Exciting social whirl of 1920s Malta

Though an artist herself, Gladys Peto does not seem to have warmed up to Malta’s history or to its art treasures. She rarely speaks about them with anything like enthusiasm – nothing compared to her gushing eulogies for the Union Club, the gay life at the Marsa Sports Club and those irresistible lures of the Ladies’ Bathing Club at Tigné.

There is not much to shoot. There is so little to eat on the island that every kind of bird is shot and cooked immediately it appears

She does throw in bits and pieces of Maltese history, but as her sole source she claims she relied on a recently published pamphlet by a Scottish officer, Major M.B.H. Ritchie (1882-1969).

MBH stands for Michael Balfour Hutchinson – like Peto’s husband, an army doctor. His colleagues elected him secretary of the Malta branch of the Royal Army Medical Corps Association. His Melita Effulgens, well meaning, overall unbiased, competently written but not cutting edge insofar as historical research goes, Peto turned into her bible, to be dipped in when everything else failed.

Ritchie had taken on board Lord Strickland’s politicised historical drivel about the Maltese being nothing other than the modern-day Phoenicians. And to that Peto added, apparently on her own steam, how everything that counted in Malta was Phoenician: the temples, the people, the language, the customs – at a time when all these silly prefabricated myths had already been scientifically blown to smithereens by genuinely academic scholars.

And Peto duly relayed to others those political inanities: “The Maltese are of Phoenician descent, and all kinds of tombs and curious ancient monuments of these people are still found upon the island.”

The Rabat catacombs are simply “a Phoenician cemetery” and the Phoenicians must have been particularly short to be able to navigate those diminutive passages.

The pillars at Birżebbuġa (Borg in-Nadur?) are said to be Phoenician – there grow the best spring flowers – and so are the rock-tombs at Binġemma. And the National Museum “contains a very excellent collection of Phoenician antiquities”.

To be fair to Ritchie, his writing ends up sounding like a paragon of objectivity when compared to Peto’s. His rare criticism of Malta and of the Maltese he always keeps restrained, benign, with an amiable touch of lightness – and everything is anyway amply set off by his obvious passion for the island. Not the faintest echo of the Gad, Sir! Colonel Blimp, in him. With Ritchie as mentor, one would have expected less Land of Hope and Glory from Gladys Emma.

Peto starts her book by contradicting the opinion “made in a commanding and ferocious tone” that Malta is really a part of Gibraltar. She disagrees. At least she kicks off on the right foot. And Peto does record some praise for the island too – faint praise and for all the wrong reasons.

Malta is “the one perfect place in the whole world” (her words) – but because you can bathe in the open sea from April to October. The opera is remarkable – but because half the audience is Army in scarlet or Navy in blue and gold, and because the stalls cost only three and sixpence.

Maltese Carnival is fabulous – because you go to fancy-dress dances for five nights in succession, showing off a different costume each night. Houses by the sea are lovely – because they rent at only £40 a year. Malta is overall the place to be garrisoned in – because it is full of charming British sailors.

Frankly, I do not care unduly if my country is praised or if it is not, but, if it is, I would rather it was for sounder reasons. Frivolities are just fine with me, but could we, if only occasionally, please throw in something a bit weightier too? Optional, obviously.

Food in Malta did not particularly impress Peto. Even when not positively awful, something was almost always wrong with it: it tasted, well, Maltese, and one could overlook a lot, but that Maltese food should actually taste Maltese was quite unforgivable. “The food is not really very good. Cow’s milk is procurable, but it is not recommended as it is very likely to have been adulterated with goat’s milk. There is but little beef. The mutton is very like goat.”

Peto thought it a godsend that from the NAAFI stores, opposite Castille, she could stock up on plum pudding, fishing rods, dog collars, grocery “and all kinds of useful things”. St James Cavalier, pride of the crusader knights, then served to keep the families of British forces in Malta in toilet paper, baked beans, porridge and sanitary towels. And damn, I almost forgot pith Bombay hats, Worcester sauce and knitting needles.

