Works of Grant Allen

by Grant Allen

  But the tourist who for the first time surveys Valletta from the deck of a steamer as she anchors in the Quarantine Harbor, or still better from the Grand Harbor on the other side of the peninsula on which the capital is built, sees little of this. Scarcely is the vessel at rest before she is surrounded by a swarm of the peculiar high-prowed “dghaisas,” or Maltese boats, the owners of which, standing while rowing, are clamorous to pull the passenger ashore; for Malta, like its sister fortress at the mouth of the Mediterranean, does not encourage wharves and piers, alongside of which large craft may anchor and troublesome crews swarm when they are not desired. Crowds of itinerant dealers, wily people with all the supple eagerness of the Oriental, and all the lack of conscience which is the convenient heritage of the trader of the Middle Sea, establish themselves on deck, ready to part with the laces, and filigrees, and corals, and shells, and apocryphal coins of the Knights of St. John, for any ransom not less than twice their value. But in Malta, as elsewhere in the Mediterranean ports, there are always two prices, the price for which the resident obtains anything, and the price which the stranger is asked to pay. To these tariffs a new one has of late years been added, and this is that paradisaical figure, that fond legend of a golden age invoked only when the buyer is very eager, or very verdant, or very rich, “the price that Lady Brassey paid.” However, even when the sojourner fancies that he has made a fair bargain (and the appraisements fall suddenly as the last bell begins to ring), the pedler is well in pocket, so well, indeed, that it has been calculated every steamer leaves behind it something like two hundred pounds in cash.

  But if the rubbish sold in Valletta can be bought quite as good and rather more cheaply in London, Valletta itself must be seen in situ. The entrance to either of the harbors enables one to obtain but a slight idea of the place. It seems all forts and flat-roofed buildings piled one above the other in unattractive terraces. There are guns everywhere, and, right and left, those strongholds which are the final purposes of cannon. As the steamer creeps shrieking into “Port Marsa-Musciet” (the “Port” is superfluous, since the Arabic “Marsa” means the same thing) or Quarantine Harbor, it passes Dragut Point, with Fort Tigne on the right and Fort St. Elmo on the left, in addition to Fort Manoel and the Lazaretto on an island straight ahead. Had our destination been the Grand Harbor on the other side of Valletta, Fort Ricasoli and Fort St. Angelo would have been equally in evidence, built on two of the various projections which intersect the left side of that haven. But the forts are, as it were, only the ganglia of the vast systems of fortifications which circle every creek and bay and headland of Valletta and its offshoots. Ages of toil, millions of money, and the best talent of three centuries of engineers have been lavished on the bewildering mass of curtains and horn-works, and ravelins and demilunes, and ditches and palisades, and drawbridges and bastions, and earthworks, which meet the eye in profusion enough to have delighted the soul of Uncle Toby. Sentinels and martial music are the most familiar of sights and sounds, and after soldiers and barracks, sailors and war-ships, the most frequent reminders that Malta, like Gibraltar, is a great military and naval station. But it is also in possession of some civil rights unknown to the latter. Among these is a legislature with limited power and boundless chatter, and, what is of more importance to the visitor, the citizens can go in and out of Valletta at all hours of the day and night, no raised drawbridge or stolid portcullis barring their movements in times of peace. The stranger lands without being questioned as to his nationality, and in Malta the Briton is bereft of the Civis-Romanus-sum sort of feeling he imbibes in Gibraltar; for here the alien can circulate as freely as the lords of the soil. But the man who wishes to explore Valletta must be capable of climbing; for from the landing place to the chief hotel in the main street the ascent is continuous, and for the first part of the way is by a flight of stairs. Indeed, these steps are so often called into requisition that one can sympathize with the farewell anathema of Bryon as he limped up one of these frequent obstacles to locomotion,

  “Adieu! ye cursed streets of stairs!

  (How surely he who mounts you swears).”

