Surrounded by fabulous greenery at St Edward’s College and in splendid isolation in its quiet earlier days, we were subjected to the reality that the English language had a universal dimension and was the accepted medium of communication of many nations, fostered by the intellectual aristocracy in the world of literature. To this level we were seriously made to aspire, in style and in diction, far beyond what was commonly held to be necessary. But these were days of Empire.
The language was modelled on the Etonian dream, which the college then personified as “the greatest possession we have”. And as the map of the world was predominantly red, as shown unmistakably in the geography books of the time, the language found its way to the expression of all directions of thought and became more and more eclectic to meet the social needs of the fast-fleeting years.
This is what we had to conquer, and the only unfortunate side effect was that Maltese and Italian were of necessity left in the shade – at college not merely for political reasons. It was a sin to speak Maltese.
A few years passed. The college moved to Mdina under the threat of alien bombs but kept its faith. Not merely so, but suddenly we were regaled with an extraordinary personality who was to lift our linguistic aspirations no end. His name was Francis Sebastian Berry, a professor from England who now appeared in the scene, a handsome bachelor.
He was considered the third English poet living at the time and it was he who infused a love for literature, which took the college by storm with an annual Shakespeare play towards the end of the summer term, among other things. This was seriously taken by the islanders as a social event, popular in the extreme, and gave the language a poetic uplift all along. To add to the linguistic progress of our preliminary years, some of us were now set on fire.
His motive was set far above the ordinary needs of good writing and was bent on passing to the school the awareness of the full beauty and elegance of the English language and its poetry, as captained by Chaucer and Shakespeare, fully pressured by Milton and Gray, the Georgian poets, the Victorians and the so-called “war poets”.
What we have been makes the island what it is,and this is the history we continue to write
What he tried to accomplish with visible effort, well beyond the frontiers of idealism, it appeared, was to emphasise the grandeur and the majesty of English expression as built up by the poets in areas of sorrow and seriousness and in the world of levity and laughter – emotions expressed in the manner of the old masters, as flowing from the nobility of human feelings, beautifully said and enriching it, not merely to be expressed, but to be expressed in the loveliest form and with impeccable intonation and manner. A tall order indeed!
In a way, this seemed to be the raison d'être of the college in its grand show of Virtus et Honor and discipline and smartness taken for granted.
Indeed, when the first rector of St Edward’s College was about to retire from Malta after serving many years, at a special function held in his honour, with tears in his eyes and with great nostalgia, he proudly made it clear he was taking with him one great consolation: that he was leaving behind over two hundred Edwardians “who are among the cream of men, who can stand alone anywhere in society and behave and speak with distinction to mirror their education”.
At the university, graced with royal patronage, the language also flaunted its importance. But here the accent on poetry was absent, even though the Golden Treasury had its own appreciative following, the anthology considered as the best ever.
English was run by a very down-to-earth professor, Owen Fogarty, who considered that his mission in life was to ensure the undergraduates would speak and, even more so, write correctly. Basically, only that. He did so for many years, and I have no doubt that his absence is still felt to this day, now more than ever.
Poetry was less important, a reality which of course carried literature with it, but to him, grammar and punctuation, composition and comprehension, precis-writing and paraphrasing and the idiom were considered of supreme importance in addi-tion to a rich lexicography, with nuances strictly to be adhered to – paragraphing and spelling in the first commandment.
I remember he once told me that the omission of a comma, when necessary in the writing “was equivalent to an earthquake” – nothing less, for the aspirant to perfection.
Regrettably, because of this standard expected, many would-be students missed university for life. It was clear that, even without the accent on literature, the standard of Fogarty was considered as the highest hurdle.
The inexorable hour moves on, and it is evident that what we have been makes the island what it is, and this is the history we continue to write. May the gods stand friendly, never to allow us to forget the legacy left to us by our ancestral Malta, our island home, built by nature for herself. But the point is that sadly, many feel we still need a deluge of education, ideally to make us a model nation to the world.
Joe Zammit Tabona is a lawyer.