistic efforts that may be expected of them, or the innumerable stairs to be climbed to reach the drawing-room, which in Malta is generally, for coolness, upon the top-floor, it is not quite clear. The fact remains that, with the exception of a few high officials, the two nationalities do not mix, and more's the pity; so that we are left to imagine that the Briton abroad is a shy and retiring individual.
English society, indeed, finds plenty with which to occupy itself, and under
the influence of the strange environment and the continual gaieties of the season
loses much of the stiffness for which it is proverbial at home. English ladies
in Malta, we are told, laugh over their household difficulties, instead of uttering
dismal groans as in England; and the officers grumble less over their uniform
than usual; while both the sexes have plenty of opportunity for flirtation. The
young officer fresh from home may well regard the poet's warning: ' And thou
may'st find a new Calypso here!' Money seems to go a long way. People who at
home look twice at their butchers' books own a trap and a pair of ponies, drive
tandem, play polo, ride in races, subscribe gaily to a box at the opera and for
tickets for the club dances. House-keeping, indeed, in a flat in Strada Mezzodi,
or a house at Sliema, is bereft of its terrors if the 'sinura' is wise enough
to entrust it to 'Pietro' or 'Carmela,' who will bargain in the markets with
an Eastern cunning at five o'clock in the morning for fish, fowl, kid (in lieu
of lamb), water-melons and prickly pears, and all the ingredients for wonderful
bragioli, ravioli, or timpani, and other mysterious dishes in the Maltese menu.
The servants (sefturi they are called in Malta) are faithful to the 'sinur'
and 'sinura's' interests, and, though often illiterate, will render an exact
account of every penny spent in the morning market. From this they will return
in a lordly manner, followed by a small boy balancing gracefully upon his head
a tall narrow basket containing the purchases for the daily needs. To those who
would venture upon the gentle art of housekeeping for themselves, a little book
by 'Fat Rabbit,' published locally, which tells of prices and places where to
buy, will repay perusal. To watch the Maltese peasant women doing their housekeeping,
wrangling and haggling together over the price of olives or a chicken, gesticulating
wildly, with expressive movements of their features and faldetta amid a positive
torrent of words, is an awe-inspiring treat. The dances, of which there are several
every week, constitute the chief attraction of the winter season, and take place
at the Palace, the clubs, or in the ships of the fleet. They cannot be given
in the ordinary private houses owing to the absence of wooden floors. Perhaps
one of the finest dancing floors in the world is that swung on chains in the
vast ballroom of the Union Club, once the Auberge de Provence, in Strada Reale (now Republic Street / Ir Repubblika Triq) .
The Carnival Ball at the Palace is the great event of the social year. It is
opened by a Maltese native dance, something like a minuet, in which about a dozen
couples take part, generally including some debutantes of Maltese society, the
ladies of the dance being dressed in red-and-white costumes of the national colours,
designed in the eighteenth-century style. Not the least pleasant part of this
dance, for the performers at any rate, consists of the numerous rehearsals that
take place from house to house or in the Palace in the weeks preceding. At the
Carnival Ball fancy dress is, of course, the order of the evening, and the old-world
costumes of departed kings, queens, courtiers, maids-of-honour, Catherine de
Medicis, Richelieus, Romeos and Juliets, the gay uniforms of naval and military
officers, harmonize well with the mise-en-scene of the Palace of the Grand Masters
with its medieval and romantic memories. Once again, perhaps, the old walls
may witness the coming and going of forms clad in the familiar robes of the Order,
the flippant conversation of the wearers while 'sitting out' a dance in the
corridors no doubt causing the ancient Brethren looking down from their painted
canvases to frown severely in spirit.
The Casino Maltese, better known as the 'Borsa,' from their old quarters over
the Exchange, have, in their new habitation, once the Treasury of the Order,
at the corner of St. George's Square, also a fine ballroom, strikingly decorated
in white and gold. The Casino de' Nobili gives a bal masque at Carnival, the
very limited invitations for this event being anxiously sought by 'matrons ever
on the watch To mar a son's or make a daughter's match.'
