Ida Pfeiffer - The last travels of Ida Pfeiffer

Portrait of Madame Ida Pfeiffer unavailable.
MADAME IDA PFEIFFER.

INCLUSIVE OF A VISIT TO MADAGASCAR.
WITH
An Autobiographical Memoir of the Author.
TRANSLATED BY H. W. DULCKEN.
NEW YORK:
HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS,
FRANKLIN SQUARE.
1861.

It was at Buenos Ayres that I received the intelligence of the death of my beloved mother. Shortly before her decease she had expressed the wish that I should arrange and prepare for publication the papers she left concerning her last voyage to Madagascar. The dangerous illness which befell her in the Mauritius immediately after she had left Madagascar, and which, in spite of the most careful medical attention, and the kindest nursing on the part of her friends, proved fatal, prevented her from doing this herself.

When, after a few months, I returned from Buenos Ayres to Rio de Janeiro, I found my mothers papers waiting for me there; but the loss was too recent, and my grief too violent, to allow me to read them then, much less to peruse them with the care and attention which must necessarily precede their publication.

At length I made up my mind to the task. I was obliged to go through it, for it was my mothers last wish. Filial duty induced me to leave my dear mothers journal as little altered as possible. In thus giving this last work of my mother to the world, I trust that our kind readers will receive it with the indulgence they have so frequently extended to the other works of the late enterprising traveler.

Oscar Pfeiffer.

Rio de Janeiro, July 8th, 1860.

Several biographies of Ida Pfeiffer are already scattered through various encyclopdias 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 boys 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.