A MEETING WITH MARIF ANTOINETTE

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 178, 14 August 1937, Page 15

A MEETING WITH MARIF ANTOINETTE

rpHERE recently died the only sur-j vivor of those two ladies whose auOnymous account of their vision at the Trianon in August, 1901 (first published in January, 19H), has been thc most discqssed ghost story of our day. This is because, apart from the ro ruatiti e interest of the story itself, there never has been a ghost story so well and so historically documented. Miss Anue MebciTy was the sevpntk ckild ol! u seventh child, so ske vrns a prcdesUabd clair«oyanle. Ber i'ather, Ur. Mp'berly, successive headmaster of Winchester nud BJshop pf Salisbury, wpst havp bud Russiau blood. It f|e e.'urcd itsolf in the cast of counteuanro of several of his children, uotnbly in Miss Aune Moberly hersclf. His mothor wa$ a daughter of Jokn Cayley, Eng-lis-h Consul at St. Petersburg, where he spent his early years. Dr. Moberly n.'arried Miss Mary Aupe Crolcat, a ^cotswtwvau, so more than one ruco could he traced in Miss Moberly 's blood. In "Dqlee Domum" she has hcrse! described the Moberly home life, botli at Winchester and in Salisbury, and no boolc excels this as a pictuTe of a cultuied, religious mid-Victorian family. Miss Charlotte Yonge, a neighbour in V/inchester days, was a close friend of the Moberlys, and their large family was in her mind as she wrote "The Daisy Cliain. " Iveble was nnoLher great friend, and as iho Moberlys grew up, tliey soerncd naiurally to become either bishops or -fiiooliiiftsters, or the wivps of such. , Ihey were serious and seholarly, many of them were iine musicians, and all were accustomed to hear of the possitijiily of inlercourse between this wcrld and thc next. But Miss Moberly disapprovcd of I "spiritualism," fclhe distrusted the revclations of mediuws, and was convinc-

GHOSTS OF VERSAILlES

Women's Strange Adventure

vd that any tauiperiug with such subjects was fraught with danger, cspb cially for fhe youug. So when {ihe becciue the iirsfc prineipal of St. llugk's t'oJJege at Oxford, she resolutely set hcr face against such practices, and discouraged talk on the subject among the students. Then she herself had this astounding oxperience-— oue which she herself described as "the greatest thing that kappened to jne in my life. ' ' She was faced with a dilemxaa. On the oue hand was her cohvietion that sho must probe this thing to ihe bottom, find out what, if any, historicai basis existed fbr her vision, and give the results to the world. On the other hand was her conseientious disapproval of the study of spiritualism in hcr college. She reconciled these warring principles by working privately for niBe years on the Trianon arehivcs, and when the results of this rcsenrch proUuced evidence even .. more startling than she at first expecteci, she pubfisb jd the story of tho original " a 1 1 1 r.turc," with all this new corroborunoM, ns a small -auonymoas bookThis was in .1911, "An Adventore" rushed tluough live editions' in six laonths. Miss Moberly, to her surprise, had produced a "bcst sellor." The

pubJicity disturbed aml distressod her. •c'h e clung to the sljreds of nubnymity, though the names of hersolf and her cempanion soou becamo open secrots. 8he dicw herself up with dignity, and her faco beeame a liayghty blank wlien strangers raised the subject in her preft^uce, Vet, with those who had a fight to know, she was unshaken in her certainty that this experience was no fancy, but might some day be ©xplPhed by future researclies into the uature of Time. 'The years passed. Miss Jourdain. who hqd been Miss Moberly 's companmn, was dead. Miss Moberly herself , had for some years resigned her post m M. Hugh's. What was to become the future of the documents which contained the details of the Trianon researches? Miss Moberly liad thoughts of burn- , ing them before her own death. She was fortunately dissuaded from tliis, ar.d they are now preserved in the Ik.dlciau. ilaving decided this, she thou reJved to give to the world a new edilion of "An Adventure," and to ac•cept responsibility for it. 'J'his oili ! t'on appeared in 1031, just thiriy year.« afior the events recorded, and ptow, for tnc first time, ihe opobrypha! uaines oi Miss Morrison and Miss Eamont were C'.nl«sBod as concealing Ihe idealities

bf Miss Moberly and Miss Jourdain. The story itself. was unaltered, though this admiasibn of authorship al on.ee gave it the authority it had Jack cd. The new prcface by Miss Edith Glivier (one of Miss Moberly 's history students at St. Hugh 's) testified to the cave and honesty with which the re■seayches had been made, On August 30, 3901 , Miss Moberly ar.d Miss Jourdain visited Versatlles for tho first time, and eventuafly found themselvea at tho Petit 'J'rianon, Here tlrey passed some cui'ious oid cottages, and a small garden casinb which they describca as a ''Kiosk. " They cros-sed a tusiic bridge over a ravine, into which fell a tiny cascade. They spofee to gardeners, footmen, aud caxetUkefS, eud they received answers te their questious frpm these people. They eveatuaily reached the Petit Trianon itself, and there they saw a lady Teadiug a letter. She loQked noyed at their iutrusion, Still they dicl not suspect \hat their expeiience wae other than an qrdinary walk tfirough a garden fined with historieal nemories, Qnly when they returaed subsequently to the Trianon did they dxscover that the building amd the Kiosk which they had seen did not actually exist. The bridge they had crossed, and the ravine which it spanned, had vanished a century before. The iady waa no tourist, bnt the face they had seen was that of Marie Antoinette herself. The gradual reeovery of the facts lying behind the vision of the two ladies is related in "An Adventure," aml it is this carei'ul historrcai documentm tuni which has made the beok a classic. ti if in fact unique; and through • Mj&s Moberly and Miss Jourdain made icr themselvea a niche in a byway oi Uistory where their uaiues wliJ loug be iv.mcyjbersd,