Peto had tasted the peculiar cheese from Gozo (ġbejniet?), “but I do not suppose you will like it very much”. Nor did the renowned local honey inspire her at all: “I find the famous honey a sad disappointment.” She includes birds, such as they are, in the food supply: “There is not much to shoot. There is so little to eat on the island that every kind of bird is shot and cooked immediately it appears.” She adds not too surprisingly: “Malta is assuredly no bird sanctuary.”

But was it the food the Maltese ate that left Peto so unimpressed, or was it the food served on British tables? Mostly the latter, it seems, but hardly only that. Whichever, she misses no occasion to run it down.

Given our current obsessions with the finer reaches of international cuisine, I allow myself to document the times when Malta appeared so food-unsavvy to at least one visitor: “At a dinner party, turkey, chickens or pigeon appear, according to the number of the guests and the importance of the party. They are, of course, a different size and shape, but they all taste the same, for they all taste of Malta.

“You can use tinned milk, so puddings are but dull affairs, and anyhow, they taste of Malta. All Maltese servants make elaborate ice cakes, interesting sandwiches and very bad tea. So in any household you always know what to expect.”

Peto concedes that it is usually preferable to live off the food of the country you are in, and to avoid imported and expensive tinned stuff. But in Malta one has “to break this admirable rule otherwise you will encounter some perfectly horrible foods.

“There is, for example, roast kid... it has an abominable and unforgettable taste. And then, almost all foods seem to taste of Malta. Malta, I must explain, tastes of garlic, spice and the insides of old cupboards that are rarely scrubbed, with a suggestion of incense... a taste that palls after a year or so.

“The chickens are small and unsucculent, for they spend their lives in unsuccessful peckings round doorways and running away from motor-cars.

“The servants would not expect meat unless you told them to finish it up. Their usual food, which they eat in a bowl, consists of a horrible mixture of every kind of duller vegetable, boiled with a little dripping added to the water. Macaroni is then put in and possibly a tomato.” Sadly, your yummy kawlata and minestra earned no Michelin stars from Peto. Lowly sustenance for lowlier natives with the lowliest expectations.

Some British residents, Peto records, chose to bring all their servants over from home. With the help of a British soldier-servant picked up on the island, it was then possible to run in Malta “such a British household that you would hardly know you were living abroad”. To go with that, on official army issue, a swatter and a spray-gun of Flit, helpful in keeping insects and natives away.

If on the one hand Peto loathed the food of Malta, nothing could, on the other, dampen her enthusiasm for the relentless vortex of entertainment British residents were sucked into when billeted to Malta: parties, receptions and then more parties still. Twenty-four hours a day seemed anything but sufficient for the compulsive socialising the British were condemned to once they set foot in Malta.

It all started by ‘visiting’ just after you landed – making courtesy calls on virtually everyone, from the august Governor himself (there you signed The Book), to every British expat in Malta and Gozo – of course, excluding pointedly the few who had “gone native” (you get those sorry losers everywhere). Her plea to those about to settle on the island: “You must take about five thousand visiting-cards to Malta with you.”

Peto piles up cunning advice on dos and don’ts, the hints to earn kudos and what pitfalls to avoid. The protocol sounds stricter than that set in stone for meetings of world leaders. What to wear, where to sit, times to visit, what not to say, when to leave – a guide to ease the unbearable angst that these existential choices entailed.

Important social events hosted by the Governor or the Admiral provoked perennial bouts of anxiety: would you find invitations to them in your letter box (all the neighbours must know) or would you not (how to hide from the neighbours your rebranding as a social pariah)?

Then gossip: who has taken a shine to whom, who is overweight (Commander Lumpey-Bulger) or anorexic (a plank), how much do you pay the housemaid – is she a Bolshevik? Those who expected more than one day off per month obviously were.

Tea parties, on their own (often wise to distinguish between furniture-inspection parties and baby-inspection parties), or better still, after-tennis tea parties. Then, of course, dinner parties, the opera, and the after-opera parties, the Carnival dances in dauntlessly reckless costumes, say like Columbines and Harlequins, or ancient Britons hiding modesty and cellulite under old fur rugs.

For the dangerously revolutionary, cross-dressing by men and women, with a good deal of bread-throwing, maaaaa, what fun, what unbearable fun, all resembling “the gayer dances at the Albert Hall and the Chelsea Arts’ Club”. And then inevitably the Carnival parties (officers in Pierrot costumes cooking bacon and eggs and kippers, unrecorded whether tasting of Malta or of Wapping).

