The exceptional, bold, world-wandering Ms. Ida Pfeiffer
In 1842, at the age of 44, a Viennese woman sets out to travel the world. A woman! Of that age! Alone! Her routes, her books, her animal and plant collections make her one of the most extraordinary travellers of her time.
When men set out to see the world in the 19th century, they did it in great style. “The entire crew of the frigate numbered 351 men,” reported Bernhard von Wüllerstorf, Captain of the Novara, to the Imperial Academy of Science, “including Corvette Captain Baron Pöck as commander of the ship, 8 hardworking navy officers, 14 sea cadets and the aforementioned natural scientists and specialists. As has already been mentioned, there are 4 doctors onboard, a priest, an administrator as well as a mechanic and the necessary craftspeople. A music band of 7 individuals will perform to raise the spirits of the crew.” The Novara set sail from the harbour of Trieste and was the first large-scale scientific expedition authorised by the State of Austria.
A day later, on 1 May 1857, the Viennese woman Ida Pfeiffer reached Madagascar, on her fifth – and final – major journey. Previously, she had circumnavigated the globe on two different occasions, completing around 250,000 kilometres by sea and 32,000 over land, always on her own and always on a shoestring budget. With a sun umbrella and pocket knife, she had fought off armed attacks in the jungles of Brazil and had ruined the appetites of cannibals in Sumatra. She had seen the permissive life of Tahiti – something she could not at all abide – as well as poverty and slavery in many regions of the world – her comments equally as derogatory.
“But the commotion is not because she was the first European to have almost reached Lake Toba in Sumatra. The sensation,” says Hiltgund Jehle, the ethnologist and cultural scientist in Frankfurt who has meticulously traced the footsteps of Ida Pfeiffer like few others, “is that she travelled for such a long time with so little money and survived for so long.”
Ida Pfeiffer was not a qualified scientist, she was no researcher. Ida Pfeiffer was a housewife during Vienna’s Biedermeier era and Austria’s first world traveller. Ida Pfeiffer was, as it notes in her passport issued in 1851, of slight build, with black hair, dark brown eyes, a well-proportioned mouth and a small nose. Ida Pfeiffer was an honorary member of the Gesellschaft für Erdkunde in Berlin and the Société de Géographie in Paris. She was, as Franz Grillparzer put it, “the exceptional, bold, world-wandering Ms. Ida Pfeiffer.”
March 1842, Vienna- Kaisermühlen
“In vain, my relatives and friends tried to dissuade me from this venture.”
Her life as a world traveller begins with a harmless warm-up round. She would visit a girlfriend in Constantinople, she explains in Vienna as she climbs aboard a steamship on 22 March 1842 to sail on the Danube towards the Bosporus. Which is only partly the truth. Still, there was no shortage of critics: A woman! Alone! At that age! Ida Pfeiffer is a late-starter, almost 45 years old, both sons –Alfred and Oscar – are grown, she has long lived apart from her husband Anton Pfeiffer.
In fact, she is on her way to Jerusalem. For years she had dreamed of visiting the Holy Land. And when she finally stands before the walls of Jerusalem at dawn she is deeply impressed. “This was the most beautiful morning of my life.” Once in Jerusalem, Egypt and its famous pyramids are not too far away. Ida Pfeiffer is not one to let such opportunities pass.
This first trip would be her most conventional. Pilgrimages to the Holy Land were common at the time, for women as well, and journeys to Egypt also became a trend after the deciphering of hieroglyphics at the beginning of the 19th century. The still inexperienced traveller visits all the hotspots of the region – Bethlehem, Nazareth, the Sea of Galilee, the great pyramids of Giza, Suez – and right from the outset she proves undaunted, a virtue that would accompany her on all her trips. Despite never having ridden horseback, she joins a mounted travel tour in Constantinople and travels to ancient Bursa where she finally arrives “well shaken but without incident”. In Egypt, she ventures to climb onto an even larger animal and rides a camel to Suez.
