Joy Unconfined

by Ian Strathcarron

  ’And them.’

  ’Quite.’

  To settle our stomachs we drank a glass of myrto, a local liqueur made from myrtle. I hope never to fall ill, or be in prison, or need a certificate of birth or death or matrimony in Sardinia, but if I do I cannot think of a better person to take care of me than our honorary consul in Cagliari, Andrew Graham MBE.

  Chapter Seven

  MALTA

  31 AUGUST - 19 SEPTEMBER 1809

  29 SEPTEMBER 2008 - 23 MARCH 2009

  In the act of addressing you for the first time, it is with the greatest pleasure that I have to inform you that His Majesty takes the Maltese nation under his protection. He has authorised me, as his representative, to inform you that every possible means shall be used to make you contented and happy.’ With these words Major-General Henry Pigot, on 19 February 1801, confirmed to the inhabitants of Malta and Gozo that they were indeed now, as requested, under British rule.

  Napoleon had stopped at Malta on his way to Egypt on 9 June 1798, and sent an ultimatum to the Grand Master of the Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of St. John of Jerusalem of Rhodes and of Malta, Order of St. John, Knights of Malta. After a rude exchange of messages the Knights Hospitaller, half of them French and many too old to fight, surrendered three days later. Napoleon immediately started the process of département-alising Malta. A bureaucracy was established and the theocracy abolished. Houses were to be numbered so taxes could be collected. Three thousand French troops under General Vaubois were to stay behind to form a garrison. All the gold and silver in the churches and hospitals was to be removed and melted down for Napoleon’s war machine; a potentially enormous haul of 3,500 pounds of bullion. A week after arriving, satisfied with such an easy and succulent conquest, Napoleon resumed his quest for Egypt.

  On the island the French behaved appallingly and with due arrogance. They tried to impose their language and revolutionary mores on the Maltese who in defiance closed ranks behind their religious institutions. Matters passed mutual accommodation when two years later the French tried to auction the contents of the Carmelite church in Mdina; the outraged Maltese threw the French chief of militia out of a window. The French retreated to Valletta and from then on were effectively under siege. Meanwhile a Maltese delegation had found its way to Nelson who obliged by sending a dozen ships and 1,500 troops to blockade the Grand Harbour. Vaubois held out for a while, but with rations low and morale lower he eventually accepted surrenderin 1800, after only two years of French occupation.

  By the time Byron and his companions sailed into Grand Harbouron 31 August 1809 most of the strategic Mediterranean had followed Malta’s example and settled under British control. The exceptions were the Ionian Islands, stretching from Corfu in the north to Kythirain the south, whose recent history had been confused by events and decisions in Venice, Moscow, Paris and Constantinople.

  It is probable that on arrival in Malta Byron and Hobhouse were not abreast of these recent developments further east, yet it was the preparations in Malta to retake the Ionian Islands which played the pivotal role in their Grand Tour, diverting them from their intended destinations of Greater Arabia, Persia and India to countries that would later become Greece, Albania and Turkey. By the time Byron reached Malta the Ionian Islands were again under French control, Napoleon having first inherited them as a Venetian colony when he took Venice herself in 1797. Since then they had been taken over by the Turco-Russians, had been formed into the Septinsular Republic, were retaken by Russia acting alone and then in 1807 in a secret clause in the Treaty of Tilsit handed back to France.

  Two days after arriving in Malta Byron and Hobhouse had the good fortune to meet a remarkable gentleman called Spiridion Foresti; or more precisely the day after arriving in Malta they were sought out, then later charmed and seduced by a remarkably successful British consul and secret agent called Spiridion Foresti. They were to leave the island nineteen days later on a secret mission for what then passed as British Intelligence.

