If there is one factor that still makes people believe their story even after more than 100 years, it is their reputation. Both Charlotte Anne Moberly and Eleanor Jourdain were highly educated English women with stellar reputations.
As writer Nell Rose tells us.
“They were not liars, and both ladies had nothing to gain by making up this story. In fact, it could go a long way to ruining their reputation.”
In fact, both the women were so disturbed by the incident that they did not talk about it even to each other until they were back in England a week later. They knew their reputations were at stake and being from conservative English academic families meant that anything they talk about the ‘strange’ incident would prove controversial and scandalous not only to their careers but also to their families.
And when they finally did discuss it, they decided to write separate accounts of what they had experienced and then compare notes. They even visited the Versailles palace several times to identify the ‘landmarks’ and the ‘strange buildings’ they had discovered and above all get more information about the ‘beautifully dressed woman’ they had seen sketching in the garden in front of the Petit Trianon, the château of the French Queen Marie Antoinette. Could Marie Antoinette be the lady sitting on the grass?
But they found no evidence of what they had seen on that day. It was as if they had experienced ‘ghosts’ from a bygone age who had disappeared as abruptly as they had come. Not knowing what to do and believe, they decided to publish their experiences in a book called “An Adventure,” in 1911 under the pseudonyms Elizabeth Morison and Frances Lamont.
It was only after they died in 1937, the people got to know about the real authors. As they feared, their stellar reputations stirred more controversies and immense criticism and to this day, nobody knows for sure what did the two women actually experience on that hot August day in Versailles.
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