The 1930s were as politically turbulent for Malta, and Frederick Ryan, though seemingly unwilling to challenge doctrines then still current on the redeeming destiny of the em­pire, had genuine sympathy for those Maltese who did not suffer colonial serfdom gladly. His book on Malta received a good press review “altogether a fascinating by-path in European history”. While  his first book had sold for seven shillings and six pence, his second hit the market with a price inflated over 300 per cent: 25 shillings.

But before publishing his House of the Temple, Ryan had already dedicated himself massively to the promotion of the study of Maltese history, and his achievements were many and significant. In his times, ‘history’ in Malta often, if not mostly, meant myth-making to prop or subvert some political, national or religious agenda. It meant the uncritical repetition and embellishment of what had been said before by other like-minded ‘historians’.

Setting foot in an archive, wearing out your eyesight over undecipherable parchments, and working on the context rather than on the text, were considered quite inappropriate extravagances. There had been exceptions, like Mgr Alfredo Mifsud, Roberto Valentini, Ettore Rossi and Temi Zammit, who believed history was only as good as its sources. But most ‘amateurs’ did not bother to distinguish between historical rhetoric and rhetorical history.

It was in this milieu that Ryan took the plunge at the deep end. It was to change this state of affairs that he, and others who shared his concerns, set about an intense series of activities to promote a more scientific study of the history of Malta. They were many and varied, and this is not the right medium to list them all, or in any detail. But Ryan’s contribution, his dedication and his perseverance were determining, and it would be most unfair for them to be forgotten. Even the fact that he strove for Maltese historical research to be undertaken as an integral part of larger European projects, appears pioneering and unusual in his days.

It was Ryan’s enthusiasm that persuaded the Oslo Conference of the Comité International des Sciences Historiques to create in 1932 the Malta Institute of Historical Research, and the local government took up the challenge, appointing a high-powered committee, chaired by Harry Luke; the members mostly leaned glaringly to the imperialist side, like Major Henry Alexander Balbi, Augustus Bartolo, Albert V. Laferla and Hannibal Scicluna. But the Maltese constituted bodies trumped them by nominating outspoken nationalists on the committee: the University sent professors Carlo Mallia and Vincenzo Laurenza, while the Historical and Scientific Society appointed Joseph Darmanin Demajo and Hamilton Stilon – the four quite high-profile anti- imperialists.

The Governor reconstituted the committee of the institute in 1933. The first two names on it were Enrico Mizzi and Vincenzo Bonello, and the ranks were packed with prominent nationalist intellectuals: James Dunbar Cousin, Arnaldo Fabriani, Judge Robert Ganado, Vincenzo Laurenza, Giuseppe Darmanin Demajo, Carlo Mallia, and Hamilton Stilon – with a token sprinkling of imperialists: Albert Laferla, Hannibal Scicluna, Henry A. Balbi, and the old chairman, Sir Harry Luke.

Most of the executive and coordinating work of the institute fell on Ryan’s shoulders. He liaised bet­ween the Comité Internationale and the Maltese institute. From 1932 to 1950, he organised the compilation of at least seven publications, called ‘Bulletins’, which included inventories of different archives relating to Malta, on the island, in Rome and in the UK, and a number of other researched historical contributions by different authors. These set the study of historical archival research on a much sounder scientific footing than it had ever been.

The files relating to the institute preserved in the National Archives demonstrate Ryan’s dogged determination and his wide internationalist vision. One file contains an offprint of his long paper, submitted to the Oslo Conference in 1928, in which he first proposed “Malta as a centre of historical research”. He saw the island as a natural venue for historical studies, not only related to Malta, but to the whole world. What passion, what foresight!

In his memos to the Maltese government, Ryan canvassed “for the initiation of a large scheme by which Malta would become an active centre of serious study in new subjects, from which fact both intellectual and material advantages would result to the island”. The Governor answered politely that the matter had been referred to Sir Temi Zammit and Prof. Thomas Agius for their views, with instructions to them to liaise with Ryan.

The second file at the National Archives relating to Ryan’s institute has a prominent “SECRET” stamped on its cover. It contains the rules of the new organisation, drafted by Ryan and printed at the government press. Harry Luke wrote a very cordial letter to Enrico Mizzi, Minister for Public Instruction in the incoming Cabinet (privately Luke disliked and feared Mizzi). In it he explained that the government did not have the powers to amend the rules of the institute, which provided that the committee would be appointed by the Governor, not by the civil government. However, the rules could always be amended to give the government a say in the institute. After all, the government paid £40 a year subsidy to the institute. Luke saw in the file a copy of the written advice by the legal advisor to the Governor: if the rules are not changed in the way the Cabinet wished, then “the local civil government could, of course, show its disapproval by ceasing to subscribe to the funds of the institute”. Something on the lines of paying the piper and calling the tune.