  Foresti was 57 years old when he recruited Byron; I say Byron rather than Byron and Hobhouse because it was specifically the 21 year-old peer on whom he had set his sights. Foresti would later become popularly known as ‘Nelson’s spy’, although in fact he was at least as useful to Collingwood. His first posting for the British had been in his native island of Zakynthos in 1783 and he was to serve the cause in the Ionian Islands throughout the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. He was imprisoned by the French, exiled to Venice, but found his way back to the Ionian Islands to help the English cause by joining the Russian fleet. Throughout his time as consul or resident, prisoner or sailor, he maintained his network of scouts and sneaks, runners and rubbernecks and reported to the Admiralty accordingly. Nelson attested that Foresti was one of only two consul ‘I have found who really and truly do their duty, and merit every encouragement and protection.’ After imprisonment by the French Nelson wrote to him: ‘Give me leave to say, that throughout my command in the Levant seas, you have done yourself the highest honour, and rendered, as far as was possible, the greatest service to your Country. This public testimony, from a stranger to everything except your good conduct, will, I trust, be not unacceptable.’ In all nearly one hundred pieces of correspondence between Nelson and Foresti are held in public archives, as indeed are further testimonials from three other Mediterranean Naval Commanders, Jervis, Keith and of course Collingwood. He was knighted in London by the Prince Regent in 1817, on the specific recommendation of the Foreign Secretary, George Canning; and of Canning more later.

  The Treaty of Tilsit had put this perfect spy out of work, however, and he had repaired to Malta where from August 1807 he was employed as Minister at Large. In fact he ran British Intelligence on the island. Malta was a hotbed of French-sponsored espionage, the Treason Harbour of Captain Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin’s adventures. (As an aside Patrick O’Brien based Aubrey’s character on ‘Dauntless’ Cochrane and ‘Foul weather Jack’ Byron, our Byron’s grandfather.) It was Foresti’s task to control as best he could French espionage activities and at the same time build his own espionage and counter-espionage networks, as well as plan for the covert British re-taking of his native Ionian Islands.

  In 1808 Foresti had persuaded Collingwood that the islands could be retaken without too high a price being paid. Except for Corfu they were poorly defended, and the French had managed to upset the islanders as convincingly as they had done the Maltese ten years previously. But, as always, there was a problem. On the mainland opposite the islands ruled one Ali Pasha, a particularly unpleasant mass murderer who ruled his fiefdom as a despotic tyrant under the diplomatic cover of the Ottoman Empire. With memories of one time’s Mujahideen being another time’s Taliban springing to mind, the British had promised Ali Pasha their assistance in taking at least the northern Ionian Islands as a way of making trouble for France. Now that the British were able to take the islands directly themselves Perfidious Albion would break the promise made to Ali Pasha, and an unhappy Ali Pasha would at best be an unpredictable neighbour.

  Foresti calculated that Ali Pasha could huff and puff, but without a navy could only take his vengeance out on his own people, which he was inclined to do anyway. The rewards of taking the islands outweighed the risks of having Ali Pasha as a disgruntled neighbour. Collingwood agreed, and on Malta a troop of 1,900 men from the 35th and 44th Regiments, the 20th Dragoons and Corsican Rangers under Major-General Sir John Oswald was assembled as an invasion force. The navy was ready. The moons en passage made 22 September the ideal day of departure. Spiridion Foresti was to sail with them as Special Advisor, with a particular responsibility to pacify the troublesome Ali Pasha.

  The preparations on Malta were done as secretly as conditions would allow. There were at any time dozens of ships in Grand or Marsamxett Harbours and a dozen more did not necessarily arouse suspicion. There was also a military garrison, so soldiery aplenty, and the extra troop
s who made up the invasion force were camped and trained in the north of the island near the beaches of St. Paul’s Bay. Foresti must have hoped that any reports back to France of a build-up would have yielded more questions than answers, but still through habit and necessity he ensured security was as staunch as it could be.

  It was into this complex and secretive military adventure that the Byron party stumbled unknowingly when they disembarked on 31 August. Hobhouse, like the Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Romans,Byzantines, Normans, Spanish, Knights, French and British before him was impressed by the majesty of the entrance into Malta. He wrote that ‘the entrance of the eastern harbour of Malta is very grand,and surpassing every conception of that place’, a good way to describe the grand harbour that is Grand Harbour. The awe still arises as one passes under proud St. Elmo’s Fort and enters the magnificent embrace of its sweeping sandstone arms, arms which offer the promise of safety at last and an end for now to the random perils of the sea. One presumes that even the latest invaders who come in cruise ships not war ships must sense it ‘very grand, and surpassing every conception of that place’, although the likelihood is that they are down below stuffing their faces in the endless buffet.