On 8 December 1842, she returns to Vienna via Italy and at the urging of publisher Jakob Dirnböck begins to publish her travel notes. Travel literature is a popular genre in the mid-19th century and it sells well. Her first book entitled “Journey of a Viennese Lady to the Holy Land” is published in 1844, without a mention of the author. Only with the fourth edition did she appear on the cover. The fact that her family had to first see the manuscript before it went to print gives a fitting picture of the censorship-plagued and little emancipated Vormärz period of Vienna. The book is a huge success and is translated into several languages. Ida Pfeiffer the travel author is born. She writes comprehensive reports from each of her travels – at times needing several volumes.
The books are entertaining and informative, only sometimes does one have the urge to skip a few pages to get to the exciting parts quicker. Ida Pfeiffer is a woman of her time, the pinnacle of conventionality, the pinnacle of colonialism, a large part of the world is under European and North American domination. Her writing is direct, unfiltered, always from a subjective viewpoint. “I found the Indians uglier than the negroes” - such expressions are typical of the authentic Viennese woman. Not infrequently, she gives a surprisingly critical, reflective slant on the old and new world. “As was the case in old despotic countries, their minds are purposely kept enchained; for, were they once to awake from their present condition, the consequences to the whites might be fearful,” she notes about the black people in Rio de Janeiro.
May 1845, Hafnarfjordur , Iceland:
“I felt so gladdened when I arrived in this land. I could have embraced all of the people.”
In 1845, Ida Pfeiffer sets out on her second great journey: to Iceland - Iceland, nevertheless. Originally, she had thought seriously about heading to the North Pole, but then sees “insurmountable difficulties on closer inspection.” Good decision. From the Franklin expedition of that same year, not one of the members returns home alive.
Via Hamburg and Copenhagen, Ida Pfeiffer reaches Hafnarfjordur in Iceland after nearly two weeks by ship with a most glowing preconception of the land and its people. She believes “a veritable Arcadia” awaits her, “the best and most educated people of Europe.” She is bitterly disappointed. “To be welcome here you either have to be rich or travel as a naturalist,” she notes soon after her arrival. Consequently, she turns to nature. In the appendix of her book “Journey to Iceland” is a complete list of the animals and plants she collected there.
But the most important items that Ida Pfeiffer brings with her from Iceland are neither the polar ground beetle nor the moss campion plant but two photographs: perhaps the first photos ever of Iceland. In her luggage, she has a “daguerreotype apparatus enclosed in a small case”, the forerunner of classical photography which was only to be invented about ten years later.
These two photographs are part of Ida Pfeiffer’s private estate that we uncovered – stored in two cardboard boxes - in Bavaria. Also included were a passport, visa booklets, manuscripts, journals and other items like an antique inscribed brick from Babylon and tiny women’s lotus shoes from China. Instruments of torture which even children were forced to wear.
September 1846, Rio de Janeiro:
“I also possessed a clasp knife which I instantly drew out of my pocket, fully determined to sell my life as dearly as possible.”
In 1846, Ida Pfeiffer embarks on her first great round-the-world journey. In Hamburg she books her passage to Rio de Janeiro on a sailing ship accompanied by a travelling acquaintance from Palestine, Friedrich Berchtold. She is not prepared to pay the expensive price of the faster and more comfortable steamship. It takes two and a half months to cross the Atlantic and on 17 September she berths in Rio. Ida Pfeiffer is not one for embellishment. “We landed at the Praya dos Mineiros, a filthy, disgusting place.” With Berchtold, she makes her way to Petrópolis, a colony founded by the Germans not far from Rio – on foot in order to collect insects. An idyllic day’s hike through the jungle. “When we found ourselves in a somewhat isolated place, he suddenly jumped out in front of us, a long knife in his hand, holding a lasso in the other, fell upon us and gave us to understand more through gestures than words that he would murder us and drag us through the forest.” With a parasol and pocket knife, the petit woman defends herself as best she can, the umbrella breaks, blood is spilled and she receives cuts to the arms. Salvation arrives in the form of two riders appearing out of nowhere.
An incident that obviously makes an impression on Ida Pfeiffer – she carefully preserves what is left of her umbrella – but it is no reason to turn back. After her wounds are dressed she marches on, “although not completely without fear”, but in “continually increasing admiration of the beautiful scenery”.
July 1847, Macao:
“Just a year ago it seemed hardly credible to me that I should ever succeed in taking my place amongst the small number of Europeans who are acquainted with this remarkable country... from my own observation.”
