On 15 August 1855, Paolo Pullicino turned forty and sat down to reflect on his life. He did not ask whether he had been happy. What he asked was whether he had lived a useful life.
“Today I complete forty years of life. Are the tasks of my life finished, or does much still remain to be done? If God destines me for more, may he give me the necessary help, so that I may fulfil my destiny better than in the forty years that end today.”
MSS90b, p. 58
The voice belongs to a priest and educator, but also to an examiner. Paolo inspected schools, museums, churches, paintings, hotels, methods, manners and himself. When he inspected schools he would arrive in the morning, when an institution had no time to put on a face for him.1
The sentiment is a common one — a private audit of ‘what have I achieved?‘ Holidays must be earned; pleasure should teach something.
What we see first in his diaries is his desire for order. A badly governed school injures children; a confused museum insults the learner; a careless painting misrepresents the subject. 2
When a young teacher confessed that his school had fallen into serious disorder, Paolo’s answer:
“I offer him whatever assistance is in my power, so that order may be restored in his school.”
MSS49A, p. 9, 20 August 1852
He was an administrator by instinct, and a principled one. Paolo wrote that a “church is made for everyone, not for privileged persons” when objecting to reserved seating. 3
Of a financial matter: “This is neither just nor appropriate… In future I intend to pay the exact sum.” He wanted the money accounted for and the credit given to whoever had earned it.4
“A talent given by God should not be employed only for the theatre; it should also produce works for the Church and for the glory of the giver of that talent.”
MSS87, p. 167
Paolo’s eye was demanding, yet also easily moved by natural wonders. Near Pisa, he wrote “The beauty of these landscapes is inexpressible.” Such things could not be conveyed, “whether in poetry or in any other form, without seeing them.” 5
As a young man Paolo attended the opening of the First Congress of Scientists in Pisa in 1839. It was memorable to him:
“Great and indelible was the impression that I had when, on that day, I visited the magnificent Cathedral, beneath whose very lofty vaults, supported by a very great number of columns, the scientists who had come to the Congress could be seen assembled to attend the Mass of the Holy Spirit. This impression was one of the most beautiful that I had in the course of my travels.”
MSS92, p. 96
He judged the theatre: “The characters are sublime, but exaggerated… probability and moral consistency are not always preserved” 6, “La Scala must be seen more than once if one wishes to judge it properly.”7
He travelled to bring the world back to Malta. At seventy, looking over a journey he wrote with satisfaction:
“Although this journey was not so extensive as others I had made, it proved very pleasant and instructive. The three months were not spent idly, but tirelessly used in observing and studying what was most remarkable in the cities through which I passed.”
MSS93, vol. 2, p. 293
Not spent idly. Even pleasure was required to be useful.
He seems to have suffered the fate of every competent person: to be rewarded with more work. He requested halls for charitable sales whose proceeds would go to the poor. He paid for ancient panels of Saint Agatha and Calvary to be restored and donated them to the Cathedral. “I am extremely occupied with public affairs.”8
Paolo moved through Europe with a striking mixture of self-confidence and dependence upon personal introductions. Two encounters, separated by fifteen years, reveal how readily he converted borrowed connections and chance opportunities into direct access to celebrated figures.
In October 1840, armed with a letter of introduction from Professor Cioni of Florence, the young Paolo sought out Alessandro Manzoni (1785–1873). On reaching Milan, he learned that Manzoni was living privately at a villa outside the city. He hired a carriage and went searching for him “despite the driver’s surprise and the servants’ reluctance.” 9 Once Cioni’s letter reached Manzoni, however, the celebrated author came out promptly and received Paolo with great courtesy.
The encounter with Johann Friedrich Overbeck (1789–1869) occurred during a different journey, in May 1855. Before travelling, Paolo had obtained from a Maltese friend a letter of introduction to the painter. While in Italy he wrote and asked Overbeck for introductions to artists in Munich, but received no reply.
The apparent failure was reversed on Lake Como. As Paolo was boarding the steamer, he noticed a tall man whose face closely resembled a portrait of Overbeck that he had at home. After confirming the stranger’s identity with one of his companions, Paolo approached him and mentioned the unanswered letter. Overbeck explained that it had reached him just as he was leaving Rome and apologised for not replying. He then invited Paolo to accompany him for part of the journey. They crossed Lake Como together, continued towards the Splügen Pass, stayed at the same inn and separated only when their routes diverged in Switzerland. During their time together, Overbeck spoke with Paolo at length and supplied the desired recommendations to leading artists in Munich.10
Paolo’s public self knew what to do. His private self had more doubts. He sometimes needed another person to tell him whether he was thinking straight. In an 1849 letter to Italian cleric Don Luigi Marchetti, his dear friend, he admitted:
“It is one of those circumstances in which the comfort of an intimate friend, such as I am proud to have in you, I feel to be necessary to me… I should be grateful to learn—not from others, but from you alone—your opinion. I await it anxiously.”