A reference to these entertainments would not be complete without an allusion to Professor de Lancellotti and his band, which plays with that feeling and abandon of which only the Southern temperament seems capable.
Another well-known feature of the season is the Opera, beginning in November
and lasting for four months. Most great singers, from Albani to Tetrazzini, when
less known to fame, have sung to Maltese audiences in the handsome opera-house
with its tiers of stone boxes in Strada Reale (now Republic Street / Ir Repubblika Triq) . Success in Valletta generally
means for the prima donna a step up the ladder which ends at La Scala or Covent
Garden. The Maltese are very musical and make critical audiences, who neither
speak during the performance, come in late, rustle their programmes, nor do any
of the thousand and one things which we permit in our theatres at home; and they
will not hesitate to hiss a performer who sings out of tune or renders the music
incorrectly. Like the Italians in the matter of encores, they insist upon their
favourite scenes being repeated all over again. Operas are given five days in
the week, including Sunday evenings, when the humblest Maltese will crowd to
hear and appreciate Donizetti or Verdi. Both old and modern music, from Mercadante
to Wagner, may be enjoyed in Valletta, and one may hear Leoncavallo's 'Zaza '
and Giordano's 'Fedora,' and other operas which rarely find their way to England;
while the old favourites of our grandfathers, such as 'L'Africana,' 'Aida,' 'Norma,'
'Barbiere,' and 'Les Huguenots,' still hold their own. The Theatre Manoel,
built in 1731 by Grand Master A. Manoel de Vilhena, was once famous for opera
bouffe. Here Madame Angot still occasionally charms, and Don Pasquale is consumed
with jealousy upon these old boards in Strada Teatro. This theatre, built of
stone like that of San Carlo at Naples, is the second oldest of those still standing
in the world, having thus for two centuries escaped destruction by fire. During
the temporary occupation of the French, when Valletta was invested by the Maltese,
a company of Sicilian players were by chance shut up within the city, and these
unhappy persons were forced by the besieged soldiers to perform for their amusement
in the Manoel Theatre, despite the occasional shots from the Maltese mortars
that passed over the roof of the building.
The Malta Sports Club organizes cricket matches, tennis tournaments, and race
meetings at the Marsa, a vast expanse of sandy ground with occasional patches
of carefully-prized grass. Here is a very fine club-house, with polo-ground and
golf-course adjoining. Expeditions to St. Paul's Bay, where there is an excellent
hotel, to Marsa Scirocco, or other pretty little villages lying along the coast
at the foot of the numerous creeks blue arms of the sea running into the golden
rocks; an excursion in the slow-moving eight-mile railway to Citta Vecchia;
moonlight picnics in the summer nights to the groves of Boschetto a pleasure
ground laid out with trees and ornamental water by Grand Master Verdala; sailing
in the small and swift Maltese craft of native build, decked, and with a three-cornered
sail, called bakka, now sometimes found in the waters of English yacht clubs;
amateur theatricals once 'His Excellency the Governor' was forbidden by the
sensitive authorities as being rather personal drives in essentially English
dog-carts in short, to get as much fun as possible becomes the end and aim of
the gay and light-hearted English visitors out for a winter season. 'In such
a fashion only,' it has been cleverly remarked, 'is exile from Aldershot or
Hyde Park made tolerable.'
Plenty of grumblers, of course, are to be found in Malta, as elsewhere. There
is the 'junior sub' who tells you that 'this season is not as gay as the last'
'last season,' indeed, is always 'top-hole ' and the old lady who avers that
nowadays 'society is not what it used to be,' to whose pessimistic assertions
we can best reply in the words of the editor of Punch upon a kindred occasion:
'It never was!' One anonymous individual, indeed, went so far as to state, in
a recent number of a Service journal, that nothing of good was to be seen, found,
or heard, in Malta. Stay! We are doing even this melancholy critic an injustice:
the 'Victim,' as he signed himself, admitting that the island contained one attraction
'a really inviting cemetery!' Society in England and elsewhere has, it is true,
changed in one direction with the march of democracy. It has lost the importance
and influence it possessed in the days before Reform, when the great English
houses in quite the grand manner arranged the affairs of their country and the
Empire often to the advantage of their poor relations. Colonial society likewise
has since those days lost much of its dramatic interest and its marked personalities.
