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Updated: June 27, 2025
Even more interesting was Madame Pfeiffer's peep into the "domestic interior" of Mandarin Howqua. The house was of large size, but only one story high, with wide and splendid terraces. The windows looked into the inner courts. At the entrance were two painted images of gods to ward off evil spirits, like the horse-shoe formerly suspended to the cottages and barns of our English peasants.
On the occasion of Madame Pfeiffer's visit a service was being performed, a funeral ceremony in honour of a mandarin's deceased wife, and at his expense. Before the altars on the right and left stood several priests, in garments strangely resembling, as did the ceremonial observances, those of the Roman Church.
Mounts Leirhnukr and Krabla, in the northeast, are very formidable; and one of the most terrible eruptions recorded in the island annals was that of the Skapta Jokul in 1783. We have now completed our summary of Madame Pfeiffer's Icelandic excursions.
The superintendent made no reply; his eye had caught mine, and he had become very thoughtful. "One of the two candelabra belonging to the parlor mantel was found lying on that closet floor," he observed. "Somebody has entered there lately, as lately as the day when Mr. Pfeiffer was seated here." "Pardon me," I impetuously cried. "Mr. Pfeiffer's death is quite explained."
Both caldron and basin, on the occasion of Madame Pfeiffer's visit, were full to the brim with crystal- clear water in a state of slight ebullition. At irregular intervals a column of water is shot perpendicularly upwards from the centre of the caldron, the explosion being always preceded by a low rumbling; but she was not so fortunate as to witness one of these eruptions.
At the time of Madame Pfeiffer's visit only one pair were enjoying their otium cum dignitate, and the number rarely exceeds three pairs. Peeping into the interior of a Bonze's house, the company came upon an opium-smoker.
All about the area are scattered altars, statues, vases of flowers, censers, and candelabra. But the eye is chiefly attracted by the three shrines in the foreground, with the three coloured statues behind them, of Buddha, seated as symbolical of Past, Present, and Future. On the occasion of Madame Ida Pfeiffer's visit, a funeral ceremony was being performed in honour of a mandarin's deceased wife.
So wild, so romantic was the scene, with its shifting lights and shadows, its sudden bursts of silvery lustre where the valley lay open to the moon, and its depths of darkness in many a winding recess, that even Madame Pfeiffer's uncultured companions were irresistibly moved by its influence; and as they rode along not a sound was heard but the clatter of the horses' hoofs, and the fall of rolling stones into the chasm below.
"A pard-like spirit, beautiful and swift;" so ethereal, so bird-like, that it is no wonder that the horse about whom those old story-tellers lied so stoutly, telling of his running a mile in a minute, was called Flying Childers. The roses in Mrs. Pfeiffer's garden were hardly out of flower when I lunched with her at her pretty villa at Putney. There I met Mr. Browning, Mr. Holman Hunt, Mrs.
She was not an artist, but she had a feeling for the beautiful; and she examined with intense delight the Parthenon, the Temple of Theseus, the Olympian, the Tower of the Winds, and the graceful choragic monument of Lysicrates. These, however, have been more fitly described by writers capable of doing them justice, and Madame Pfeiffer's brief and commonplace allusions may well be overlooked.
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