A journalist and patriot

John Mizzi: Antonio Muscat Fenech: Ġurnalista Pijunier tal-Ilsien Malti. Self-published. 96pp.

The distinguished journalist and author, John Mizzi’s smallish but well-researched and even better illustrated book, is about his grandfather, a man well-known in his time but now forgotten save by a few.

Muscat Fenech (1854-1910) was the son of a beloved medical doctor in Qormi, Vincenzo Muscat, whose reputation was made when he was in the medical services of the British forces during the Crimean war.

We are not told if Antonio went to our University, but we do know he was a well-read and cultured young man. Mizzi does not say if he ever had an ordinary job, but only that by 1877 he was writing for the newspaper In-Naħla Maltija.

This was edited by the legal procurator Ġuże Muscat Azzopardi, only a year older than Antonio but already an influential figure in the movement for strengthening of Maltese literature and for its correct writing.

He must have been a strong influence on Antonio and became one of his good friends as they fought shoulder to shoulder for their native language.

When Muscat Azzopardi’s paper folded up, in 1878 Muscat Fenech published verse and fiction in a new paper, Il-Ħabbar Malti of which he became the editor in 1880 and remained in this post until 1896, the year in which he was appointed vice-consul for the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

We are not told if in addition to his editorial job, Muscat Fenech also engaged in other work. Having another job has always been characteristic of our people.

Journalism was not a lucrative occupation in late 19th century Malta, and if in addition to this Muscat Fenech had some line in business, this might explain why he became a vice-consul. This is a point the author does not appear to have investigated.

Muscat Fenech was a man of many parts: journalist, author and translator of both prose and verse, photographer, talented painter, and much respected for his work as a vice-consul. He was well-known for his construction of Christmas cribs, and most of all for a fine and large one he built for the Qormi band club of which he was president at the time.

Mizzi does well, however, to emphasise above all his championing of the Maltese language through his journalistic and literary activity. Like his friendMuscat Azzopardi, he was eager to have Maltese orthography standardised.

All thinking men agreed the cause of Maltese had long been impeded by the fact that people wrote it their own way. In 1880 he made a first appeal in Il-Ħabbar Malti for the convening of a working group of people like the lexicographer G.B. Falzon, the academic Napoleone Tagliaferro, Ġużè Muscat Azzopardi, of course, and a number of others to decide on an alphabet for the writing of Maltese.

This came to nothing, and a good many years later, in 1994, Muscat Fenech issued a second appeal that was welcomed by the press in Maltese, and had better success. A working group chaired by the old author Ferdinand Giglio, with Muscat Fenech as secretary, was not only set up but began working seriously and appears to have agreed on an alphabet, but following Muscat Fenech’s resignation as secretary following his nomination as vice-consul for Austro-Hungary, something went wrong, important papers were lost and nothing came out of the venture.

Muscat Fenech died relatively young in 1910 without having seen his aim achieved, and it was not before another 10 years, in 1920, that the new Għaqda tal-Kittieba tal-Malti, chaired by his old friend Ġużè Muscat Azzopardi, published the long-awaited Maltese alphabet, the alphabet that has remained in use.

This alphabet included the letter ‘w’, a letter to which Muscat Azzopardi and Muscat Fenech were violently opposed. The violence of this opposition can be seen in articles in Il-Ħabbar Malti pouring ridicule on and abusing, for instance, a priestly author who dared write he was in favour of introducing the latter ‘w’ into the Maltese alphabet. The hot tempered Muscat Azzopardi had to give in after many years, and ‘w’ remains with us still.

Mizzi’s book is a bitty sort of memoir, and includes a little anthology of verse and prose by Muscat Fenech, and reproductions of a few of his paintings, probably aimed at visitors to Malta, of elderly people in folk costume.

The extracts from newspaper reports written by him include an 1888 report about the launching in Malta of the Royal Naval corvette Melita, built in Malta largely by Maltese workers.

It was formally launched by the person after whom it was named, Princess Victoria Melita, granddaughter of the Queen and daughter of the Duke of Edinburgh, the Queen’s second son who had served in Malta (where the princess was born) for many years.