It was a day of sorrow for Ida when she was forced to assume the dress of her sex. She fell ill with grief and disappointment, and her parents found it necessary to allow her to retain the boy's blouse and cap, to which she was so partial. Then, as if by magic, she recovered, and resumed her favourite games. She acknowledges that feminine work filled her with contempt. Pianoforte-playing, amongst other things, seemed an occupation so inappropriate and uncongenial, that to escape those odious "exercises"—which thousands of girls, by the way, have found equally distasteful—she would frequently cut and wound her fingers severely.
We have alluded to her fondness for history. She was not less addicted to voyages and travels—to any reading, in fact, which satisfied her love of adventure. She would envy at times the condition of a postilion, and the sight of a travelling carriage would set her dreaming for hours.
She was fourteen years old before she would consent to wear petticoats. About the same time her parents placed her education in charge of a young professor, who, recognizing the high qualities of her ill-regulated character, set himself to work to develop and mature them. He was so devoted to his pupil, that she on her part became anxious to anticipate his wishes, and never felt so happy as when he was satisfied with her efforts. In truth it was the old story of Hymen and Iphigenia reversed. Her wayward and wilful nature was subdued by the influence of love; and at the cost of not a few tears, she renounced her childish caprices in order to please him, and occupied herself with the pursuits she had previously regarded so contemptuously. She took up even the most thoroughly feminine avocations, and learned to sew, and knit, and cook. Meanwhile, she was wholly ignorant of the nature of the feeling which had transformed the romp into a discreet and retiring maiden, until, at the age of seventeen, an unexpected incident awakened her to it. A Greek merchant sought her hand; her parents refused him on the score of her youth. "Hitherto," she writes, "I had had no presentiment of the violent passion which can make one either the happiest or unhappiest of women. When my mother informed me of the proposal, and I learned that I was destined to love one man and belong to him only, the impressions I had until then all unconsciously experienced, assumed a definite form, and I discovered that I could love no person except the guide of my youth." As he was not less passionately attached to her, he hastened to make a proposal, to which her parents objected on the ground of his want of fortune. The young girl openly avowed that she would never marry any other, and adhered tenaciously to her opposition. But after a while the young man felt it to be his duty to respect the decision of her parents, and his correspondence with his pupil ceased. The little romance, according to Madame Ida Pfeiffer, ended as follows:—
"Three long years passed without our meeting, and without any change taking place in my feelings. One day, when I was out walking with a friend of my mother, I accidentally met my old master; both of us involuntarily halted, but for a long time we could not speak. At length he contrived to subdue his emotions. As for myself, I was too much disturbed to be able to utter a word; I felt as if I should swoon, and returned home hastily. Two days afterwards I was seized with a fever, which at first the doctors thought would prove mortal."
Her strong constitution carried her through it. On her recovery, in her burning impatience to escape from the parental roof, she declared she would accept the first person who sought her hand, provided he was a man of a certain age; by this proviso wishing her lover to understand that her marriage was wholly due to constraint. An advocate of some repute, a Herr Pfeiffer, proposed and was accepted. This was in 1820.
A marriage made under such conditions could hardly prove a happy one. Her husband was unworthy of her. He treated her harshly, and he wasted the fortune she brought him. But for the sake of her two sons, Oscar and Alfred, she endured the miseries of her position as long as she was able, and devoted herself with assiduous self-sacrifice to their education. Meanwhile, the prosaic character of her daily life she knew how to relieve by privately indulging in dreams of travel, of adventure in far lands, and exploration in isles beyond the sunset. On the occasion of an excursion to Trieste, the sight of the sea revived in her all the old passionate longing, and the visions of her childhood became the fixed resolves and convictions of her womanhood.