Rawdon Crawleys are no longer sent through the charms of a Becky Sharp to govern
Coventry Island; nor is Malta nowadays stirred into excitement by the presence
of a Byron bound for the Isles of Greece, or a Fabrizi directing from this isolated
little rock revolutions in Italy. These things disappeared when Cook's Coupons
replaced the Grand Tour.
When Byron started from London in 1809 to travel, as proper for a young patrician of his day, he found the ordinary routes on the Continent closed by the Napoleonic wars, and, as his mind was at that moment filled with the books about Persia, India, and the East, that he had been reading, he sailed for the Mediterranean to: . . . view the walls Where free Byzantium once arose, And Stambours Oriental halls The Turkish tyrants now enclose, as has been recorded in some verses addressed by him 'To Florence,' which were written in Malta.
Byron arrived in the island 'en grande suite' consisting of his intimate
friend Mr. Hobhouse, afterwards Lord Bathurst, his valet Fletcher, his family
butler Murray, and Rushton, a son of one of his tenants; and the poet must have
considerably astonished the authorities of this 'little military hot-house' for
so Byron disdainfully called the island by his appearance in the famous scarlet
uniform belonging to no known regiment and apparently of his own design, which
he donned on great occasions during his travels. Byron began in Malta a romantic
friendship with a Mrs. Spencer Smith, the wife of an English officer, such a
person as one would expect to find in its cosmopolitan atmosphere. Of her the
poet wrote to his mother: 'This letter is committed to the charge of a very
extraordinary lady, whom you have doubtless heard of, Mrs. Spencer Smith, of
whose escape the Marquis de Salvo published a narrative a few years ago. She
has since been shipwrecked, and her life has been from its commencement so fertile
in remarkable incidents that in a romance they would appear improbable. She was
born at Constantinople, where her father, Baron Herbert, was Austrian Ambassador;
married unhappily, yet never impeached in point of character; excited the vengeance
of Bonaparte by taking part in some conspiracy; several times risked her life,
and is not yet five-and-twenty. . . . Bonaparte is even now so incensed against
her that her life would be in danger if she were taken prisoner a second time.'
This lady is addressed by Byron in several stanzas of 'Childe Harold' as 'Florence,'
and in the separate poem already mentioned. Byron, when in Malta, as became a
gallant, had an altercation with an English officer, which nearly terminated
in a duel. He stayed in the house at the corner of Strada Vescovo overlooking
St. George's Square. His impressions of Malta were scarcely happy ones, judging
from the bad-tempered tone of his farewell to Valletta, due, we must imagine,
to the scirocco prevailing during his visit, which 'gave him fever
and the spleen.'