On her own, Ida Pfeiffer travels on to Valparaíso in Chile on a sailing ship in heavy storms around Cape Horn. She stays only two weeks, as she is presented with an opportunity of a passage to China. The journey is the reward – truly a statement worthy of Ida Pfeiffer. Often, it is enough satisfaction to get just a fleeting and distant glimpse of countries and its people. The fleet-footed Ida uses every opportunity to continue on her travels, particularly when it is inexpensive or better still, free. To keep her waiting is more or less the worst thing that one could inflict upon her. “Only money is more important to me than time.”
After a long stop in Tahiti she reaches the “most curious country of them all”, China. She goes ashore in Macao, visits Hong Kong and Canton, travels on to Singapore, Ceylon, Sri Lanka and India, which is a good three months of travelling – from Calcutta to Delhi and Bombay, long stretches in simple bullock carts which she prefers over camels “because the loss of time is not too great and the effort is less”.
Taking part in a tiger hunt not far from Roja provides variety, and of course the intrepid Ida Pfeiffer does not turn down such invitations. But the offer to take the skin of the killed animal is something she must decline. She has no time to wait “until it would be sufficiently dry”.
August 1848, Tabriz:
“The journey through Persia was life threatening, but the Asian part of Russia is so appalling that I definitely prefer the former.”
With a steamship she heads to Basra to the south of Iran and from there on to Baghdad. She sees the ruins of Babylon, of Nineveh and Nimrud in the north, joins a caravan from Mosul towards Tabriz and is the first European female to cross the Zagros Mountains. These are highly risky journeys and life threatening routes on which Ida Pfeiffer is travelling, and only shortly before Tabriz, just on a month after leaving Mosul, “did the burdensome feeling of fear find an end”. Pfeiffer’s arrival in Tabriz causes a great commotion. “It borders on phenomenal that it is possible for a woman on her own to get through such countries and people, without a command of the language,” reports Ida Pfeiffer on the welcome she receives through the resident doctor. Even more burdensome than the sense of fear is the slowness of the Russian mail coach on her further travels. “Constant troubles with the mail people”, she notes in her diary. “I am a great enemy of bickering and harsh exchanges, but with these people I would have in truth liked to settle things with a stick.”
We are talking about the year 1848, the Revolution has just reached Vienna. And as enthusiastic as Ida Pfeiffer is about the events of which she hears in Baghdad – “My easy-going, peace-loving Austrians! A coup in the government! An awakening from lethargy!” – she is just as worried about the days following the suppression in autumn. It spurs her home and in early November, two and a half years after her departure, she returns to Vienna.
August 1852, Lake Toba:
“It will certainly not be without danger, I will right away clash with cannibals on my next trek.”
In 1851 she sets off on her second trip round the world which was to take more than four years. Over London, Cape Town and Singapore, she finally reaches Borneo in December. Just a few days later she makes her way to the Dayak people, the indigenous natives of the island, known and notorious in Europe particularly as head-hunters. At the first village she sees “with real horror 36 skulls in a row and hung up like a garland”, old war trophies. Which certainly does not dampen her desire to search for the very Dayak “who are known to be extremely wild”. And to also “discover two rather recently taken human heads”. Ida Pfeiffer again chooses a route never before travelled over Sintang and the Sekamil chain of mountains. And she truly learns to appreciate the “head collectors” despite their questionable tradition. “I should like to have passed a longer time among the free Dayaks, as I found them good-natured, honest and modest in their behaviour.” Only half as wild as rumoured.
Just a few weeks later, Ida Pfeiffer has arrived in Sumatra, where she conquers yet another region in which on other European has set foot. Finally, despite not quite reaching her intended destination, Lake Toba, she takes with her some spectacular stories from the Batak settled there – cannabals, whose fearsome reputation has long since reached Europe. However, Ida Pfeiffer receives a warm welcome “at first wild, quarrelsome and domineering, but eventually good, almost childlike.”