  The reason of this peculiar construction is that Valletta is built on the ridge of Mount Scebarras, so that the ascent from the harbor to the principal streets running along the crest of the hill is necessarily steep. The result is, however, a more picturesque town than would have been the case had the architect who laid out the town when Jean de La Valette, Grand Master of the Knights, resolved in 1566 to transfer the capital here from the center of the island, been able to find funds to form a plateau by leveling down the summit of the mound. Hence Valletta is composed of streets running longitudinally and others crossing the former at right angles. Most of these are eked out by steps; one, the Strada Santa Lucia, is made up of flights of them, and none are level from end to end. The backbone of the town and the finest of its highways is the Strada Reale, or Royal Street, which in former days was known as the Strada San Georgio, and during the brief French occupation as “the Street of the Rights of Man.” Seven main streets run parallel with it, while eleven at right angles extend in straight lines across the promontory from harbor to harbor. The Strada Reale, with the Strada Mercanti alongside of it are, however, the most typical bits of the capital, and the visitor who conscientiously tramps through either, with a peep here and there up or down the less important transverse “strade,” obtains a fair idea of the city of La Valette, whose statue stands with that of L’Isle Adam over the Porta Reale at the farther end of the street bearing that name. Here the first barrier to an invasion from the landward side is met with in the shape of a deep ditch hewn through the solid rock, right across the peninsula from the one harbor to the other, cutting off if necessary the suburb of Floriana from the town proper, though Floriana, with its rampart gardens, parade ground, and barracks, is again protected on the inland aspect by other of the great fortifications which circle the seashore everywhere.

  However, the drawbridge is down at present, and a long stream of people, civil and military, are crossing and recrossing it, to and from the Strada Reale. For this street is the chief artery through which is ever circulating the placid current of Valletteese life. Soldiers in the varied uniforms of the regiments represented in the garrison are marching backwards and forwards, to or from parade, or to keep watch on the ramparts, or are taking their pleasure afoot, or in the neat little covered “carrozzellas” or cabs of the country, in which, unlike those of Gibraltar of a similar build, a drive can be taken at the cost of the coin which, according to Sydney Smith, was struck to enable a certain thrifty race to be generous. Sailors from the war-ships in the Grand Harbor, and merchant seamen on a run ashore, are utilizing what time they can spare from the grog shops in the lower town to see the sights of the place. Cabmen and carmen driving cars without sides, and always rushing at the topmost speed of their little horses, scatter unwary pedestrians. Native women, with that curious “faldetta,” or one-sided hood to their black cloaks which is a characteristic of Malta as the mantilla is of Spain, pass side by side with English ladies in the latest of London fashions, or sturdy peasant women, returning from market, get sadly in the way of the British nursemaid dividing her attention in unequal proportions between her infantile charges and the guard marching for “sentry-go” to the ramparts. Flocks of goats, their huge udders almost touching the ground, are strolling about to be milked at the doors of customers. Maltese laborers, brown little men, bare-footed, broad-shouldered, and muscular, in the almost national dress of a Glengarry cap, cotton trousers, and flannel shirt, with scarlet sash, coat over one arm, and little earrings, jostle the smart officers making for the Union Club, or the noisy “globe-trotter” just landed from the steamer which came to anchor an hour ago. A few snaky-eyed Hindoos in gaily embroidered caps invite you to inspect their stock of ornamental wares, but except for an Arab or two from Tunis, or a few hulking Turks from Tripoli with pilot jackets over their barracans, the Strada Reale of Valletta has little of that h
uman picturesqueness imparted to the Water-port Street of Gibraltar by the motley swarms of Spaniards, and Sicilians, and negroes, and Moors, and English who fill it at all periods between morning gun-fire to the hour when the stranger is ousted from within the gates. Malta being a most religiously Roman Catholic country, priests and robe-girded Carmelites are everywhere plentiful, and all day long the worshipers entering and leaving the numerous churches, with the eternal “jingle-jingle” of their bells, remind one of Rabelais’s description of England in his day. At every turning the visitor is accosted by whining beggars whose pertinacity is only equaled by that of the boot-blacks and cabmen, who seem to fancy that the final purpose of man in Malta is to ride in carrozzellas with shining shoes. In Gibraltar we find a relief to the eye in the great rock towering overhead, the tree-embosomed cottages nestling on its slopes, or the occasional clumps of palms in the hollows. These are wanting to the chief strada of Valletta. In architectural beauty the two streets cannot, however, be compared. The Water-port is lined with houses, few of which are handsome and most of which are mean, while the scarcity of space tends to crowd the narrow “ramps” as thickly as any lane in Valletta. It is seldom that the shops are better than those of a petty English town, and altogether the civil part of the rock fortresses has not lost the impress of having been reared by a people with but little of the world’s wealth to spare, and kept alive by a population who have not a great deal to spend.