The following year, Ryan really went all out to bring about a visit to Malta by British historians and other representatives of learned societies. He did all the spade work and had everything ready – but where was the funding to come from? The two governments of Malta – the Imperial and the Maltese – both praised Ryan’s efforts, but neither could bring themselves to carve out a budget for the event. Mizzi welcomed the initiative in a long and overly passionate memorandum: “Malta has everything to gain and nothing to lose from a serious, objective and impartial study of its history and of our glorious civil and cultural traditions”.

Mizzi then added, rather peevishly: “It is in our interest that our history is not misconstrued, as was recently done by the Royal Commission, chiefly because of false evidence given by certain exponents of the Stricklandian Party”. Ryan had also hinted at a study visit to Malta by Italian historians. Mizzi retorted to what he saw as an insinuation or a challenge: “As Mr Ryan makes mention in his correspondence of the visit to Malta of Italian historians, it does not seem out of place for me to state that the Maltese government did not pay a single penny for their studies and their very interesting publications”. Mizzi may have been referring to the Italian team headed by the archaeologist Luigi Maria Ugolini.

Perhaps Ryan’s most enduring trait was his obsessive belief that Malta had all the right cards to play to become a leading international centre of learning and social interaction. This had already surfaced in his 1910 book when he took on board John Hookham Frere’s almost century-old suggestion that Maltese should be written in Arabic script, rather than be the only Arabic language to use the Latin alphabet. If that were the case, Maltese, now neglected and despised, “would be a key to many locks”. Young Maltese students at the University would then easily learn Hebrew, Arabic, Syriac and Ethiopic, and this would give them and their island home great cultural and commercial advantages. Malta would become “a land of promise”. Ryan concludes “if Frere’s advice had been taken, the University of Malta might have by this time become a great imperial, if not international, centre for the study of eastern languages”.

Ryan saw the island as a natural venue for historical studies, not only related to Malta, but the world

In a separate 1922 memorandum, Ryan stressed that educated Maltese would make ideal civil servants for British-run Mesopotamia (Iraq, Kuwait and eastern Syria) “in view of their special qualifications by race, language and historical tradition” and “in view of the fact that the language and the mentality of the people of Mesopotamia (and neighbouring regions) have a strong affinity with those of the people of Malta”.

Repeatedly Ryan tried to win others to his idea of turning Malta into a European, imperial or even international centre – for the learning of languages and as a global commercial hub; this was followed by his intense activity to turn Malta into a European centre for historical research. In 1934 he wrote another long memorandum in which he elaborated his vision of Malta being developed into “a centre of international cooperation between England, North Africa and the Near East”. He expounded his views, with concrete details, in interviews he requested and obtained with the Foreign Office and the Colonial Office, the London School of Oriental Studies and others. In it, Ryan refers to a memorandum on the same subject already placed by him with the Colonial Secretary, in 1912. If he did not succeed, it certainly was not through lack of trying. Short-sight in others, perhaps?

Then, in 1938, he tried to infect Governor Bonham-Carter with his vision of reviving the tired and limping University of Malta into a major international centre of learning. The Governor unceremoniously dismiss­ed him as starry-eyed and delusional. The future, and the stubborn determination of greater men of goodwill, were to prove that he wasn’t.

Historians look backwards, visionaries look forward. Ryan did both.

“Freddie” married rather late in life. He was 44 when, on November 16, 1927, in St Mary parish church in Haddington Road, he tied the knot with Mary Rebecca Byrne, like him from Dublin, daughter of a Justice of the Peace. Everyone knew Rebecca as Bimbo, or Bim. In fact, she also, rather bizarrely, listed herself by her nickname in the formal wedding invitations. She was 38 on her wedding day. They had no children but the couple often appear together in family and travel photos; he a tall, distinguished looking, well-groomed and classy professional, she on the homelier side of beauty.

Ryan rather fancied himself as a playwright, and surely dreamt, quite unrealistically, of making it to the glories of the West End. He worked hard on the script of a play with a Malta background, honing it to what he considered the right levels of professionalism. His play follows a 19th century storyline traced by Auguste de Kermainguy in his novel Mannarino, ou Malte sous les Chevaliers, published in Paris in 1839. Ryan nursed high ambitions for his Mannarino ‘romance’. He saw it as a blockbuster on the London stage, and also as a film movie. He actually wrote to the leading actress on the London scene on May 25, 1931, to propose the play to her. Sybil Thorndike then shone in the drama firmament, the top Shakespearean diva, as no one could dream of doing.

