Most are today thoroughly unaware of a full-length novel entirely set in Malta, published in 1901 and written by an English aristocrat, and I will not be the first to moan against the injustice of that oblivion. Intrigue, treachery, love, betrayal and overwhelming passions, not wholly immaculate, all happen in Malta; scoundrels and saints, heroes and schemers, cross the island in the devout service of the British Empire, what else?

One of the characters, a naval officer stationed in Malta, is being tempted to a political career-switch in the UK, sponsored by a wealthy heiress. Quizzed by his patron as to his political views, he answers: I am probably Conservative and definitively a believer in Empire. That clinches the deal.

The Lost Key – An International Episode is a thriller and three love stories, mostly embedded in saccharine Victorian prudery, everything based on the probability that if you are not born British you are likely to be a cad, and on the certainty that the Empire owed a living, and endless rounds of entertainment, to king and country.

The chief characters are Lady Emmeline, wife of Sir William Browne, general officer commanding the troops in Malta, and Count Leo Bartoloff, a handsome, tall and dashing young Russian aristocrat who is mysteriously in the island, lionised by every woman he casts his spell on.

Emmeline Browne, formerly Robbins, youngish trophy wife of the old, red-faced and corpulent soldier, soon finds herself lurching into the bed of her Russian beau, to the great scandal of the entire British colony in Malta, which has very little to keep it busy, apart from dressing up for fancy balls, scheming how to get invited, and above all else, thriving on a fatty diet of bitching and gossip. The author highlights “the torrent of entertainments with which Valletta was deluged just before Lent”.

Lady Emmeline justifies her infidelity pleading an endemic incompatibility with her husband, a serial drunkard who believes no time should be wasted between bouts of fornication and gambling sprees. Everyone on the island knows about Emmeline’s outrageous affair, except the general. He accepted his wife’s horizontal friendship with the Russian count “with perfect complacency”.

So besotted is Emmeline with her toy-boy, reputed to be some cousin of the Tsar, that she does not realise the nefarious conspiracy she has let herself into. Leo tells her that her husband is holding in his private safe some gambling IOUs without which he would be ruined, and talks her into stealing the key and to hand it over to him. This she does, and when the general is away, Leo rifles through the safe and takes hold of its contents.

Too late does the foolish Emmeline realise she has been duped: Bartoloff had fuelled her lust only to lift and copy the most sensitive strategic military plans of the British Empire, the secret communication codes, the latest layouts of fortifications and specifications of armaments, and smuggled them out to his paymasters in St Petersburg, only to disappear precipitously from her sinful alcove and from Malta.

Malta, the author underlines, was the place where British women in search of a husband came

That is the main storyline, interspersed, not unskilfully, with a couple of healthier love stories – that of the fresh and innocent Margaret Somers, first with the lethal Bartoloff himself, but then with Arthur Gordon, wonderful but impecunious, “sufficiently the typical Englishman to be happy when he had something to kill” and who “did not like ladies with advanced ideas”. They reach their wedding day in the absolute respect of the Victorian code of prudery, having kissed on the lips only once, furtively and guiltily, before their love alchemised into holy matrimony and, I guess, consummate boredom.

All the main characters of the novel, apart from the knave Bartoloff and an Italian prima donna, are British. The Maltese are background noise, shut off whenever possible. But, in spite of the author’s determination not to infect the Malta scene with anything Maltese, the natives and their lives occasionally make an appearance. That, one must remember, was the time when it was fashionable to write the Maltese out of their own history.

Every chapter in the novel has a title. One whole chapter of the book is almost exclusively dedicated to Malta and its natives. Very tellingly, the author entitles the one about Malta: “Chapter XII, which may be skipped.” In colonial Malta a lot was quite expendable, but nothing as much as the Maltese.

