An adventure
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| An adventure |
An account of spiritualistic Phenomena encountered by the authors at Petit Trianon
From the editor preface:
It is now more than fifty years since Miss Moberly and Miss Jourdain had their ‘adventure’ at Versailles Yet people still read the book in which they recounted it.
An Adventure has appeared in several editions, 1 the more recent of which are not identical (except in the fundamental narratives) with the first. I have thought it well to make a fresh edition, as close as possible to that first published, though giving throughout the authors’ real names and not the noms de guerre they felt it discreet to employ in 1911.
I have excluded some later accretions, and have checked the text against the original MSS.
Miss Moberly was born in 1846, and died in 1937 5 Miss Jourdain was born in 1864 and died in 1924. The number of people who knew them both diminishes every year.
Review by Gallowglass
It was the myth that everyone wanted to believe, although it never stood up to any test. It had become simply too sacred to cheapen as a hoax. Two Oxford lady-scholars compare notes about a visit they had once made to Versailles and conclude that they had experienced a time-slip back to revolutionary days, with recognisable buildings known to have been long demolished, and people in authentic period costume, one of them probably Marie-Antoinette, sitting on a wall sketching.
All shot-through with a disturbing, chilly atmosphere, like entering Dracula’s village. It became an unexpected best-seller for its mystery and charm, set among the scenic wooded paths around Petit Trianon, the queen’s favourite refuge from the pressures of palace life. But it instantly set off a chorus of sneering sceptics, led by the Society for Psychical Research, deflating the claims with pitiless logic.
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