Then more parties still, on ships in Grand Harbour, always one notch up on those on the smaller ships berthed in Marsamxett, that is, if you believed that pulling rank counted – and if you did not, then it was you who did not count.

And lunch parties too, but beware, only as a prelude to the races or to an afternoon at the club. A lunch held for its own sake “is acknowledged by everyone to be an abominable entertainment”.

Of course, the absolutely orgasmic in amusement would have been the treasure hunt – motoring madly round the harbours or to St Paul’s Bay in search of the next clue. Or the night-time drives through the streets of villages, blacked-out and thoroughly deserted: “even the cats in Malta fear the devils of the island and do not walk abroad at night”. Then, moonlight bathing, with just that faintest hint of the osé, and picnics on the cliffs or in the countryside, fighting the whole insect kingdom off heroically, stiff upper lip in the best British tradition.

Incidentally, to move around in a motor-car you needed three licences: one to drive in Malta, a special one to drive in Valletta, and an even more special one to drive through the Strada Reale – “the law is enforced as fiercely as ever”, and to drive meant exactly that: “your car may not stop in this street for a single minute”.

We learn other car-related curiosities from this book: “Malta is now full of motor-cars, chiefly of American and Italian makes.” Predictably, the author rushes to add: not because British cars are in any way inferior, the heavens forfend, “but because others were apparently quicker to exploit the market”. This state of affairs had brought about another hardship for the owners of British cars: “the difficulty over spare parts and repairs.”

Parties, receptions and more parties. Twenty-four hours a day seemed anything but sufficient for the compulsive socialising the British were condemned to once they set foot in Malta

Ah yes, the melancholic saga of car repairs ­– “the Maltese mechanic will not work, of course, on feast days, of which there are many, and has a peculiar dislike for working on most other days” – this from a housewife who felt at least a moral duty to pass on anything faintly resembling work to employed servants, cooks, nannies, handymen and gardeners, and who spent one half of her time dashing from one club to the other and the other half from one party to the next. Whatever the drawbacks, the bottom-line advice from the Emmersons remains: “in every other way a light English car is to be preferred.”

Whole pages Peto dedicates to the clubs – reserved for British residents, military visitors and Maltese dishwashers. The Union Clubs in Valletta and Sliema, the Marsa Sports Club, with polo galore and gin and tonic inexpensive, and the Sliema bathing club with, thankfully, ne’er a Maltese in sight.

She has one long chapter on the Union Club in Valletta, founded in 1826, particularly about its fabled “squint hole”, with a small ladies’ entrance separate from the grand one reserved for the Superior Male. The whole complement of the British colonial elite viewed that club as the ultimate Mecca, with its compelling mix of members, many charming, some forgettable and a few obnoxious.

That unblushingly macho club sacrificed one room to ladies, grudgingly though. The door leading to their enclave had a spy hole, through which the males could survey the contents before entering, to avoid the more unpleasant surprises and to invest in the more pleasant ones: is that attractive Mrs New-Wife alone, or is her disagreeable sister with her? Is the stunning Rosemarie with plain cousin Ruth or is she already being taken care of by five naval officers? Strict club rules barred women from “penetrating into the masculine side of the club”. The Maltese were given plenty of choices, say between mopping the floors and scrubbing the toilets.

The Marsa club (actually the United Services Sports Club) “is on the same lines as a gymkhana club in India”. Annoyingly, the races there “are frequently won by Maltese gentlemen who possess very good horses”. But to make up for this near-treasonable affront, the club also had a golf course, excellent tennis courts, and the Army there played the Navy at polo as if the future of the empire depended on it.

The Sliema club housed two tennis courts, but it might as well not have had any at all as they were always booked in advance whenever you needed them. The dance floor, ah, the dance floor is in stone “which is extremely hard on your shoes”, but the balls there, two or three a week, turn out to be “of really furious gaiety”.

Peto signalled for distinction a small coupé car that joined the dancers, chugging along on the dance floor to the beat of the music. The Charleston had just accepted the unconditional surrender of the world.

To be concluded.