Parking ordeal

Those visiting relatives at St Vincent de Paul Residence will tell you what an ordeal parking there is, both in the small car park outside the gate and in the many large car parks within. The number of cars competing for a place creates bedlam.

Hoping to alleviate their exasperation, some obtain a pass to enter the grounds of the complex, only to discover that the spaces are just about enough to accommodate the numerous staff.

A few lucky visitors might find a space, many do not, even after circling the ring road twice. What to do then? No one even considers returning to the outside car park they had escaped from and so they park in the first half-suitable place. They forget the LESA watchdogs who know a captive audience when they see one.

No allowance is made for the fact that the drivers are dedicating two hours of their time to dutifully visit ailing relatives and friends.

LESA officers should close an eye to cars parked badly but not causing obstruction.  Visiting times could be staggered and increased to avoid an accumulation of cars. And most staff could be bussed into and from hospital.

JOSEPH AGIUS – St Paul’s Bay

French culture in Europe

The year we are in marks the bicentenary of the death of Napoleon Bonaparte.

His legacy in Europe, and that, too, includes the French in Malta, are controversial subjects as his undoubted achievements and atrocities continue to fire debate and divide opinion.

When asking ourselves “what did the French do for Malta , apart from taking de Valette’s sword” or “were the French really our friends after all”, why not include the following question: “How did French culture during the Napoleonic period influence perceptions of art and style across Europe?”

The answer to that cannot be answered here in full; however, here is the potted version: Napoleon’s influence on the visual arts in France and its use as a means of propaganda had repercussions all over Europe.

Perhaps one of his greatest admirers will come as a surprise if I were to tell you that the British regent King George IV was an avid admirer and collector of Napoleonic memorabilia.

A portrait of Vincenza Montalto de Fremaux.

Perhaps it wasn’t until Napoleon Bonaparte’s final defeat that King George’s admiration of the emperor of the French turned into rivalry in the field of artistic patronage. The Waterloo Room at Windsor Castle is evidence of French influence both conceptually and stylistically. It is King George’s piece de resistance in artistic patronage modelled very closely on the French style of the period where one finds a line up of full length swagger portraits of European monarchs by the British portrait painter Sir Thomas Lawrence ( 1769-1830).

Each portrait is representing the countries that eventually defeated Napoleon and the collection in its entirety was commissioned by King George IV. The portraits are breathtaking but also echo the French artist Jean Baptiste Isabey’s (1767-1855) watercolour of The Congress of Vienna, depicting European leaders who met following Napoleon’s abdication.

Attended by all the great European powers, including France, the congress declared Napoleon an outlaw and worked to renegotiate the national borders that had been thrown into disarray by the emperor’s military campaigns.

This group portrait of the delegates shows the moment (on February 3, 1815) when the Duke of Wellington arrived to take over the lead of the British delegation from Castlereagh. But by the time the congress concluded in June 1815, Napoleon had escaped from Elba and was making his way back to Paris. The interior design of The Waterloo Room too attests to how closely the British King emulated Napoleon.

Furthermore, when the matter of influence and style come into question, Lawrence again most certainly gave more than a cursory glance to the French artist Francois Gerard’s (1770-1837) portrait of Napoleon I when the commission came to paint his portrait of King George IV. The Maltese 19th century artist Pietro Paulo Caruana made a copy of Lawrence’s portrait of King George IV. It can be viewed at the President’s Palace.

When it came to fashion, Napoleon’s first empress, Josephine de Beauharnais, was influential in popularising the empire style dress all across Europe. Followers of fashion in late 18th century and early 19th century Malta were not indifferent to French fashion as can be seen above in a portrait of a Maltese lady dressed in the empire style favoured by Josephine.

 I believe we can bring many questions to the debate of France and French culture across Europe and the Middle East during the Napoleonic period.

MADELEINE GERA – Valletta

Correcting historical judgements

A prominent flamboyant 1864 plaque at the right side of the entrance to the Upper Barrakka Gardens, one of many funerary colonial memorials, extraneous to Malta’s history, blocking collective memory and identity in the capital.

Carmel Vassallo’s resurrection of what he claimed to be an extract from his 2015 lecture on the Great Siege of Malta (November 7) left me amused and bewildered at the same time; the published proceedings of that History Week simply carry a much reduced footnote on page 20.

My contribution on “the aftermath, cultural memory and the Maltese collective identity” of the siege appears in the same Malta Historical Society volume.

I am not interested in my friend’s judgmental agenda against France. My doctoral research’s scope was to bring to light, uncomfortable as they may be, facts that had been tactfully hidden or distorted for more than two centuries, mostly to appease a coherent and persuasive collective memory constructed with little regard for historical accuracy.

More than “rehabilitating” France, my book, as its full title denotes – France in the Maltese Collective Memory, Perceptions, Perspectives, Identities after Bonaparte in British Malta – sought to uncover colonial and ecclesiastical ploys during and following the 1798-1800 ill-fated events. In British historian J.R. Seeley’s words, it is “one of the chief functions of the historian to correct the contemporary judgement” of events that could have been misjudged in the past. Maybe Vassallo’s underneath message in this peculiar contribution was divulged when, in conclusion, he implored remembrance for those “who through the ages have truly been our friends”, certainly a veiled reference to the British Empire, repeatedly judged as having emerged “from well-meaning but destructive faith in Britain’s providential historical role in the world” (Priya Satia).

While other former British colonies recently witnessed places where inglorious colonial monuments are left to die (David Cannadine), Valletta is still burdened by a majority of memorials that, similar to the George Cross on Malta’s republican flag, most of them boast of a past that robbed and is still robbing the nation of its authentic identity.

I find myself at a loss on what prompted my friend’s diatribe on my book. His original rant during History Week in November 2015 came a year after the second edition of my published investigation was exhausted. Now he recalls the same invective on the last day of this year’s successful book fair where my publishers, Malta University Press, reported healthy sales of the third edition of the volume.

Glad that seminal research provokes debate – grateful for the welcome publicity – may I recommend readers to follow a stimulating interview with undersigned on the programme Ħajjitna Ktieb tomorrow on TVM at 10 pm for further elucidation of the book’s content.

CHARLES XUEREB – Sliema