The walk: Saturday, 10 August 1901, the gardens of the Petit Trianon, Versailles

The witnesses: Charlotte Anne Moberly, principal of St Hugh’s Hall, Oxford, and Eleanor Jourdain, later her vice-principal

The book: An Adventure, London, Macmillan, January 1911, signed “Elizabeth Morison” and “Frances Lamont”

The record: Their own written accounts, the earliest dated November 1901 [1]

10 August 1901. Versailles. According to the account Moberly wrote in November 1901, she and Jourdain went to Versailles from Paris, and it was “nearly four o’clock in the afternoon” when they left the Palace to find the Petit Trianon. They followed Baedeker’s plan and, by their own account, lost their way. [1] [3]

The same afternoon. What they reported. In An Adventure they wrote of a woman shaking a white cloth from a window, two men in long coats and three-cornered hats whom Moberly called “very dignified officials,” a garden kiosk with a cloaked man beside it, and a sudden change in the air. Moberly wrote: “It was all intensely still.” [1]

The same afternoon. The lady on the grass. Moberly wrote that a lady was sitting near the terrace, “holding out a paper as though to look at it at arm’s length,” in “a shady white hat.” Jourdain later said she had seen no lady. [1] [3]

About a week later. The letter. Moberly wrote that neither spoke of the afternoon for a week. Writing a letter about the trip, she asked Jourdain, “Do you think that the Petit Trianon is haunted?” She recorded the answer as “Yes, I do.” [1] [3]

10 November 1901. Comparing notes. Three months later, in Oxford, Moberly mentioned the lady sketching. According to An Adventure, Jourdain “replied that she had seen no lady.” [1] [3]

November and December 1901. The first accounts. The 1913 appendix prints two short accounts, one by each woman, dated 25 and 28 November 1901. Two longer versions, dated November and December 1901, were copied into a manuscript book in 1906 “and then destroyed.” [1]

2 January 1902. A second visit. Jourdain went back alone. She wrote that the Temple de l’Amour “was not the building we had passed in the summer.” [1]

October 1902. The Society for Psychical Research. A footnote in the 1913 edition says the two short accounts were sent to the Society in October 1902, “before any investigations began.” [1]

1903. An old map. An old map of the Trianon gardens was found that showed a bridge the women said they had crossed. [3]

4 and 9 July 1904. Back together. Moberly wrote of the return: “The kiosk was gone; so was the ravine and the little cascade.” [1]

1904 to 1910. The research. The appendix says nearly forty people later wrote testimonies that they had been told the story, dated from October 1902 to September 1910, and that “the larger number of the corroborative data came to light after 1906.” It adds that Jourdain checked the municipal list of fêtes at Versailles and found one in Louis XVI costume in June 1901, confined to the Hameau, and none in August 1901. [1]

January 1911. An Adventure. Macmillan published the book under the names Elizabeth Morison and Frances Lamont. The publishers’ note says the signatures “are the only fictitious words in the book.” It was reprinted twice in February 1911, again in March, April and July 1911, and in 1912. [1] [2]

June 1911. The first review. Eleanor Sidgwick reviewed the book, unsigned, in a supplement to the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research. She suggested that the women had misinterpreted normal events. [3]

1913. Second edition. A second edition added an appendix and maps, and was reprinted the same year. [1]

1924, 1931, 1955. Further editions followed. The authors’ identity was made public in 1931. The 1955 edition was edited by the art historian Joan Evans, Jourdain’s literary executor. [3] [4] [6] [7]

1950. W. H. Salter. Salter’s “An Adventure: A Note on the Evidence” appeared in the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research. Skeptoid summarizes his point that the embellished versions were written well after the dates the women gave, and after their return visits. [3] [4]

1965. Philippe Jullian. In his biography of the poet Robert de Montesquiou, Jullian proposed that the women had walked into a costumed gathering of Montesquiou’s friends, who staged tableaux vivants. Skeptoid notes that no evidence survives that Montesquiou held such an event in 1901. [3] [4] [8]

1976. Joan Evans. In the magazine Encounter, Evans set out the costumed-gathering explanation, drawing on Jullian. As copyright holder she accepted that solution and forbade further editions. [3] [4] [8]

1988. Michael Coleman. Comparing the November 1901 accounts with the published text, Coleman concluded that the book had been considerably enlarged after the research began, and that the early accounts had little or nothing to suggest a supernatural experience. [3]

1991. Terry Castle. “Contagious Folly: ‘An Adventure’ and Its Skeptics,” in Critical Inquiry, reviewed the case and the public reaction. [5] [3]