When time misbehaves
The Edwardian ladies who found themselves in 18th century Paris
The article describes the strange experience of two upper crust Englishwomen who on a holiday in 1901 found themselves in Versailles on the eve of the French Revolution
What is time? Is it a river, remorselessly flowing along at a steady, unvarying pace, bearing us all along in a carefully measured cycle of life, death and rebirth? Or is it a great sea in which all that has happened and will ever happen co-exist in an everlasting NOW?
Does time even exist, or is it a man-made invention to mark the passing of the seasons?
It is a conundrum which has tasked the finest minds for millennia.
One thing is certain - Time doesn't always obey the rules.
There are many recorded instances where time seems to have slipped and bewildered individuals have suddenly found themselves face to face with what we call the past.
One of the best documented examples of this happened in 1901 to two highly cultured and intelligent English ladies in France.
Annie Moberly was principal of St Hugh's College, Oxford and her friend, Eleanor Frances Jourdain, was a doctor. While in Paris they decided to visit the Palace of Versailles, sumptuous home to the French Royal Family before the Revolution. They particularly wanted to visit the Petit Trianon, the beautiful house in the palace grounds.
They searched the grounds but failed to find the Petit Trianon. An unaccountable heaviness, a strange feeling of depression settled over them. Then they saw two men whom they described as wearing long grey/green coats and three-cornered hats. They asked for directions and were following the men's instructions when they came to a cottage. In the doorway stood a woman and a young girl, both dressed in long dresses. They seemed strangely still, the woman on the top step holding a jug and the girl beneath her, holding out her hands.
Dr Jourdain said later: "They both seemed to pause for an instant as in a motion picture."
The women then came to a pavilion and again noticed a strange, depressing atmosphere. An ugly man wearing a straw hat sat outside but paid no attention to them; indeed, he seemed not to have seen them.
Feeling increasingly uneasy, the women strolled on and eventually reached a country house. On the lawn sat a woman who appeared to be drawing on a large piece of paper. She wore a summer dress with a long bodice and a short skirt. Around her shoulders was a green kerchief and on her head a large white hat. Once again, the women were ignored or not seen.
The door of a nearby house opened and a man hurried out. He headed towards the Petit Trianon and the Englishwomen followed. Then, in the blink of an eye, they found themselves surrounded by people, a wedding party, all wearing the fashions of 1901.
Back in England, the two friends discussed their experience over and over. Had they seen ghosts and was one of them the tragic Marie Antoinette? Or had they tapped into a memory from the late 18th century, somehow imprinted on the landscape?
Annie Moberly found a picture of Marie Antoinette. She was astounded to see that it showed the women she had seen sketching on the lawn, right down to the clothes.
A year later Dr Jourdain returned to Versailles. The grounds looked totally different from what she remembered and she was unable to follow the route she and her friend had taken a year before.
But she discovered that Louis XVI's queen had been at the Petit Trianon when she learned that the Paris mob was coming for her. This clinched it for Moberly and Jourdain. For the rest of their lives they were convinced that they had walked into Marie Antoinette's most terrifying memory.
