ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS WHICH WE HAVE BEEN ASKED
1. One of us has to own to having powers of second sight, etc.,
deliberately undeveloped, and there are psychical gifts in her family.
She comes of a Huguenot stock. The other is one of a large and cheerful
party, being the seventh daughter and of a seventh son; her mother and
grandmother were entirely Scotch, and both possessed powers of
premonition accompanied by vision. Her family has always been sensitive
to ghost stories in general, but mercilessly critical of particular ones
of a certain type.
2. Both of us have inherited a horror of all forms of occultism. We lose
no opportunity of preaching against them as unwholesome and misleading;
because they mostly deal with conditions of physical excitement, and
study of the abnormal and diseased, including problems of disintegrated
personality which present such close analogy to those of insanity. We
have the deepest distrust in, and distaste for, stories of abnormal
appearances and conditions. We find narratives of _revenants_
unconvincing, and studiously avoid (as utterly lowering) all
spiritualistic methods of communication with the dead. We have never had
the curiosity, or the desire, to help in the investigations of psychical
phenomena.
3. We belong to no new schools of thought: we are the daughters of
English clergymen, and heartily hold and teach the faith of our fathers.
4. We are quite certain that neither of us exerted any conscious
influence over the other; for though we saw much in common, yet each had
independent vision. We should think it wrong either to exercise, or to
submit to, influence of that nature. We are independent people and
accustomed to stand on our own feet.
5. Our condition at the time was one of perfect health and enjoyment of
a holiday in the midst of very hard work.
6. We were entirely ignorant of the history and traditions of the place,
and continued our conversation about other things after every
interruption. We did not even know that we were in the grounds of the
Petit Trianon until we saw the house.
7. At the time Miss Lamont thought that there was something unusual
about the place and was puzzled; the same idea returned to her
occasionally during the following week. Miss Morison put her feeling of
oppression down to some physical fatigue in herself, and so said
nothing; for we did not know one another very well at that time, were in
the relation of hostess and guest, and neither of us thought of
enlarging on uncomfortable sensations. After some days, when Miss
Morison was writing an account of the expedition, she thought it over
with care, and realised that her sensations had not been caused by
fatigue, but had produced fatigue. She became convinced that the
oppression had been due to some unusual cause in the place itself, and
instantly turned to Miss Lamont and said so. Miss Lamont agreed. We then
discussed the man by the kiosk and the running man, but said that there
was much besides which had caused dreamy depression. Miss Morison
returned to her letter and wrote down: “We both think that the Petit
Trianon is haunted.”
When we met next (three months later) we talked it over again, and
finding that Miss Lamont had not seen the lady, and that Miss Morison
had not seen the plough, cottage, woman, or girl, we resolved to write
separate accounts of our visit in order to find the discrepancies, but
with no idea of making exhaustive histories. These papers are still in
existence. Miss Lamont, in her story, used the words “uncanny” and
“eerie” to describe her feelings, but they did not mean that she had the
least idea at the time that any of the people encountered were unreal or
ghostly; this was still more true of the scenery.
8. During the next three years, Miss Lamont repeatedly took parties of
girls over the Trianon, and she reported that the place was changed; but
Miss Morison could not believe it, and even made maps to remind her what
their old route had been. After Miss Morison had paid a second visit to
Trianon in July, 1904, and had found out for herself that the place was
entirely changed, it was resolved to undertake a personal research into
the matter, and to say no more until we had discovered for ourselves
whether our vivid recollections of the people and the place tallied with
any ancient reality or not.
Up to that time we had told the story freely, with the result that we
have constantly traced it inaccurately reported in histories, sometimes
purporting to have come from other sources, and even in newspapers and
small periodicals. After research had begun to yield interesting
results, we were obliged to be silent, finding that publicity prevented
our getting at evidence.
We are very busy people, and have refused to let the incident take a
prominent place in our time, interests, or fancy, though from the first
we agreed to lose no given opportunity of elucidation. The evidence has,
therefore, come slowly; but the manner in which it has come has often
been a source of surprise. If a helpful person came in our way, we
showed the whole thing: if we were casually asked if certain reports
were true, we confirmed them (when we could), but said nothing further.
We were anxious to wait until we had exhausted every possible means of
satisfying ourselves as to the exact amount of interest attaching to the
story; and it was several years before we had to believe that we had
seen the place as it had been a hundred years before, and as it had not
been, in several important particulars, since 1835. The research had
been undertaken with the idea of _disproving_ the suggestion that
anything unusual had happened, for we were resolved not to deceive
ourselves or anyone else, if personal industry could prevent it.
