Postcard showing the Great Britain Hotel in Valletta, Malta,
where D. H. Lawrence - pictured here in a passport from this period -
stayed briefly in May 1920
"And the island is stark as a corpse, no trees, no bushes even:
a fearful landscape, cultivated, and weary with ages of weariness ..."
In May 1920, D. H. Lawrence was once again gripped by the absolute necessity to move: "We're going to Malta tomorrow. Don't know why it seems so thrilling. Perhaps it'll be a fiasco." [1]
Despite the latter possibility, Malta was another Mediterranean island to tick off on his bucket list of must see places as part of his so-called savage pilgrimage.
And whilst Lawrence was aware of his own tendency to quickly become disillusioned with a place once he landed, he always loved setting sail:
"How glad to be on a ship! What a golden hour for the heart of man! Ah if one could sail for ever, on a small quiet, lonely ship, from land to land and isle to isle, and saunter through the spaces of this lovely world ..." [2]
And so, on 18 May he left by steamer from Sicily for Malta, where he stayed at the Great Britain Hotel, in Valletta, enjoying eggs, bacon, and marmalade for breakfast and cream teas in the afternoon, like a true expat, even whilst writing after his return about how much he hated the Britishness of the island:
"There is something so beneficient and sterile, a kind of barrenness about it. English people seem so good, and so barren of life." [3]
The Britishness of Malta wasn't the only thing that Lawrence disliked, however. In the same letter to Marie Hubrecht, he notes:
"The island is a glaring gritty dry yellow lump with hideous villages. Only Valletta harbour is beautiful, particularly at night." [4]
Partly, one suspects that Lawrence's attitude was shaped by the fact that he was delayed leaving Malta after a couple days as planned, due to an Italian steamer strike. For at first he seemed relatively happy:
"It is wonderfully nice here in Valletta: most astonishing of all the abundance of food and of all things to buy, and it seems so cheap after Italy, where the shops are bare." [5]
In a letter to his sister Emily, Lawrence also remarks on the attractiveness of the native women:
"The Maltese women all wear this black silk arrangement in the street - gives them a dark, eastern look." [6]
But being "stuck" on the island - despite the fact life was "very easy and pleasant" and Valletta "beautiful and gay" [7] - clearly irritated him (as did the dry heat) and his lasting impression of Malta is not that of a fascinating island of great cultural and historical importance [8], but of a strange and hateful place "that glares and sets your teeth on edge and is so dry that one expects oneself to begin to crackle" [9].
Still, if nothing else, at least Lawrence had a rather elegant suit made of tussore silk whilst in Malta [10].
And his troublesome relationship with the tragi-comic figure of Maurice Magnus - with whom he and Frieda had sailed to the island - was resolved when the latter killed himself, still in Malta, a few months later [11].
Notes
[1] D. H Lawrence, letter to Compton Mackenzie [16 May 1920], in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. III, ed. James T. Boulton and Andrew Robertson (Cambridge University Press, 1984), p. 527.
[2] D. H. Lawrence, Sea and Sardinia, ed. Mara Kalnins (Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 47. Lawrence wrote those words when recalling his boat journey from
Sicily to Sardinia in January 1921.
[3] D. H. Lawrence, letter to Marie Hubrecht (28 May 1920), in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, III. 533.
See also the letter to Catherine Carswell [28 May 1920] in which he writes: " I get set on edge by the British régime. It is very decent, I believe, but it sort of stops life, it prevents the human reactions from taking full swing [...] which simply arrests my digestion." [III. 534]
[4] Ibid.
[5] D. H. Lawrence, letter to Emily King [20 May 1920], in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, III. 530.
[6] Ibid.
[7] D. H. Lawrence, letter to Jessica Brett Young [22 May 1920], in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, III. 530.
[8] Lawrence was not unaware of Malta's long history and geostrategic significance and seemed particularly struck by the ancient nature of the native tongue, Maltese; a Semitic language derived from late medieval Sicilian Arabic with Romance superstrata (and the only Semitic language to use the Latin alphabet).
[9] D. H. Lawrence, letter to Catherine Carswell [28 May 1920], in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, III. 533-534.
See also the letter to Amy Lowell (1 June 1920), in which Lawrence writes: "We went to Malta, and it was so hot I feel quite stunned. I shouldn't wonder if my skin went black and my eyes went yellow, like a negro's." [III. 538]
[10] The suit cost £6, which is about £350 in today's money, so still a real bargain. Lawrence proudly mentions the suit to Jan Juta in a letter dated 13 June, 1920. See Letters, III. 552.
[11] I discuss Lawrence's relationship with Magnus in a post dated 14 June 2021: click here.
Those who are particularly interested in Lawrence's reaction to Malta are encouraged to read the relevant section of Lawrence's Introduction to Maurice Magnus's Memoirs of the Foreign Legion (1924), published as Memoir of Maurice Magnus in D. H. Lawrence, Introductions and Reviews ed. N. H. Reeve and John Worthen (Cambridge University Press, 2005). See pp. 53-58. The epigraph with which I open this post can be found on p. 57.
