The Parminter Ladies' Grand Tour

During the first week the ladies explored Montreuil, Abbeville, Clocher, Flixcourt, Piquigny (Pecquigny), Amiens, Marigny (Wavignies), St Just (Saint-Just-en-Chaussée), Clermont and Chantilly. The Duc de Conde’s Cabinet of Curiosities at the Château de Chantilly with its ‘spar coral, amber, Crystal, Seeds of plants, shells, and many other natural Curiosities’ particularly captured Jane’s attention. Seeing collections such as these may have influenced their own cabinet of curiosities.

Then on to Paris, where the ladies visited lots of churches, the Gobelins tapestry factory and the Tuileries gardens. Jane particularly admired the Eglise du Dome at Les Invalides, with its central domed space and satellite chapels. Similar to the Basilica of St Vitale at Ravenna, these buildings probably inspired the design of A la Ronde.

Tourism in those days was not for the faint hearted. Food and accommodation were often pretty grim. The itinerary that the ladies followed was the 1784 edition of the Liste Générale des Postes de France. In Paris, the party endured ‘a very dirty Inn indeed, the staircase shaking, the maids bold and impertinent, the treatment sparing and the charge extravagant.’

On a visit to Versailles, Jane admired the tall and elegant figure of Marie Antoinette, although the King left her cold. At St. Cloud she rather disapproved of the formal gardens, noting: ‘I had rather see a natural stream dripp from a natural rock in its own wild meandering gushings.’ However, she liked Madame du Barry’s house and garden at Marly.

On 6 August the party were on the road through the bandit infested Fontainebleau Forest to Dijon, where ten days sightseeing are recorded. Here, sadly, the extracts from Jane’s diary cease. Fortunately, we can use other evidence to trace the travellers’ probable route through Switzerland, Southern Germany and into Italy.

We know from contemporary accounts that Jane and Mary can claim to be the first women to climb an alpine peak exceeding 3,000 metres in height. In the summer of 1786 they scaled Mont Buet, although Elizabeth was too delicate to reach the summit with them. Evidently the fourth member of the party had returned home by then.

Elizabeth was in England by October 1788, when she made her will. She died shortly afterwards. Legal documents also confirm that Jane was in London in June 1791.

The souvenirs that the party brought home from their Grand Tour, still to be seen at A la Ronde, provide the evidence for the other places that these intrepid ladies visited.