  The main street of Valletta on the other hand is lined by good, and in most cases by handsome, houses, frequently with little covered stone balconies which lend a peculiar character to the buildings. The yellow limestone is also pleasant to look upon, while the many palaces which the comfort-loving knights erected for their shelter, impart to Valletta the appearance of a “a city built by gentlemen for gentlemen.” Here on the right is the pretty Opera House (open, in common with the private theaters, on Sunday and Saturday alike), and on the other side of the road the Auberge of the Language of Provence, now occupied by the Union Club. A little farther on, in an open space shaded with trees, is the Church of St. John, on which the knights lavished their riches, and still, notwithstanding the pillage of the French troops in 1798, rich in vessels of gold and silver, crosses, pixes, jewels, monuments chivalric emblazonments, paintings, carven stone and other ecclesiastical embellishments, though like the wealthy order of military monks, whose pride it was, the Church of St. John is ostentatiously plain on the outside. The Auberge d’Auvergne, now the Courts of Justice, is on the other side of the street, and hard by, a building which was formerly the Treasury of the Knights, the storehouse into which was gathered the contributions of the Commanderies throughout Europe. The Public Library fronted by some trees a little way back from the road is interesting from its containing the books of the Bailiff Louis de Tencin, the Grand Master de Rohan (who erected it), and of many of the more lettered knights, besides a good collection of the island antiquities. Close to it is the palace of the Grand Master, now the residence of the Governor, or in part utilized as Government offices. The courtyards, planted with oranges, euphorbias, hibiscus, and other greenery, and the walls covered with Bougainvillia, have a delightfully cool appearance to the pedestrian who enters from the hot street; while the broad marble staircase, the corridors lined with portraits and men-at-arms, and pictures representing the warlike exploits of the knightly galleys, the armory full of ancient weapons, and majolica vases from the Pharmacy, and the numerous relics of the former rulers of the island, are worthy of a long study by those interested in art or antiquity. The Council Chamber also merits a visit, for there may be seen the priceless hangings of Brussels tapestry. And last of all, the idlest of tourists is not likely to neglect the Hall of St. Michael and St. George, the frescoes celebrating the famous deeds of the Order of St. John, and the quaint clock in the interior court, which, according to Maltese legend, was brought from Rhodes when that island was abandoned after a resistance only less glorious than a victory. For, as Charles V. exclaimed when he heard of the surrender which led to Malta becoming the home of the knights, “there has been nothing in the world so well lost as Rhodes.” The main guard, with its pompous Latin inscription recording how “Magnæ et invictæ Britanniæ Melitensium Amor et Europæ vox Has insulas confirmant An mdcccxiv,” is exactly opposite the palace. But when the visitor sees the wealth of art which the knights were forced to leave behind them, he is apt to be puzzled how the Maltese, who contributed not one baiocco to buy it, or to build these palaces or fortifications, could either through “Amor,” or that necessity which knows no law, make them over us to us, or how “Magna et invicta Britannia” could accept without compensation the property of the military monks, whose Order, bereft of wealth and influence, still exists and claims with the acquiescence of at least one court to rank among the sovereign Powers of Christendom. The knights are, however, still the greatest personalities in Malta. We come upon them, their eight-pointed cross and their works at every step. Their ghosts still walk the highways. The names of the Grand Masters are immortalized in the cities they founded and in the forts they reared. Their portraits in the rude art of the Berlin lithographer hang on even the walls of the hotels. Their ecclesiastical side is in evidence by the churches which they reared, by the hagiological names which they gave to many of the streets, by the saintly figures with which, in spite of three-fourths of a century of Protestant rulers, still stand at the corners, and by the necessity which we have only recently found to come to an understanding with the Pope as to the limits of the canon law in this most faithful portion of his spiritual dominions.

