THEY WERE NOT ON A GRAND TOUR FOR 11 YEARS - THEY WERE BACK BY 1788

It is impossible for Jane and Mary Parminter and their companions to have been on a Grand Tour for the eleven years from 1784 to 1795. They almost certainly travelled into France in June/July 1784 together with Jane’s sister Elizabeth, and another female companion who is not as yet identified, and there is no evidence that the four women were otherwise accompanied. Reverend Reichel refers to a concerned enquiry about Elizabeth’s health during the journey, recorded in Jane’s now lost diary. Elizabeth is often described as an “invalid”, although the source of this information is unclear, and the length of the supposed tour is defined by Elizabeth’s death, reportedly in 1795, being shortly after the women’s return and immediately prior to the beginning of work on the A la Ronde project.

In fact, Elizabeth Parminter was in England on 4th October 1788, which is the date of her last will and testament. She appoints her brother John, and her sisters Marianne Friend and Jane as her executors, which in the case of Jane would have been an unusual step if Jane had been out of the English jurisdiction for over four years with no plans to return, and also if she was known to be moving between foreign locations with the obvious limitations of late eighteenth century travel and communication. Whether or not Jane and Mary went abroad for periods of time before 1795, they cannot have been continuously engaged as a group of four as has previously been believed, nor is it likely that Elizabeth returned to England without them. This evidence points to the women having settled back in England within four years of the known trip to France.

What is certain is that neither Jane nor Elizabeth was outside England on 7th June 1791. Elizabeth died in 1791, not 1795 as is commonly reported, and probate was granted on that date in London on the live oaths of Jane and Marianne, their brother John Parminter apparently being absent. Elizabeth died at thirty-five years of age, in a family in which many of the women lived long lives by the standards of the times in which they lived: for example their grandmother, Jane Lavington, who lived to seventy-six, and Mary Parminter who lived to eighty-two. Whatever had happened before 1791, I think it unlikely that touring would have resumed after the early death of a much loved sister and cousin to whom Jane, and probably Mary, were very closely attached.

These facts beg the question: if not engaged in a hyper-extended Grand Tour, where were Jane and Mary in the years before the construction of A la Ronde? In particular, did Jane and Mary live together somewhere else? And why has this period fallen out of the history?