  The Townshend anchored off the north side of Valletta. Then as now the fairway was kept clear and boats anchored in one of the southern creeks, most likely what was then called Angelo’s Creek. Over time this anchorage, being the one best protected from all weathers and yet the one nearest to Valletta, was increasingly commandeered by the Royal Navy, until it became known as Dockyard Creek and the name still stands today thirty years after they left. Guarded by St. Angelo’s Fort at its entrance and with the original Maltese city of Birgu on its northern flank and Senglea to its south, this was the scene of the Great Siege of Malta in 1565. Today the site is the decidedly upmarket Camper & Nicholson Grand Harbour Marina where we moored for our time in Malta. Ancient History walks the streets ashore. To go to Valletta, a few hundred metres across the Grand Harbour, one hails a dghajsa - pronounced ‘dee-sa’, thank heavens - a sort of Maltese gondola. Nowadays they fire up a Yamaha and outboard you across; Byron and Hobhouse would have been sculled over in less of a rush.

  On the Townshend’s arrival Captain Western attended firstly to the mail, and delivered by hand correspondence from Sir Richard Bickerton, Commander-in-Chief of the Home Fleet to the Governor. Byron and Hobhouse dined on board, dinner in those days being taken much earlier than now. After dinner they made their first foray into town. Valletta is steep-to with endless stairs. Byron must have struggled up and down, as even with abled legs progress is halting, as the steps are spaced inorganically one and a half paces apart, ideal for horses and so fit for purpose. Over time they have worn down and are treacherous in the rains, and most are without wall banisters. Later Byron was to write of Valletta:

  Adieu, ye cursed streets of stairs!

  How surely he who mounts you swears!

  The not yet portly Hobhouse however was impressed and pronounced the city: ‘very clean with streets broad enough’; both Byron’s couplet and Hobhouse’s comment still sit well today. After a quick tour around the city they took a dghajsa back to the Townshend and spent the night on board.

  The first sight tourists then and now seek is the magnificent Cathedral of St. John the Baptist, the patron saint of the Knights Hospitaller. The visitors rose early, at nine o’clock, uncommonly early for Byron in particular, breakfasted on board and made for the cathedral in its pride of place on the promontory of Valletta. From the outside it looks rather austere, and in fact the inside was austere too when it was built after the Great Siege of 1565. My guide suggested that they did not want to attract the attention of the Ottomans again, so ‘played it cool for a while’. The layout that stands today was established then: a nave the size of that in Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford, with a higher barrel vault overhead and eight chapels or langues equally spaced off the nave, one for each of the lands from which the Knights’ families originated. As lesser contributors the English and Bavarians share a chapel. An oratory was added a generation later for instructing pupils in the papal processes.

  Slowly the Ottoman threat receded and the Reformation took hold on the continent. Knights’ families who felt constrained to spend freely in France, Spain and Italy in particular felt no need to hold back on Malta and within a hundred years of its foundation the cathedral had started to assemble some of the opulence it has today - and indeed which it had in full measure when Byron and Hobhouse visited it two hundred years ago and when baroque was in more recent memory. The guide suggested it was best not to ask from where the money came, churlish but true. Of course, Byron would not have had to put up with the crowds of today clogging up the aisles - one is well advised to be there at opening time, 9.30 a.m. - nor the black mats which protect the ornate inlaid marble Knights’ tombstones which, stunningly, make up the floor. They would also have seen Caravaggio’s St. Jerome in its original position in the Italian langue, whereas today it is rather obscurely displayed, if well lit, in the Oratory. The artist’s Decapitation of St. John the Baptist remains displayed distantly in the Oratory, but with the benefit of modern lighting. The image is chilling and current; one presumes a decapitation is done by a quick clean guillotine or axe stroke, but the instrument used was little more than a knife, and similar to that used by Islamists today when they behead their hostages. The dress and expressions of those attending unites those times and these as well.

  The writer must confess to being a cathedral enthusiast, one who has spent many still and happy hours in Chartres and Ely and others along the way, but the impression of St. John’s is that it is not really a place of worship, rather the opposite: it is so splendid that one feels as if God was being invited to worship at the shrine of the Knights. It is, however, a quite magnificent place, the very definition of baroque, a testament to the confidence that this particular religion would be eternal, as would the enormous amount of funds needed to glorify it further and further.