  On the other hand, the secular side of the Order is quite as prominent. Here, for instance, after descending some steps which serve as a footpath, we come to the Fort of St. Elmo, which terminates the Strada Reale. But long before there was any regular town on Monte Sceberras, when the capital was in the center of the island, this fortress on the point midway between the two harbors was a place round which the tide of battle often swirled, when Paynim and Christian fought for the mastery of the island. Of all these sieges the greatest is that of 1565, a year before the town of Valletta was laid out. Twice previously, in 1546 and 1551, the Turks had endeavored to expel the knights, but failed to effect a landing. But in the year mentioned Sultan Solyman, The Magnificent, the same Solyman who thirty-four years before had driven them from Rhodes, determined to make one supreme effort to dislodge the Order from their new home. The invading fleet consisted of a hundred and thirty-eight vessels under the Renegade Piali, and an army of thirty-three thousand men under the orders of Mustafa Pasha. These sea and land forces were soon afterwards increased by the arrival of two thousand five hundred resolute old Corsairs brought from Algiers by Hassan Pasha, and eighteen ships containing sixteen hundred men under the still more famous Dragut, the Pirate Chief of Tripoli, who, by the fortunes of war, was in a few years later fated to toil as a galley-slave in this very harbor. The siege lasted for nearly four months. Every foot of ground was contested with heroic determination until it was evident that Fort St. Elmo could no longer hold out. Then the knights, worn and wounded, and reduced to a mere remnant of their number, received the viaticum in the little castle chapel, and embracing each other went forth on the ramparts to meet whatever lot was in store for them. But St. Angelo and Senglea, at the end of the peninsula on which Isola is now built, held out until, on the arrival of succor from Sicily, the Turks withdrew. Of the forty thousand men who on the 18th of May had sat down before the Castle, not ten thousand re-embarked; whilst of the eight or nine thousand defenders, barely six hundred were able to join in the Te Deum of thanks for the successful termination of what was one of the greatest struggles in ancient or modern times. Then it was that “the most illustrous and most Reverend Lord, Brother John de la Valette,” to quote his titles inscribed over the Porta Reale, determined to lay out the new city, so that, before twelve months passed, the primeval prophecy that there would be a time when every foot of land in Monte Sceberras would be w
orth an ounce of silver bade fair to come true. St. Elmo is still the chief of the island fortresses, and the little chapel which the knights left to fall under the Turkish scimitars is again in good preservation, after having been long forgotten under a pile of rubbish. But though churchmen and soldiers, the masters of Malta were, if all tales are true, a good deal more militaires than monks. Eye-witnesses describe the knights as they sailed on a warlike expedition waving their hands to fair ladies on the shore. In their albergos or barracks the “Languages” lived luxuriously, and though dueling was strictly prohibited, there is a narrow street, the Strada Stretta, running parallel with the Reale, in which this extremely unecclesiastical mode of settling disputes was winked at. For by a pleasant fiction, any encounter within its limits was regarded as simply a casual difficulty occasioned by two fiery gentlemen accidentally jostling each other!

  Turning into the Strada Mercanti, the San Giacomio of a former nomenclature, we come upon more reminders of this picturesque brotherhood. For close by the Hospital for Incurables is the site of their cemetery, and farther up the steep street is the Military Hospital, which was founded by the Grand Master, Fra Luis de Vasconçelos. This infirmary, as an old writer tells us, was in former days “the very glory of Malta.” Every patient had two beds for change, and a closet with lock and key to himself. No more than two people were put in one ward, and these were waited upon by the “Serving Brothers,” their food being brought to them on silver dishes, and everything else ordered with corresponding magnificence. Nowadays, though scarcely so sumptuous, the hospital is still a noble institution, one of the rooms, four hundred and eighty feet in length, being accounted the longest in Europe. But there are no silver dishes, and the nurses have ceased to be of knightly rank. The University, an institution which turns out doctors with a celerity which accounts for the number of them in the island, is an even less imposing building than the public pawnbroking establishment hard by, and neither is so noteworthy as the market, which is remarkable from a literary point of view as being perhaps the only edifice in Valletta the founder of which has been content to inscribe his merits in the vulgar tongue. On the top of the hill, for we have been climbing all the time, is a house with a fine marble doorway, which also is the relic of the knights. For this building was the Castellania, or prison, and the pillory in which prisoners did penance, and the little window from above which prisoners were suspended by the hands, are still, with the huge hook to which the rope was attached, to be seen by those who are curious in such disciplinary matters. But like the rock-hewn dungeons in which the knights kept their two thousand galley-slaves, in most cases Turks and Moors who had fallen in the way of their war-ships, which still exist in the rear of the Dockyard Terrace, such reminders of a cruel age and a stern Order are depressing to the wanderer in search of the picturesque. He prefers to look at the Auberge of the Language of Italy, where the Royal Engineers have their quarters, or at the Palazzo Parisi, opposite (it is a livery stable at present), where General Bonaparte resided during that brief stay in Malta which has served ever since to make the French name abhorred in the island, or at the Auberge de Castille, the noblest of all the knights’ palaces, where the two scientific corps hold their hospitable mess.