And when the Batak become overly wild, she plays her strongest card: her dry humour that obviously works equally as well in broken Malay and Batak. With her statement, “you wouldn’t kill and eat a woman, at least not one who is as old as I, whose flesh is already dry and tough”, the 55 year old keeps the warriors at bay. This well-practiced and learned sentence did the trick. “Fortunately they started to laugh at my gibberish, my pantomime.” He who laughs does not kill - exemplary crisis management. Several kilometres later as they approach Lake Toba, the Batak turn serious and force Ida Pfeiffer to turn back. “To turn back so close to the destination, after so many fortunate escapes from perils and arduousness – that was truly hard.”
Hiltgund Jehle followed Ida Pfeiffer’s route to Lake Toba – “today a beautiful, well-developed place with a great hotel on an island in the middle of the lake” – with her notations in hand. She was unable to find any new traces or old stories of Ida Pfeiffer, not in South America either where she also researched. But she was able to confirm the authenticity of Pfeiffer’s reports and has developed a feeling for “how unbelievably strenuous these trips must have been.”
September 1854, Niagara Falls:
“I saw one of the most wondrous, exalted scenes of nature in God’s beautiful world, Niagara Falls.”
In July 1853, a golden opportunity arises to change continents – free passage by ship to San Francisco. Ida Pfeiffer visits gold diggers and Indians, she travels to Ecuador to see Quito and the highest mountain of the world at that time, Chimborazo at 6,272 metres. On the way she takes a detour to Peru and returns via the USA – to New Orleans thence in a northerly direction to Chicago and finally on to the Niagara Falls. “Without having seen them,” she writes in 1852 in a letter, would have given her “no peace at the end of my life”.
In November she steams her way from New York to Liverpool, dropping in on her son Oscar in the Azores. He is a pianist, whose tracks are lost later in South America. In the summer of 1855 she is back in Vienna.
September 1857, Tamatavé:
“Although ill with fever, Mr Lambert and I still did not do Queen Ranavola the favour of dying.”
The trip to Madagascar from 1856 to 1858 is ill-fated right from the start. In Cape Town Ida Pfeiffer joins Frenchman Joseph-François Lambert, who lives on Mauritius and from there enables her entry into Madagascar. Lambert is a dangerous travelling companion, as he plans to overthrow the Queen Ranavola from Madagascar. When word of the uprising gets out, both are thrown out of the country and during the 53-day march are brought before Tamatavé. Still suffering fever attacks, Ida Pfeiffer reaches Mauritius. Although she plans to continue on to Australia, her ill health prevents her from fulfilling her last great goal. Via Hamburg, she returns to Vienna in September 1858, where she dies one month later. Possibly as a result of malaria that had plagued her over a long time.
What actually drove this woman to travel around the world? One possible answer: her misfortune with men. As far as we know, there were three important males in Ida Pfeiffer’s life. Her father, Aloys Reyer, who raised his daughter like his sons, strict but not gender specific which pleased the young girl. “I was not shy, but wild like the boys and braver and more curious than my older brothers.” But that was to change when her father died in 1806. Ida was nine years old when her mother took over her education following the classical model – against vehement resistance from the daughter.
Her tutor, Emil Trimmel, the great but unfulfilled love of her live. Her mother rejected his marriage proposal for reasons of status. Trimmel not only awoke her heart’s desire but her love of travel. He provided Ida with travel literature, he himself loved to take journeys, he also wrote travel reports, even if he didn’t make it further than the Austrian spa town of Bad Ischl.
And lastly, her husband, Anton Pfeiffer, a lawyer from Lemberg, whose main virtue was to live “hundreds miles from Vienna and is 24 years my senior”. A marriage of convenience. And a great misfortune from the very first day. “God alone knows what I suffered through eighteen years of marriage.”
Perhaps the answer lies, however, in something much simpler: her first glimpse of the ocean when she travelled to Trieste with her son Oscar in 1836 – and in her “awoke an almost irresistible urge to travel.”
In any case, the life of Ida Pfeiffer would make the perfect story for a block buster Hollywood movie, says Pfeiffer expert Hiltgund Jehle. And of course she has prepared the appropriate cast: Emma Watson as the young Ida Pfeiffer, Moritz Bleibtreu as Emil Trimmel. And, naturally, Meryl Streep in the main role.
Translated from German by Kaye Mueller for Terra Mater magazine, 2012