  Be that as it may; Malta was not specifically expecting Byron’s and Hobhouse’s arrival, and in those days a member of the House of Lords could not simply be ignored or detained for the three weeks needed until the invasion fleet departed. The first reaction of the governor, Rear-Admiral Sir Alexander J. Ball, and the Commander of the British forces, Major-General Hildebrand Oakes, was to persuade them to leave the island as quickly as possible. In two days time a convoy was leaving for Smyrna - now Izmir - and Constantinople and they should join that. But Foresti, who would have known of their arrival almost as soon as they stepped ashore, immediately saw a better use for them. Ali Pasha, among his many other virtues, was a societal fascist and aggressively bisexual with pederast tendencies. This Lord Byron, who had suddenly been delivered by the graces into Foresti’s lap, was a beautiful young aristocrat with a ready made entourage and no direction home. After the diplomatic double- cross Ali Pasha would need consoling. Could young Byron be his consolation? Would the worldly-wise and wily Spiridion Foresti not have smiled to himself, laid the sign of the cross in the air and schemed his trap?

  Back on board Hobhouse found they had received a dinner invitation to join the governor at his country house in San Anton. The dinner was clearly more than sociable, as Hobhouse recorded that they were advised to leave Malta as soon as possible, in fact to take the convoy that would leave for Turkey in three days time. Later he noted that there was a ‘perpetual recommendation to go instantly to Constantinople’. After dinner they returned to Valletta in a trap, ’a neat carriage with two seats, two wheels, one mule, and the man running by the side’, and found some excellent hospitality, as well as accommodation, from a merchant called Chabot. No trace of any of his time there remains today.

  ***

  I think by now it is time to issue a dinner invitation of my own. Before leaving on the re-Tour, as part of the preparation for this project I had joined the International Byron Society, and without
any great expectations I contact a gentleman the Society had listed as the Malta local branch secretary, one Professor Peter Vassallo. He sounds interested in the project over the phone; we arrange to meet for dinner the following week, and he agrees before then to cast his eye over an early draft of the chapter you are reading now, and I think no more of it.

  A day or two later I am in the National Library in Valletta and ask about Byron’s time in Malta, and if they have anything relevant.’Ah, you’ll want Peter Vassallo’s books,’ the librarian replies straight away. She volunteers to retrieve them, pulling her long skirt down even further as she shuffles away. While she raids the shelves in the dungeons I Google ‘Professor Vassallo Malta’ on the library’s grubby old Mark 1 PC and up pops:

  PETER VASSALLO is Professor of English and Comparative literature and Head of the Department of English at the University of Malta. He also is Director of the Institute of Anglo-Italian Studies in this University. He is the author of Byron: The Italian Literary Influence and editor of Byron and the Mediterranean. Peter Vassallo is the editor of the Journal of Anglo-Italian Studies and has published various articles on Anglo-Italian Literary relations in the nineteenth and twentieth century.

  I spend the afternoon reading Byron and the Mediterranean, and find a treasure trove of information, learning in the preface that the author had also hosted the 10th International Byron Society conference in Malta. Clearly Professor Vassallo is an all round Byron brain box, and a brain box I’m looking forward to unlocking.

  Byron and Hobhouse weighed up taking the next day convoy to Turkey, and decided to spend some more time in Malta instead. All the signs of their intentions still pointed to Arabia and beyond. They were in no rush, and it wasn’t - and isn’t - an uninteresting island. In particular for Hobhouse it was an untapped mine of historical majors and minors, and for Byron the British expatriate society had not yet had enough time to amuse him. They visited the public library, now the National Library on Republic Street, and found it as excellent then as it is evocative now. They came across there an Arabic Grammar which Byron bought for a dollar, and they discovered that the chief librarian, Abbate Giacchino Navarro, spoke Arabic and gave Arabic lessons; he gave them their first one there and then. They had found a lovely place to stay, ‘capital lodgings’ as Hobhouse had it, a proper palazzo at 3 Strada di Forni - now at the top of Triq Il Fran or Old Bakery Street - belonging to an absent Dr. Moncrieff. Like much of Valletta the palazzo was bombed in the Second World War. It is now a block of a dozen apartments needing at least an external wash and brush up. Later they dined with General Hildebrand Oakes at his country house, and a likeness of the general can be found next to the dominant lion and unicorn motif in the National Library. Above the portrait a sign announces Hildebrandus Oakes, and I don’t suppose anyone has told him but hand-on-hip he looks remarkably like Bill Clinton.