Very rarely does a Maltese get an honourable mention, one rare exception being Carlo, the cook of the lady of the manor: “The dinner that night was a merry one. Carlo the cook (no one knew if he had a surname or not) certainly proved his capacity, and even Lady Maude, who was very particular, praised his performance, especially when he compared with all the tinned food she said she had been consuming during the past week. ‘All tinned things taste the same,’ said Christopher; ‘they give ’em different names, that is all.’”

And Malta, the author Lady Acland repeatedly underlines, was the classical, quite predestined place where British women in search of a husband came or were driven to by their families. With the hundreds of young British officers, in the army and in the navy, stationed there or continuously passing through, many of them unwed and of good and wealthy families, the chances of a British woman still struggling for a place on the marriage market would be considerably higher in Malta than elsewhere. Acland makes it sound like Malta – the ultimate matrimony discount mart – was part of the current and accepted lore of mainland British society.

I did not know anything about the novelist, nor have I been able to discover much. The title page states “by the Hon. Lady Acland”. At first I was tempted to dismiss this as a nom-de-plume, but then Google led me by the hand to give her a shadow of a profile.

Emily Anna Smith was born in 1859 in London, daughter of the Right Honourable W.H. Smith (renowned bookseller, MP and eventually First Lord of the Admiralty, parodied by Gilbert and Sullivan in HMS Pinafore) and Mrs Emily Anvers, who later became Viscountess Hambleden. In 1887, Emily married the naval officer William Dyke Acland, who later rose to the rank of admiral, and when her husband inherited the title of Baronet, she styled herself Lady Acland. They had two children, William and Hubert. She published three novels, one under the pen-name of Evelyn Stone, and died in London aged 83.

Lady Acland certainly knew Malta thoroughly, as one who must have lived here at some length, probably through her husband who, as a naval officer, may have been stationed in the harbours here in the late 19th century. I have been unable to document her Malta stay except from some details of the island she sometimes lets slip to the readers of her novel.

Overall, Lady Acland is not noticeably hostile to the Maltese, only effortlessly supercilious. They are just insignificant, generally fawning servants, unreliable, almost devoid of personality, but providentially useful for menial jobs and in promoting imperial interests.

When one of the characters, Mrs Mainwaring, falls grievously ill after childbirth, the family rue the fact that the British physician, Dr Masters, is away, and they engage the services of Dr Vella, who is short and talkative – he would be, wouldn’t he? They make it clear they do this only because he is London-trained, but then they hedge their bets and also ask for the advice of British army surgeons. To make doubly sure, they employ two nurses, British of course.

Sadly, Mrs Mainwaring passes away, and the family believes she would not have had the genuinely British Dr Masters been around, with his magic British wand. Dr Vella exits rather unpleasantly. He blabs with everyone about medical details of his patient he had learned confidentially.

And who betrays to the general the part his wife Emmeline had played in the theft of the key? It would be the disloyal Carlotta, her trusted Maltese maid, who for a rise in pay, negotiates with the general to snitch on her mistress. Carlotta used to lend Lady Browne her għonnella when she sneaked out for her secret trysts with her Russian lover.

Talking of faldettas, one character gives his explanation why Maltese women were so keen on wearing them: “They [the għonnellas] are hideous things” but they served an overwhelmingly useful purpose. Maltese women were generally so dreadful, “such frights”, that they wore għonnellas because “they were ashamed of their own ugliness” and the ample black hood at least “allowed one to see so little of them”.

Willcox is left massively uninspired by the hundred years of British rule in Malta

Men, on the other hand “were fine and lean” looking as though “they could do a lot of hard work” – for the equivalent of one euro a week, Acland neglects to add. To the author, the native inhabitants had one major failing: the Maltese in Malta had “a foreign look”. And a lot could be forgiven, but at any native of Malta looking Maltese, one had to draw a line.

The only character in the novel who shows any real empathy with the plight of the Maltese is a wannabe English politician, a bizarre cockney who aims to make the House of Commons his future career. He is unashamedly ‘Socialist’ and aspires to revolutionise the world, ban privilege and inequality, and give the poor a stand and a living. He infiltrated the political discontents of Malta, and sided with them against colonial abuse and arrogance.

