Ida Reyer Pfeiffer and Malta

Abstract

Of the relatively few German-speaking tourists who came to Malta in the first half of the nineteenth century and left accounts of their visits surely one of the most interesting was Ida Reyer Pfeiffer (1797-1858), a native of Vienna. As a girl she was fascinated by stories of far away places, but the opportunity for her own travel abroad was not realized until she had reached middle age. When she was twenty-three years old she married a lawyer and widower from Lemberg named Dr. Pfeiffer, and domestic cares delayed any immediate realization of her dreams to visit those remote places which held so much interest for her. Later in life, after her sons were educated and she was approaching the age of forty-five, she was finally able to set out without companions on a series of travels which had been long contemplated. To retain more accurately the recollections of her visits she carefully kept a diary, a simple and unadorned relation of facts. She herself expressed the view that her diary should not be judged as a literary work, for it was, she declared, 'a simple narration, in which I have described every circumstance as it occurred...' She commenced her journey on March 22, 1842, taking a steamer from Vienna going down the Danube. Her first major objective was the Holy Land. From there she proceeded to Egypt, and from Egypt she came by ship to Malta. She remained in Malta from mid-September until October 4 when she embarked on the Sicilian steamer Hercules for a horn ward journey. She reached Vienna in December, 1842. Here are Mrs. Pfeiffer's comments on her visit to Malta.