On 10th August 1901 two English women, Anne Moberly and Eleanor Jourdain, both academics, visited Versailles. After touring the palace they decided to search for the Petit Trianon, but they soon got lost. As they walked in an atmosphere of dark gloom, they spotted officials in long greyish green coats with small three-cornered hats, an old plough and farmhouse; they proceeded down a path and came upon a gazebo shaded by trees, next to which they saw a man with his face pitted with small-pox. After crossing a bridge, Moberly noticed a lady in a light old-fashioned summer dress sketching on the grass who looked at them.
Months after leaving Versailles they wrote separate accounts of what had happened, researched the history of the Trianon and found out that on 10th August 1792, the Tuileries palace in Paris was besieged, the king's Swiss guards were massacred and the monarchy itself was abolished six weeks later.
During their research, Moberly and Jourdain thought they recognised the man by the kiosk as the Comte de Vaudreuil, a friend of Marie Antoinette, who herself was identified as the woman in the green dress seen by Moberly (who, according to the academic, looked like the French queen as painted by the artist Wertmüller).
The two women visited the Trianon gardens again on several occasions: Jourdain returned to Versailles in January 1902 and was unable to trace the path she had taken, the landmarks they saw had strangely disappeared too.
Jourdain also found out that on October 5, 1789 Marie Antoinette had been sitting at the Petit Trianon when she first learned that a mob from Paris was marching towards the palace gates. Having decided that the grounds were haunted and that Marie Antoinette's dark memory was lingering above them, they published their findings in a book, entitled An Adventure (1911; Download AnAdventure_by Elizabeth Morison and Frances Lamont) under the pseudonyms of Elizabeth Morison and Frances Lamont.
Artist Maud de Brunhoe, the main character in Annie Goetzinger’s new graphic novel translated in English by NBM Publishing, is a bit like Moberly and Jourdain, with one main difference: she doesn't actually see the ghost of Marie Antoinette, at least she doesn't do so at the beginning of the story.
Goetzinger's Marie Antoinette, Phantom Queen (with a script by Rodolphe; originally published in French in 2011 and now available in English from NBM Publishing) opens on 5th October 1934 with Maud sketching in the grounds of the Petit Trianon. Following her dog Baba through the royal gardens of the Trianon Maud starts feeling a gloomy and dark atmosphere, but she can't see any ghosts.
Her psychic gift reveals indeed during an unexpected séance at a friend's house and, from then on, the ghost of a tormented Marie Antoinette will start sharing the account of her terrible fate.
After being guillotined, the Queen is said to have been thrown into a common grave, but exhumed later on and buried with her husband, Louis XVI, in the Saint-Denis basilica. The ghost tells Maud that her remains are instead still in the common grave and asks the painter to move her body to the right place to let her rest in peace. Maud decides to help her, but will have to be careful and avoid being considered mad by her friends and her greedy "stepchild" Remy.
Fashionistas into graphic novels may think this story doesn't share much with Goetzinger's Girl in Dior, but the author includes some wonderful fashion hints in the volume. Marie Antoinette gives Goetzinger the chance to create lavish historical costumes, while Maud is a stylish woman from the '30s, always elegantly and impeccably dressed. In one page readers will also be able to follow Maud to a catwalk show at Madeleine Vionnet's atelier.
The graphic novel is also recommended to architecture fans as Goetzinger illustrates palaces and buildings in great detail, without forgetting to draw with precision iconic interior design pieces in the scenes that show us Maud's house.
While the story is slightly different from Moberly and Jourdain's, the author acknowledges them in the graphic novel and Rodolphe also recounts in the introduction to the volume how he discovered An Adventure and passed it to Goetzinger.
Yet the timeslip in which the British women claimed they had fallen in is estended into a completely new plot in Marie Antoinette, Phantom Queen and this gives the author a wide range of possibilities.
Today it's 10th August, so you can celebrate the anniversary of this ghost story (and try to fall back into the timeslip that captured Moberly and Jourdain) by reading An Adventure (Download AnAdventure_by Elizabeth Morison and Frances Lamont), watching the TV movie about it - Miss Morison's Ghosts (1981) - or opting for this haunting and stylishly illustrated paranormal tale.
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