MSS86, pp. 33–35, 22 October 1849
Friendship gave Paolo a private space where uncertainty could be spoken about. With his brother Filippo he could be lighter, and brotherly. “Tell me, dear Filippo, what do you think?” he asks in one letter, before joking that legal qualification in Ireland required money and teeth – for fees and the compulsory dinners.11
His affection was often disguised as a type of mentorship. In 1880, he took his nephew Giovanni abroad “so that he might see something of the world.” He left him in London because, in Paolo’s judgment, the boy would learn more by seeing the city’s best museums, and institutions. Later came the assessment: the journey had developed Giovanni’s eye for art and his power to distinguish schools of painting and “it improved his manners. May he persevere in the paths of goodness.” 12
An article or book is sent instead of a confession of worry, an appointment is made instead of the words “I love you”, the friend who organises the funeral while everyone else is grieving. Practical care is real care, but its recipients may occasionally find it exhausting.
When another nephew, Giuseppe, son of his brother Filippo, suffered a nervous illness, Paolo went to Naples. He found Professor Tommasi absent and simply went on to the celebrated Professor Cantani, obtaining prescriptions that he hoped would help. He would travel again to Naples in 1885 to consult another top specialist, Professor Cardarelli, about Filippo. He was receiving letters from Malta about his brother’s condition every four days.13
His educational observations reveal what he believed a human being required.
“The best method is the good teacher; methods are nothing without the best teacher.”
MSS78b, p. 101, this was Paolo’s record of a school superior’s remark.
When a learned man named Balbi took over a school tha fell into chaos in three months, he sent his resignation to Paolo. Balbi said, “the insolence of the children exceeds my scant patience”. Paolo wrote in his diary:
“A humiliating confession!
It clearly shows how a person who is himself educated may nevertheless be unfit to teach others.”
MSS49a, p. 11, dated 21 August 1852
According to Paolo, pupils should have “a controlled liberty” through which a teacher might observe how they governed themselves and formed their character. 14
He worried when Maltese students remained isolated from English pupils, because little change was visible in their manners.15 But his concern went deeper than polish. Of orphan education he wrote that children were treated “with all cordiality and love” and were not discharged until a good situation had first been secured. 16
Workhouse rules drew a harder line from him: “The rules separate children from parents, sons from mothers, and husbands from wives.” He kept asking what became of young women after institutions released them. Who would receive them? Who would supervise them? 17
His feelings, when they escaped, could be direct. At Lourdes, the procession and the sight of the pilgrims moved him so deeply that tears fell from his eyes. A mentally ill woman entering his railway carriage alarmed him enough that he asked the conductor whether she might be dangerous. While examining plants he nearly fell into a basin five feet deep. He landed in the shallows, but the thought of plunging into an unknown depth frightened him, and the fall left him in pain. 18
The impact which I received, however, was such as to cause a considerable injury to my foot. During the day it seemed to me that it was becoming worse, making me fear some serious consequence. But I felt within myself a great impulse to pray; I prayed, and after a few hours I found the injury entirely healed.
MSS78f, vol. 2, pp. 93–95, Royal Dublin Society’s botanical garden, 20 November 1849
Late in 1839, watching members of the Misericordia in Pisa carry a dead person to burial, he wrote:
“I confess the truth: I felt full of tenderness whenever, on the morning of a gloomy winter’s day, I saw many of those good Christians, covered from head to foot in a dark-coloured habit, carrying upon their shoulders, inside a bier, some dead person to the grave. They were preceded by a cross between two lights, and from time to time offered, in a low voice, prayers to the Lord for the soul of the person whom they were carrying to the tomb.
How beautiful it was to see these men, full of Christian charity, carrying the sick to the hospitals amid the darkness of a rainy evening; and the dead appearing beneath the sky of Italy, accompanied by a few lights to show them the way.”