Henry Willcox had all it took to rub the conservative, high-class military officers and their fatuous wives the wrong way “he has already made friends with some of the Maltese Opposition, and is collecting valuable materials for a fresh campaign against the government on his return”.

The author gives the leaders of the Maltese Opposition who Willcox cultivated, fictional names: Borg, Caruana and Meli. He “believed everything they told him to the disadvantage of the English and their system”. He valued their “poisoned arrows” with which he would attack the colonial ministers once he won a seat in the House.

Willcox is left massively uninspired by the hundred years of British rule in Malta and what it had done for the island: “Of all their masters, the English have made least impression on the Maltese. It is a common saying that, if we were turned out of the island tomorrow, in a month’s time the only sign of our occupation would be the Opera House.”

Willcox tackles the naive Margaret head on: “You have not been much among the people here, I suppose?” “The Maltese, do you mean? No, I am afraid not. I cannot talk their language and they talk very little English.”

Willcox does not hold back, at the cost of scandalising the garrison ladies: “I am glad to find there is a great deal of nationalist feeling among them. I have gone around Valletta with some Maltese gentlemen who express themselves very strongly against the English rule.”

“You are glad of that?” enquires Margaret, outraged. You can actually see her arched eyebrows.

“Certainly,” replies Willcox, “discontent is the first upward movement. Why should they [the Maltese] not be discontented? What have we done for them? We have destroyed their liberty, kept them in degradation and ignorance and in a state of religious slavery. They are overcrowded and under-paid. Both sanitation and education are in a disgraceful state. The English come here either to amuse themselves, like you, or to rule with a rod of iron, like the officials. In neither case do they take the least interest in the native inhabitants, or make the least effort to improve their condition.”

Margaret wants to fight back: “Oh really! I don’t think that is true. I am sure the Governor works very hard. He is always giving prizes away in schools and subscribing to charities, besides his regular official work.”

This is what Willcox hoped to hear: “Priest-ridden schools and charities are not what is wanted. They keep the people down, make them contended with their miserable lot, teach submission as a duty.”

Margaret cannot believe her ears. To salvage what’s left of her argument she falls back on her fattiga-man, a Maltese boy of about 18 who has no working hours, does all the dirty stuff no one else would dream of doing, sleeps on a bench, has no footwear or socks, nor a single change of clothing, gets up at all hours of the night to open the door after the interminable nocturnal balls, and is totally illiterate. For all this he gets eight shillings (one euro) a week wage.

“But he is the merriest person in the house, always smiling, always singing over his work. It seems to me it would be cruel to make him discontented.”

Willcox retorts sharply: They look happy, so do not improve their lot? That argument was used to retain slavery and to oppose compulsory education. That is the reasoning invariably resorted to by the conservatives to keep leeching on the status quo, which had fattened the haves and flattened the have-nots.

Overall, the socialists enjoy a poor reputation in this book, and are lumped in the same basket with others subversive of the virtues of conservative governance “the body politic seemed everywhere diseased, and the quack doctors – nihilists, socialists, collectivists, Fabians, protectionists – were occupied in prescribing diverse nostrums, all certain to effect its cure, and in tearing each others’ eyes out meantime”. Acland forgot to include the anarchists in her inventory of the enemies of mankind.

Lady Acland’s fiction has some uncanny resemblances to real events which happened in Malta in 1835, when the dashing prince Hermann Pückler-Muskau visited and dazzled the island, to the great chagrin of the more hide-bound elite. He was reputed to be the secret lover of Sarah, wife of John Austin, special British commissioner to Malta, and rumour also had it that the handsome philanderer had come to Malta to spy. The prince was Prussian, but half his surname suggested a Russian descent. It is not impossible that Pückler-Muskau’s stay in Malta inspired the novelist.

(To be concluded)