“Time slip” stories are fairly common
March 25, 2024 1:50 AM Subscribe

The story was so extraordinary that they decided to document a full account in book form. That account, titled An Adventure, was published in 1911. It became the literary sensation of its day, running to numerous editions. As incredible as the tale was, perhaps the most astonishing part was yet to be revealed, for Morison and Lamot did not exist. The real authors of An Adventure were Eleanor Jourdain and Charlotte Moberly, the Principal and Vice-Principal, respectively, of St Hugh’s College, University of Oxford—two highly esteemed academics hiding their names to protect their identities. from The Respected Oxford Professors Who Say They Time Traveled [Atlas Obscura]
posted by chavenet (16 comments total) 23 users marked this as a favorite

Dr. Amy H. Sturgis has a regular column on the sci-fi podcast Starship Sofa, and she's been covering timeslip stories over the month of march, including this one. Her focus is on a sort of orbit of women writers around Shirley Jackson over the past century, but she spent a long time on this report of the event at Versailles.
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 2:23 AM on March 25 [2 favorites]

The Public Domain Review

What really happened? Here’s one version: two women of uncommon intelligence spent decades asserting the validity of their particular shared experience. They fought tooth and nail to prove that they saw what they saw, that it mattered, that it was real, and that they were credible. It was an argument about ghosts, but it might not have been about ghosts at all.

posted by pracowity at 4:10 AM on March 25 [5 favorites]

That cocaine is a hell of a drug.
posted by Czjewel at 6:36 AM on March 25 [3 favorites]

The article only states that "Moberly and Jourdain remained close friends throughout their lives, and are buried just a few feet from each other in Wolvercote Cemetery, Oxford."
I think it's worth noting that they are also remembered as lesbians.
posted by Flight Hardware, do not touch at 7:17 AM on March 25 [15 favorites]

My favorite theory (aside from actual time slip) is that they stumbled into one of Robert de Montesquiou's LARPing/tableau vivant outings.
posted by audi alteram partem at 8:06 AM on March 25 [17 favorites]

they stumbled into one of Robert de Montesquiou's LARPing/tableau vivant outings.
As a LARPing sapphic woman, I hereby endorse this theory. Much better than one theory at the time that their hallucination was due to their lesbianism.
posted by Flight Hardware, do not touch at 8:17 AM on March 25 [8 favorites]

It would make for a memorable movie pitch.

Studio Exec: “So I understand that you’ve got a treatment for a time travel picture? That’s great, love it! What’s the gimmick? A flux capacitor like Back to the Future?”

Writer: “Nope!”

Exec: “Okay, maybe a wonky energy drink like Hot Tub Time Machine?”

Writer: “Nope!”

Exec: “Don’t leave me in suspense, it certainly can’t be two Edwardian ladies who scissor each other so hard they go back in time!”

Writer: Uncomfortable laughter
posted by dr_dank at 8:18 AM on March 25 [13 favorites]

Charlotte and Eleanor's Excellent Adventure (dir. Céline Sciamma, 20??)
posted by Strange Interlude at 8:42 AM on March 25 [13 favorites]

A long time ago, in Versaille
Some time-travelers wandered by
They say that they met
Marie Antoinette
And stared at some ugly old guy.
posted by MrVisible at 8:55 AM on March 25 [15 favorites]

First read about this in the Sci-Fi anthology from the 1940s, Adventures In Time And Space, in the Time Travel Happens! story by A.M. Phillips, which ends with

I should also like to add, for those who may read "An Adventure," that excellent color photographs of the park at Versailles, and of the grounds of the Trianon, can be seen in the National Geographic Magazine for January 1925. There clings to these scenes, it seems to me, an aura of strangeness, a shadowy suggestion of something beyond.

...which actually provoked me to acquire that issue, many years ago. The color rendering of that article's photographs, so poor to my modern eyes, eliminates any "auras of strangeness." (Far more interesting to me now is that issue's first article, "Seeing America from the Shenendoah," the first rigid US airship, lost in a terrible storm over Ohio later that year.)
posted by Rash at 9:56 AM on March 25 [5 favorites]

This is a classic time slip story for anyone who grew up obsessed with the paranormal, baroque not only because it involves the Gardens of Versailles, but baroque in itself as a paranormal experience... especially creative in that they claimed to have been slipped into both a prior point in time and a memory of Marie Antoinette from that point in time, but also so unlike many similar stories from the modern age where the ultimate focus is usually gaining (however narrow) fame and (however small) fortune. Jourdain and Moberly's motivation is tantalizingly opaque. Even the most sensible (and likely) interpretations are a delight to read.

I vividly remember reading about this over breakfast before junior high school, alone at that end of the house on a gloomy day, giving myself a very satisfying case of the willies looking out at the misty dawn backyard and imagining it suddenly peopled with figures from the distant past. Said distant past being, for me at that age and time, people from the 1950s wandering around the farms and fields that my suburb had lately been. The following week I no doubt spooked myself at breakfast imagining a UFO landing in the selfsame backyard.

Charlotte and Eleanor's Excellent Adventure

haha! I'd go with "Celine and Julie Go Ghostbusting"
posted by lefty lucky cat at 10:17 AM on March 25 [12 favorites]

This makes me think of one of my favorite time slip stories: Harry Martindale, in York. A plumber, did not believe in ghosts at the time until he found himself face to face with a Roman legion.
posted by rednikki at 11:30 AM on March 25 [5 favorites]

I love this!

Nanukthedog, I've had that series in my wish list for a long while, but hadn't encountered anyone I "knew" who'd actually read them. Bumping them up!
posted by The Wrong Kind of Cheese at 9:17 PM on March 25 [1 favorite]

Pulpy fun - they read quick. There are some solid twists and probably one of the neatest time travel theories / uses ever. And there are details that are just conceptually funny for academia. I mean... "borrowing" a few trinkets, plates, and documents and stashing them somewhere so they can excavate the site later is a solid strategy for funding.
posted by Nanukthedog at 5:07 AM on March 26 [2 favorites]

Seconding the St. Mary's collection. Good fun, solid plots.
posted by cooker girl at 9:00 AM on March 26 [1 favorite]

« Older Dr. Ala Stanford | Some hold that the spice produces a learned-flavor... Newer »

This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments

MetaFilter

“Time slip” stories are fairly common
March 25, 2024 1:50 AM Subscribe

Tags

Share

“Time slip” stories are fairly common March 25, 2024 1:50 AM Subscribe

Tags

Share

“Time slip” stories are fairly common
March 25, 2024 1:50 AM Subscribe