Ryan tried to catch Thorndike’s attention after George Bernard Shaw had targeted his St Joan at her, and that play turned into a worldwide hit for her and for Shaw. Ryan told Thorndike: “I am keenly interested in the theatre and I have a little knowledge of stage craft”. He added he had tailored the role of Dun Gaetano Mannarino to Sybil’s husband, Lewis Casson, “and there is a good part” for their daughter, Mary Casson, too. The leading role would, of course, go to Sybil Thorndike, made dame by the king at roughly the time Ryan was, rather unctuously, grooming her. He also added that his play had great potential to be turned into a film, and that he had started negotiations to this effect with the rival Elstree and Welwyn Studios. He asked Sybil Thorndike for a personal interview “at which I might more effectively than by letter, discuss the possibility of your taking up this play”. He would be in London, awaiting Dame Sybil’s gracious favour.

True to his word, shortly later he wrote to Matheson Lang, renowned actor, film star and playwright, shaker of Elstree Studios, to thank him for having met him and discussed with him in detail a future film production of Mannarino. He admitted his original script had “a very macabre ending”, but that could always be altered to make a very good film that “should appeal to a large British public”.

Ryan aimed high. Names like Sybil Thorndike and Matheson Lang featured on the uppermost rungs of the theatre and cinema Parnassus in the UK and worldwide. Nothing came of Ryan’s epic efforts to stage and film his Maltese play, and that would, no doubt, have been a hurtful let-down, though there is no trace of resentment or recriminations in his papers. Ryan still, quite misguidedly, considered Dun Gaetano Mannarino to be one of the “Maltese martyrs and heroes”, rather than the craven traitor embedded in psychosis who betrayed his co-conspirators in the Rising of the Priests of 1775, to save his quite distasteful neck.

When, in 1932, Ryan and Bimbo started planning to leave Malta to return to Dublin, they faced a human problem: what to do with their Maltese employees. John Borg and his wife, of 103, Strada Reale, Ħamrun, had served the Ryans faithfully and excellently since 1925, and now they would be out of a job. According to Ryan, Borg embodied every virtue one could desire, and then some more – hard working, discreet, intelligent, decorous manners, honesty and good schooling. He had been trained at Flores College in Valletta and spoke English, Italian and Maltese quite fluently. His wife could also add French to the repertoire. Borg’s relatives had joined the professional classes but he was working below his station as his father had invested heavily in Russian bonds and had lost all his savings. He was a particularly fine driver and mechanic, and had served as an interpreter during the war and as a strike-breaker in the UK during the General Strike of 1926.

The couple had already followed the Ryans in their travels abroad and they had been trusted blindly with money and jewellery. The Ryans would gladly have taken the Borgs to Dublin with them “but we cannot afford this luxury”. Every page in this official file shows an intense human concern on the part of Ryan, and his genuine appreciation of the sterling qualities of his dependants. Borg, his employer believed, would be a great asset in the public service “in view of his rather unique experiences, his remarkably good character and his imagination”. A rare paragon of virtue.

This is where Freddie Ryan roped in Sir Harry Luke, the de facto Governor of Malta: would he secure a job for Borg as a messenger with the government? Luke parried that only those already in public employment could apply for that post, but something would be done for dear Freddie. The file ends with a minute that Borg had been referred to the manager of the Telephone Department for consideration.

Ryan passed away on June 18, 1956, aged 73, in Dublin, and was survived by Bimbo his wife. The secretary of the Malta League, F. A. Mercieca, published a touching appreciation of him, in which he listed his activities and achievements, but also his “very attractive personality which could not fail to impress you once you met him... whose charm will be difficult to forget”.

A different friend, A.V.M., left an even warmer appreciation of him, which I believe I should reproduce in part: “Another link with the past has snapped in the passing of Freddy Ryan. The quintessence of a gentleman, Freddy belonged to a generation that – alas – is fast disappearing. He was highly cultured and, in the field of historical research, he was proficient to a degree that he had a special knack of knowing where to go to find what he required. His patience knew no bounds. Of an amiable disposition, his geniality and other qualities of heart and mind attracted a large coterie of friends. When Freddy was in Malta a few years back, his favourite quotation when ending a discussion was the proverbial editorial expression ‘correspondence on this subject is now closed’. Alas, it is indeed!”

It is nothing more than a guess, but would this appreciation have been written by Lt Colonel Albert V. Mallia?

Acknowledgements

My sincere thanks to Leonard Callus, Maroma Camilleri, Rose Mary Craig, Nicholas de Piro and David Elyan, without whose generous assistance this research would have been far less fruitful.