The Last Travels of Ida Pfeiffer: Inclusive of a Visit to Madagascar with a Biographical Memoir of the Author

Several biographies of Ida Pfeiffer are already scattered through various encyclopædias and periodicals. These are based partly on oral communications made by the deceased lady, partly on particulars collected from her friends. No authentic sketch of her life has, however, yet been published, though many whose sympathy has accompanied the dauntless voyager on her dangerous way will doubtless be glad to hear something of the earlier life of Ida Pfeiffer. In remarkable people, the germs of extraordinary faculties are generally recognizable in early youth; and those readers who have followed the course of a remarkable life from its meridian to its close will doubtless be gratified by the opportunity of casting a glance backward to its early years, when the seeds of future distinction were sown.

This consideration will probably be thought a sufficient justification for publishing the following pages; the more so as the facts given in this biographical sketch rest exclusively on the authority of the heroine herself. Madame Ida Pfeiffer left behind her a short outline of her life written by her own hand, and her family very courteously permitted this manuscript to be used. It is to be followed by a summary of her travels, and by her diary in Madagascar, to which her son, Mr. Oscar Pfeiffer, has added the narrative of her sufferings and death. Thus the whole career of the late adventurous pilgrim, with particular reference to the latest circumstances of her checkered life, namely, her interesting and eventful voyage to Madagascar, will be placed before the reader.

Our traveler was born in Vienna on the 14th of October, 1797. She was the third child of the wealthy merchant Reyer, and at her baptism received the name Ida Laura. Till she was nine years old, all the family in her parents’ house, except herself, were boys, so that she was the only girl among a party of six children. Through continual intercourse with her brothers, a great predilection for the games and pursuits of boys was developed in her. “I was not shy,” she says of herself, “but wild as a boy, and bolder and more forward than my elder brothers;” and she adds that it was her greatest pleasure to romp with the boys, to dress in their clothes, and to take part in all their mad pranks. The parents not only abstained from putting any check on this tendency, but even allowed the girl to wear boy’s clothes, so that little Ida looked with sovereign contempt upon dolls and toy saucepans, and would only play with drums, swords, guns, and similar playthings. Her father seems to have looked with complacency upon this anomaly in her character. He jestingly promised the girl that he would have her educated for an officer in a military school, thus indirectly encouraging the child to a display of courage, resolution, and contempt of danger. Ida did not fail to cultivate these qualities, and her most ardent wish was to carve her own way through the world, sword in hand. Even in her early childhood she gave many proofs of fearlessness and self-command.

Mr. Reyer had peculiar ideas on the subject of education, and carried out these notions strictly in his family circle. He was a very honest, and, moreover, strict man, holding the opinion that youth should be carefully guarded against excess, and taught to moderate its desires and wishes; consequently, his children were fed on simple, almost a parsimonious diet, and were taught to sit quietly at table, and see their elders enjoy the various dishes that were served up, without receiving a share of those dainties. The little people were, moreover, forbidden to express their wish for any much-coveted plaything by repeated requests. The father’s strictness of discipline went so far as to induce him to refuse many of the children’s reasonable requests, in order, as he said, to accustom them to disappointments. Opposition of any kind he would never allow, and even remonstrances against a discipline that bordered on harshness were always unavailing.

There is no doubt that the old gentleman carried his system to excess, but it is equally certain that, but for this Spartan education, little Ida would never have ripened into the fearless traveler, able to bear the heaviest fatigue for months together, living meanwhile on the most miserable food. The chief characteristics of Ida Pfeiffer’s courage, endurance, and indifference to pain and hardship became developed by an eccentric course of education, which would hardly find a defender at a time like the present, when every thing peculiar is hastily condemned. The unusual, with its sharp outlines and deep shadows, disappears more and more in the light of common-sense mediocrity, and the characteristic heads that we remember in our youth gradually disappear, and are succeeded by very rational, but somewhat tedious and commonplace figures.

Ida’s father died in the year 1806, leaving a widow and seven children. The boys were in an educational institution, and the mother undertook the education of the girl, who was now nearly nine years old. Though the father had appeared formidable to the children by his strictness, his rule appeared to the girl far preferable to the melancholy régime of her mother, who watched the child’s every movement with suspicion and alarm, and caused her daughter to spend many a bitter hour, merely from an exaggerated notion of duty.