9. In the course of the last four or five years, Miss Lamont has
searched for evidence bearing on the story (either by word or picture)
in the Archives nationales, in the library, museum, Mairie, and Archives
departmentales at Versailles: also in the libraries Nationale, Hôtel de
Ville, and in the Musée Carnavalet, and in the Conservatoire de Musique
at Paris. She has poked about in French book and print shops, and must
have seen a large number of the originals of the published plans,
illustrations, and accounts of the place. We believe that there is not
likely to be any striking documentary evidence other than we have dealt
with.
10. The historical interest of the story seems to depend on the truth of
the tradition that the Queen went to Trianon on October 5th, 1789. We
can find no negative evidence of this, but extremely little which is
both affirmative and trustworthy. Madame Campan’s short statement
remains the basis of other people’s longer and more detailed narratives.
General La Fayette’s full account of the day was burned by his wife
during the Terror. Count Fersen’s memoirs were also partly destroyed.
The Abbé Bossuet had Madame de Tourzel’s careful history of that day
burned; but in the published memoirs she says that she was in residence
that day at Versailles, as _Gouvernante des enfants de France_; she does
not mention having gone to Trianon, as implied by Marion’s story, but it
is still possible. Most French historians now adopt Madame Campan’s
statement, but (in the words of one of them) “with some doubts.” It is
worth mentioning that many later historians insert the fact (though it
is not recorded by Madame Campan) that “the Queen was accompanied by a
single valet.” Is this a tradition?
11. We do not believe in anniversaries in the usual sense. We have
tested both our days (August 10th and January 2nd), going, as far as
possible, under the same circumstances, without any result at the Petit
Trianon. Yet it is possible that if we entered into an act of memory, it
may well have been first made on the terrible 10th of August, 1792,
though the memory itself was occupied (in the central place) with the
events of October 5th, 1789. The dress of the messenger was more
suitable for October than August. At the same time Vaudreuil left France
the previous summer and cannot have sat in the Trianon woods after the
taking of the Bastille, July 14th, 1789.
There is an incoherence about both the large and small incidents which
seems to require combination within a single mind, and the only mind to
which they could all have been present would have been that of the
Queen. Our theory of 1901, that we had entered within the working of the
Queen’s memory when she was still alive, is now enlarged. We think that
the two first visits to Trianon (August 10th, 1901, and January 2nd,
1902) were part of one and the same experience; that quite mechanically
we must have seen it as it appeared to her more than a hundred years
ago, and have heard sounds familiar, and even something of words spoken,
to her then.
Having been for two most trying years confined to Paris, and (excepting
for a visit to St. Cloud) through two hot summers, and being in the
midst of the tumultuous horrors of the great tenth of August, she may,
as the day wore on, and she grew more used to her miserable position in
the Hall of the Assembly—where she sat for eighteen hours—have fancied
(in memory) the grounds at Trianon more spacious than they really were;
and have seen the trees, as one sees trees in recollection, like a
picture without life, depth, or movement. In rêverie her mind may have
wandered from the familiar sight of the two Bersys at the gate, to the
little vision of two men gathering up garden rubbish into a cart (which
we know happened on October 5th, 1789, as well as one day during the
last winter she spent at Versailles), and which—without any reason—had
remained in her mind. She may have thought of the place as it was during
that year of the meeting of the States-General when the grounds were,
for the first time, thrown completely open to the public, and intruding
strangers could be seen there. Or she may have gone back to the earlier
years and the pleasant afternoons when the band played on the _pelouse_
in front of the house, and to the excitement of acting in the little
theatre with her special friends, perhaps letting herself realise the
unkindness of the pressure put upon her by Vaudreuil to have the acting
of the _Mariage de Figaro_ authorised.
How naturally the thought of him would have formed one picture in her
mind with the memory of the last scene, when she was hurriedly summoned
from Trianon, never to return! For she may very likely have supposed all
that she was suffering to have been more exclusively the result of her
own former mistakes than could have been just, and have been going over
them in her mind.