A more appreciative visitor was found in Sir Walter Scott, who cruised in
the Mediterranean in 1831 in H.M.S. Bar/tarn, placed by the British Government
at the disposal of the then enfeebled and dying novelist. Scott stayed at Beverley's
Hotel in Strada Ponente. A good account is found in Lockhart's 'Life' of his
impressions, and the great ovation he received from the distinguished people,
both English and native, then gathered in the island. A garrison ball was organized
in his honour in the Auberge de Proven9e, where more Scottish music was then
heard than has been the case either before or since. On his entering the ballroom
an ode of welcome was read, and it is recorded that one native admirer attempted,
not merely symbolically, but in actual fact, to crown the brows of the great
man with a wreath of laurels. Scott took many excursions through the island,
and was much interested in the character of the people. The city of Valletta
entranced him: 'This town,' he repeatedly remarked to his compardon, 'is really
a dream.' The relics of chivalry to be seen in the books in the library, the
buildings, and churches of the Order, naturally interested exceedingly the author
of 'Ivanhoe,' so much so that when, as Lockhart has recorded, he imprudently
resumed the pen of romance, forbidden him by his doctors, the subject he chose
was drawn from his memories of this visit. Strada Stretta, the scene of the duels
of the Knights, with its gloomy doorways, narrow passages, and overhanging balconies,
in particular charmed him, lending itself to dramatic treatment in the hands
of a weaver of romance. ' It is hard,' he exclaimed, as he wandered through Valletta
on the last day of his visit, 'if I can't make something of this!' Fate was unkind,
for the great novelist died the next year on his return to England. Scott found
at Malta many old friends from England and Scotland, including Sir John Stoddard,
then Chief Justice of Malta, an Englishman who always had a kind word to say
for the Maltese; Sir William Alexander, the English Lord Chief Baron; Colonel
Bathurst; and the whimsical genius James Hookham Frere. This antiquarian and
man of letters the personal friend of Pitt and Canning, a former Under-Secretary
of State, and British Minister at the Court of Spain had settled in Malta with
his wife the Dowager Countess of Erroll, attracted there by the charms of the
climate, and under the Mediterranean sky he wrote for the English public at home
many of his best works. It is interesting to note that his famous translations
of the plays of Aristophanes, described as 'masterpieces of a difficult art,'
were first of all privately printed in Malta in 1839. Thackeray, too, in the
early Victorian era, visited Malta, and has recorded his impressions in 'A Journey
from Cornhill to Grand Cairo.' The novelist, like Scott, was put in 'damned'st
quarantine' in Fort Manoel, known to travellers, as he punningly observed, as
'Le Manuel des Voyageurs.'
Michele Fabrizi, the Italian patriot, the henchman of Mazzini, Crispi, and Garibaldi, spent many years of his long, eventful life (he was born in 1804, and died in 1885) in Malta. 'Since 1837,' writes Mr. Trevelyan in 'Garibaldi and the Thousand,' 'he had made it his headquarters, and from there guided the movement against the Bourbons in Spain in the direction of Italian Unity. Early in the fifties he laid in a secret store of ammunition, and hundreds of bad old muskets, some saved from the wreck of the late revolution in Sicily, others purchased for 50 from Mazzini in London. Though such an armoury was illegal in Valletta, the British authorities, benevolently neutral to Bomba's enemies, made no effort to find it; the rumour of its existence gave Fabrizi importance among all Sicilian parties. The Government of Palermo kept spies around him, who periodically reported his doings. There was a continual passage of conspirators from Sicily, Genoa, and England, to Malta, and thence threatening Bourbon rule.'
In recent years many celebrities have sojourned, admired, and recorded their
pleasant impressions of sunny days in merry Malta. Lady Brassey, sailing in the
Sunbeam, has spoken with fondness in her famous diary of the place and the people,
leaving a record of her visit in the phrase the price that Lady Brassey paid,
'by which shop-keepers for long after tried to prove to tourists the equity of
their prices for souvenirs. The French novelist, Rene Bazin, was so charmed on
his arrival by the still mediaeval appearance of the place that he asked, 'But
where are the Knights themselves?' H.R.H. Princess Beatrice has translated into
English a diary of one of the German Knights, giving a picture of social life
in Malta in the sixteenth century; while His late Majesty King Edward, with Queen
Alexandra, paid no less than three visits in his short reign.
Social life in Malta, however, is now less eventful than in the days when
a Governor could be so autocratic that he was called 'King Tom,' or when, eighty
years ago, a local guide-book, describing a certain 'pretty miniature palace,'
gravely wrote of the owner no doubt to impress the reader 'the Marchioness passed
her younger days at the Courts of Europe!'
Malta, indeed, is often overlooked. Even Kipling, the Bard of Empire, has
seemingly been silent about this little island which Byron once thought worthy
of several stanzas. If, despite the perusal of these pages, the stranger be disappointed
in the vaunted charms of Malta and craves to be home again, we can only ask him,
when writing 'London' on his luggage labels, to repeat as a corrective the four
lines in Byron's 'Farewell to Valletta':
'I go but God knows when, or why, To smoky towns and clouded sky, To things (the honest truth to say) As bad but in a different way?
>>
Next - Lord Byron's farewell to Malta