MSS92 p.116-117
Then came sorrows nothing could fix. In 1862, on his forty-seventh birthday, he wrote: “Today I complete my forty-seventh year, and my father is no more.” The sentence continues into a desolation rare in his papers: “Today I am almost alone, abandoned by my sisters, and moreover in a foreign land.” 19
His father’s death started a major family conflict. Paolo described his sisters as moved by ‘ill-founded prejudices’, opposed to him, determined to separate him from his three brothers. He wanted the portion of property containing the piano he had played for many years, and the upper portion of their house in Zebbug. He had discussed the division of the inheritance with his father while he was still alive. But Paolo’s sisters did not want to go along with his plan. The inheritance division was settled by lottery many years later. 20
“For my part I left the matter in the hands of God.”
MSS68, pp. 125–129
That was Paolo’s characteristic sequence: effort, then surrender. He gathered the facts, argued the principle, sought the expert, planned the correction, prayed to the Madonna and when action had reached its limit he left the matter to Divine Providence.
In 1872, he was distraught at the death of his six-year-old niece Marianna. Paolo remembered her as “so gentle, lovable and dear” that she delighted everyone who knew her. Then the intimate clause: “and me, who loved her tenderly and hoped to find comfort in her in the years to come.” The uncle who guided and protected had imagined that one day the child would comfort him. “The unexpected and almost instantaneous death of this child,” he wrote, “was a terrible blow for us.”21
He cared for others through instruction and attention, and he lived with the hope of having someone care for him in return.
He grew old without giving up his habit of purpose. “Although I have now reached my seventieth year,” he wrote in 1885, “with a few precautions I was able, thanks be to God, to remain active every day.”22
He wanted life arranged, but life kept teaching him dependence: on friends, on family, on strangers’ kindness – and most of all on God.
A note on this article. This is hopefully an interesting way to present historical material, but includes my own imaginative interpretation of who Paolo was as a human being. Many other things could be written. My intention is to make history readable, but it is not a claim to objective truth about Paolo. We will never know completely what he was like – we only have clues. It is clear Paolo’s diaries are mostly used to record details that are not personal or biographical, probably as an aide memoire for details – he probably never meant them to be published.
This article draws on an AI-assisted survey of ninety-five manuscripts. Machine transcription made it possible to identify relevant passages across a very large body of material, but the quoted readings have been checked against the manuscript images. Because the handwriting is sometimes faded or difficult, some readings have to remain provisional.
To give you some sense, this is the page of the passage I quoted on the Misericordia. It was written 187 years ago and is faded.
All the primary material is available through the OAR at the University of Malta website. If you require a transcription or reference to a particular event please write to me.
Footnotes
- Paolo’s exacting inspection and correction practices recur in MSS87, pp. 55–56 and 179–180; MSS78a–b; and MSS78f, vol. 1, p. 97. ↩︎
- The school incident is recorded in MSS49A, p. 9, dated 20 August 1852. The museum criticism appears in MSS78f, vol. 1, p. 97; the requested corrections to a painting and to the representation of Malta appear in MSS87, pp. 55–56. ↩︎
- MS101, vol. 1, p. 128 ↩︎
- MSS87, pp. 179–180 ↩︎
- MSS92, p. 253 ↩︎
- MSS92, p. 154, Paolo’s criticism of Alfieri’s Antigone. ↩︎
- MSS73, p. 60 ↩︎
- Occupied with public affairs MSS55, pp. 53–54 Charitable sale request: MSS55, p. 55, Restoration and donation of the panels: MSS56, pp. 54–55, 16 February 1884 ↩︎
- search for Manzoni: MSS73, pp. 14–15 ↩︎
- Overbeck encounter: MS118, p. 42 ↩︎
- MSS86, p. 36 ↩︎
- MS101, vol. 3, p. 31 ↩︎
- Consultation concerning Giuseppe: MS101, vol. 3, p. 7; Filippo’s illness MSS93, vol. 1, 16 May 1885, p16–17. The physician’s name appears to be Professor Cavaliere Antonio Cardarelli ↩︎
- MSS85, p. 27 ↩︎
- Maltese pupils’ isolation: MSS85, pp. 20–21 ↩︎
- MSS78a, pp. 114–115 ↩︎
- Concern for girls leaving institutions: MSS78h, pp. 67–75) ↩︎
- Lourdes tears: MS101, vol. 1, p. 54, . Railway alarm: MS101, vol. 2, p. 32, Water-basin incident: MSS78f, vol. 2, pp. 94–95 ↩︎
- MSS61a, p. 49, 15 August 1862 ↩︎
- Family rupture, piano and lottery: MSS68, pp. 124–129 ↩︎
- MS118, pp. 89–90, 14 July 1872 ↩︎
- MSS93, vol. 2, p. 293 ↩︎