A glimpse of late Victorian Malta

Fondazzjoni Patrimonju Malti on Friday issues the fourth book in its Nostalgias of Malta series, featuring pictures by Horatio Agius.

Handsomely bound and elegantly designed like its predecessors, Nostalgias of Malta: images by Horatio Agius from the 1860s to the 1900s, is the work of Giovanni Bonello, who has not just made a careful choice of those photographs from Horatio Agius’s studio but also provides a carefully researched introduction to Agius as an artist and as a man

In fact, the early part of the introduction will remind readers of Bonello’s numerous articles about people – Maltese, Knights of St John and Britons – whose lives were noted for irregularities in social mores, as he reveals that Agius was born in 1844 out of wedlock to a married woman, and a father who was to recognize him when Horatio was twenty-six years old.

The boy did not receive a regular schooling, it seems, but he managed to learn a photographer’s technical skill, and over the years made some good money out of photography. He tried his best to achieve social acceptance by acquiring immovable property, marrying as the second of his two wives a woman from a good middle-class family, and finally by buying himself a dubious Neapolitan knighthood, following which he styled himself Chev. Horatio Agius. He died in 1910.

His many photographs, many of which are remarkable for their sharpness, provide a fine record of Valletta, its harbours, and of Cottonera in the last few decades of Queen Victoria’ reign. The captions used for the original prints have been retained, leading to hilarious phrases such as “French Chapee[for Chapel]” or “Colidor of the Armoury”. The greatest novelty is the series of figures in lay or religious garb – cotton spinner, chorister, peasant, Capuchin Father, etc. A photograph showing “The Boys of HMS Garnet” – naval ratings wearing the large straw hats still worn as part of the summer uniform in Victorian times – should become a favourite especially with English readers.

Giovanni Bonello, Nostalgias of Malta: images by Horatio Agius from the 1860s to the 1900s Fondazzjoni Patrimonju Malti, 29th May 2009 ISBN 978-99932-7-257-1 (hardback) €55; 978-99932-7-258-8 (soft cover) €40