On 10 August 1901, two ladies enjoyed a day out at Versailles.
Miss Charlotte Anne Elizabeth Moberly and Miss Eleanor Frances Jourdain took
tea in the magnificent Galerie des Glaces before walking through the palace’s
vast gardens towards the canal. Their ultimate destination was the Petit
Trianon, the beautiful house that had been presented to Marie Antoinette by
Louis XVI. They had a rough idea of the way, and they had with them the latest
copy of Baedeker’s for reference.
It was almost four in the afternoon when they set off. The day had
been hot, although it had now clouded over, and there was a pleasantly cool
breeze. Having taken the central avenue, they arrived at the canal, to the
right of which stood the Grand Trianon. At this point, however, they took a
wrong turning. Instead of going right onto the broad road that would have led
them to the Petit Trianon, they followed a narrow lane that ran to the right of
the Grand Trianon.
Passing under a bridge, the ladies carried on up the lane, which
made a sharp turn to the right, and passed some deserted buildings. Suddenly
everything took on an unreal quality, as though they had stepped into a
painting; they began to experience feeling of depression, even oppression,
which deepened the further they went. Still walking in the general direction of
the Petit Trianon, they asked two gentlemen, who stood on the path ahead of
them, if they were going the right way. Brusquely, the men waved them on.
As they passed some farm buildings, one of the ladies noticed a
discarded plough. Miss Jourdain saw a woman passing a jug to a small child.
Suddenly they heard the sound of someone running up behind them. They turned to
see a young man wearing a green cloak; he was out of breath, but he gave them
rapid directions: they must not go left, but to turn right and ‘cherchez la
maison.’ His message delivered, he then turned and disappeared as quickly as he
had arrived.
The ladies followed the young man’s directions and took a path
that led them into a narrow grotto. Close to the entrance of the grotto stood a
circular garden kiosk that looked like a bandstand. They both noticed a man
sitting on the low wall that surrounded the kiosk, and something
about his appearance repelled them. He watched them as they went
past, but did not speak to them, nor did they speak to him.
A narrow path took them through the grotto, across a small
footbridge which skirted a tiny waterfall on the right. This took them over a
patch of high ground and on to a meadow, from which they could finally see the
Petit Trianon.
As they walked up to the terrace searching for an entrance, a door
of a building to the side suddenly opened and a man ran out, banging the door
behind him. He hurried up to the two ladies, telling them they could not remain
there and offering to escort them to the main entrance to the house. Thankful
for his assistance, they allowed the stranger to guide them through a narrow space
between the buildings and onto the broad drive they should have taken in the
first place. The Petit Trianon was a short walk away and, upon entering it,
everything seemed to return to normal, and the feeling of depression and
anxiety that had come upon them as they had passed under the bridge, suddenly
lifted, and they joined a French wedding party, who were visiting the house.
Miss Moberly and Miss Jourdain would spend the rest of their lives
trying to explain the phenomenon they believed they had experienced. They would
come to believe that they had slipped through a ‘ripple in time’ and had
actually encountered the Petit Trianon and the people who worked and lived in
it as it was in the closing days of the Ancien Régime. They lady, who only Miss
Moberly saw, they concluded, was Marie Antoinette, the house’s first mistress.
The story of the ‘Ghosts of Versailles’ has fascinated
ghost-hunters and psychologists alike, and it is interesting to note that what
the two ladies believe they had experienced that summer is not unique. A
similar event occurred to none other than Carl Gustav Jung.
While on a visit to the tomb on Galla Placidia in Ravenna,
Jung fell into what he described as a ‘strange mood’. He was struck by the blue
light that seemed to bathe the baptistery, although he did not wonder at it nor
did he try to account for it. This was his second visit to the tomb, and he was
surprised to see that, instead of the windows he remembered from the first visit,
there were now four large and very beautiful mosaic frescoes. One mosaic
depicted the baptism in the Jordan; the second was the passage of the children
of Israel through the Red Sea; the third one quickly faded from Jung’s memory,
but he thought it might have shown Naaman being cleansed of leprosy in the
Jordan, while the fourth and most impressive of the mosaics depicted Christ
holding his hand out to Peter, who was sinking beneath the waves. This memory
of last mosaic remained with Jung for a very long time, and he would always be
able to recall it in detail.
When Jung and his companion left the baptistery, he wanted to buy
some postcards of the mosaics but time was pressing and the two of them had to
leave. Having returned home, he asked a friend who was visiting Ravenna to
obtain some pictures for him. The friend duly went to the baptistery only to
find that the mosaics did not exist.
[This post was first published on Facebook, 10 August 2016].