On our return to Paris on the day of the original visit to Trianon, when
undoubtedly her image was uppermost in our thoughts, and the
recollection of her terrible end was hardly to be endured, the recurring
consolation to Miss Morison was, “She has forgiven it all now, and knows
the true meaning of the French Revolution on both its good and bad
sides, and also the exact proportion of her own part in it.” But the act
of memory which had so strangely and mechanically clung to the place,
with which we had, perhaps, been associated in the grounds, was
incoherent and pictorial. It was oppressive to us because it represented
a more limited view of those times than after a hundred years we have
learnt to take of them, and was far more limited than any thought the
Queen can have about them now.
12. Our answer to the suggestion that we were in a state of suspended
consciousness is that our conversation and sense of the quiet continuity
of things remained unbroken, and, in spite of oppression, believed
ourselves to be particularly wide awake and on the alert. When we were
first asked whether the man from the side building was real or not, we
laughed at the idea of any unreality; all was so quietly natural that we
are still uncertain whether the tall gardener belonged to another
century or not. It has taken us nine years to work out all the details
which bear witness to the strangeness of what we saw and did, and to
justify us in our present conviction, that from the moment of our
leaving the lane until we emerged into the avenue we were on enchanted
ground.
13. The theory of coincidences would have to be considerably strained to
cover more than twenty points quickly succeeding one another.
14. In the municipal records kept in the Library at Versailles there is
a list of fêtes in the grounds. Miss Lamont has examined it carefully.
There had been one for which people had been dressed in Louis XVI.
costume in June, 1901, but there is a note to say that it had been
confined to the Hameau. There was none in August, 1901. We know that
since 1901 there have been fêtes in the grounds with scenes in
character, so that other people may have come across them; an
examination of the records as to dates would probably reveal such
possibilities.
In the same catalogue notices are made of photographs taken of
historical groups at fêtes; there had been some in connection with the
June fête, and “Otto” was mentioned by name. On enquiry Otto wrote that
he had not taken “l’ensemble de la fête, c’était des groupes de jeunes
filles, et des dames séparément.” “Dufayel” took pains to look the
matter up, and Miss Lamont and one of his employées went all through his
lists and books of specimen photographs, and found that he had not taken
any photographs at Trianon between 1900 and 1906. He recommended
enquiries at Pierre Petit’s, as Petit would have Lafayette’s as well as
other photographers’ pictures. No photographs of the scenes we wanted
were to be heard of there, and Pierre Petit wrote afterwards that his
only photographs at Trianon had been taken in 1900 for the Exhibition.
It has been suggested to us that our story can be explained by people
posing for a cinematograph in order to register the scene of the
messenger running to the Queen, whilst something further has been said
of a girl sweeping up leaves as forming part of the group. Naturally,
from the first, we had thought of some such explanation, but had
rejected it as insufficient. We did not see the man running; we only
heard him; then he suddenly appeared, standing close to us, and
addressed us personally, earnestly, and with excitement. As a scene it
would have been nothing; we saw no Queen, and no girl sweeping up
leaves. He remained by us until we turned away from him. The
cinematograph theory does not explain how it was that he came over and
stood with his back against rocks of considerable size piled on one
another, when rocks have not been there for nearly a hundred years,
though we find that they had been placed in that part of the garden in
1788. Nor does it explain how it was that both before and during the
man’s coming we were both gazing at a kiosk which is not now in
existence, though both rocks and kiosk we found out years after to have
made part of the original scenery in 1789. Not a word is hinted about
the little bridge over the ravine, and the little cascade close by, all
being essentials both to our, and, we believe, to the original story. We
suspect the explanation to be simply that we had not talked about them
at first, not knowing their significance till later, and so they have
not got into any widely-spread story. We know from the archives that the
streams were not cleared from leaves after October 4th, 1789, and that
“Mariamne” is only mentioned as having been paid for work in the grounds
in _1783_, as one of several children so occupied.
If masqueraders were posing as guards at the _porte du jardinier_, the
cinematograph idea does not explain the reappearance of the old cottage
close by, in its former position as placed in Mique’s map of 1783. If
the part of the Queen was being acted, what of the orchard of trees we
saw her looking into, not now in existence; also, what is the account of
the barrier at our right hand screening off the present view and exactly
answering to the old enclosure of the Jeu de Bague?
The cinematograph does not explain the man who opened the great door of
the chapel, easily banging it behind him as he came out; for in 1907 the
people living in the place believed that it had not been opened since
the days of Louis XVI., and the keeper of the key knew that even the
door of the landing had not been opened for fifteen years. How was the
wall lowered, which now largely hides the great door from the terrace,
and makes it necessary to go down one flight of steps and up another,
whereas we saw the man coming along a level, in full view, from the
moment of his opening the door until he reached us standing on the
terrace outside the window of the _antichambre_?[77]
A cinematograph would not explain the reappearance of the old wood in
all its denseness; nor the rapid disappearance of the cart and horse in
an open field; nor the music, which, six years later, was found to be a
piecing together of eighteenth century operas.
