A Club Worth Joining.

Edward initially stayed at Durnsford's Hotel in the Strada Reale,the main street of Malta, now known as Triq il Repubikka. I could find no reference to this hotel but after a few days in Valletta through the kind attention of Colonel G, my late fellow passenger in the Orinoko, I became today an honorary member of the Union Club, which is chiefly supported by the officers of the garrison, and, considering the very limited society of the island, the arrangements and style of the clubhouse appear to reflect great credit upon the management. 

The Malta Club still exists as a sporting and social club but the building it occupied in 1855 is now the National Archeology Museum, also in Triq il Republikka. Edward  doesn't state specifically whether the Club provided accommodation and staff at the Museum were unable to say definitively if it did but they said that the old club occupied the entire building that the Museum now shares with shops, offices and appartments so they thought it would be logical to assume it did.

The Museum of Archeology in what was the Union Club

Given that Edward seduced by the bright skies and other attractions of Malta and being desirous to make some progress in the study of Italian  decided to remain in Malta for nearly two months, it is likely that he did take accommodation in the Club as that would have meant the kind of society he  clearly enjoyed.

We visited the Museum of Archaeology and then the Grand Master's Palace where like Edward we saw the armoury of the Palace, where are preserved the armour suits worn by the renowned Lisle d"Adam, La Valette, and others although it is likely that some of the armour was misidentified because today it didn't appear that any of the suits were linked to those particular worthies. Apart from the armoury the rest of the Palace is currently closed for renonvation. However the entry way now contains a carriage which from Edward's description appears to be the state-carriage of the Grand Masters ... originally covered with gilding, but the French, when they took Malta, in 1788, carried their republican antipathy to anything like aristocratic state, so far as to disguise all this with a coating of coarse paint, that he saw at the Garden of St Antonio.

After that we we walked the ramparts which Edward did frequently during his sojourn, and they do have some spectacular views. Edward observed that The temperature is delicious, and  the clearness and regularity everywhere observable in Valetta, are in most agreeable contrast with the filth and disorder of the place I have so lately quitted (Crimea). The streets of Valetta are straight, evenly paved or Macadamized, and most scrupulously cleansed and swept daily, and the whole of the buildings being of fine white stone, the city has altogether a light, clean and cheerful appearance. That description still applies today and Valetta has an appeal that makes me understand Edward's decision to dally a while.

For dinner we went to Valletta's modern food court which has stalls representing all facets of traditional Maltese cuisine and downstairs where there is a supermarket selling bottles of very acceptable Maltese red for 4 euro! So we took a bottle back to our apartment.