No amount of masqueraders explains to us the ease with which we
dismissed from sight and hearing the usual August crowds in the middle
of a fine afternoon, and the impossibility of harmonising our
recollections of the scenery with anything but the old maps and records.
Certainly none of the persons we met were being photographed at the
moment, or we must have seen it; and had scenery been erected for the
purpose, we must have observed such large artificial arrangements; there
would probably have been sightseers; and, presumably, the fact of
anything so considerable would have been in the catalogue.
Even should it be proved that a cinematograph had been taken that very
day, it would not be a possible explanation to us. The groups we saw
were small and isolated from one another. There was the deepest silence
everywhere, and no sunshine; whilst the light was the worst possible for
a picture, for the sky was overcast. And though whilst we stood there an
indefinable air of strangeness dropped over everything, including the
tall forest trees, it was not of a kind that could be accounted for by
fictitious scenery. The people moved and spoke as usual, but their words
were extraordinarily difficult to catch.
In September, 1910, the question of such representation was settled by
an enquiry of the authorities. No leave to take cinematographs had been
granted in August, 1901. The fête had been on June 27th, and the
photographs of it had been taken sufficiently near the time to be
published in the July number of _Versailles Illustré_. Not one of the
pictures in this number is in the least like what, we saw either in the
matter of subjects, costumes, or places. The inaccuracy is so great,
that in an article in the same magazine the scene of the messenger
coming to the Queen is transferred from the grotto to the Hameau, though
the sole authority for the tradition places it at the grotto.
15. During the last five or six years much research into topographical
and archæological details has been made by the newly-formed “Société des
amis de Versailles,” probably from the same archives examined by Miss
Lamont, so that many points of likeness to what we saw may soon
reappear. Old music with old-fashioned instruments is now frequently
introduced at summer fêtes at Trianon. Even the water arrangements in
our part of the garden seem likely to be altered, and the little cascade
may yet be seen again. At the beginning of 1910 Miss Lamont saw
engineers searching for the first and second _sources_, and in the
following autumn she found iron grids placed on the ground near the
positions we had allotted for them; but nothing had been altered up to
September, 1910. We are most curious to know whether the restorations
will be exactly according to our recollections of the scenery or not.
16. Stories retailing just so much of our own as we had first talked
about are constantly being repeated to us; some with the little
additions we can recognise as our own early surmises; generally with the
omission of points we did not know to be interesting until later; and
often with all the muddles arising from the attempt to shorten a long
story, with a few unauthorised additions and explanations thrown in.
These stories are told to us as being the property of persons we have
never heard of. We have constantly enquired on what authority they rest,
and, if there is any at all, we have not infrequently been able to
discover the track they have followed from us back to us again.
17. We do not think that deception explains it. If we were deceived in
one, two, or three points, could we have been in all? For out of them we
have been able to reconstruct the story of Trianon in many tiny details,
the truth of which we have had to discover for ourselves.
18. We are constantly asked why we, of all people, should have had such
an adventure? We are equally puzzled; and have come to think that it may
not be so unusual as it seems. We can imagine that people, even if they
suspected anything unusual (which they might easily not do), may have
thought it best not to follow it up. The peculiarity in our case may
simply have been that two persons were equally able to consider the
circumstances, and did do so: that we found there was available
evidence, and that we had the opportunity for obtaining it.
19. Certain unusual conditions were present.
(1) Two people in broad daylight, good health, and normal conditions,
were equally able to bear witness to the facts, yet not in the manner of
thought transference between each other, for they did not see alike in
every point.
(2) Some of the facts were so small that no historical knowledge,
however dim, could have suggested them.
(3) They concerned such well known historical personages that much
documentary proof as to the reality of the incidents is accessible; yet,
in some particulars, they are of such a nature as to be incapable of
reproduction by any tricks of scenic effects; and some of the evidence
found in the archives had, to all appearance, not been disturbed since
its collection by the National Assembly until Miss Lamont in 1904 undid
the old fastenings that had stuck together through age and disuse: for
instance—much of the evidence about the gardeners taken from the wages
book.
E. M.
F. L.
_September, 1910._