ÉMILIE SAGÉE

Opening

In 1845 a French teacher named Emilie Sagee was hired at the Pensionnat of Neuwelcke in Livonia, a Moravian school for girls of Baltic families. She was thirty-two, fair, from Dijon by the later telling. Julie von Guldenstubbe, thirteen, was in the class. One day Sagee wrote on the board and the girls saw two of her: one with chalk, one without, the same gestures. That is the first double. It was not the last that year.

The story reaches print in 1860 through Robert Dale Owen, who had it from the Guldenstubbe line. Camille Flammarion and Alexander Aksakov pass it on. Everything flows through Julie. Forty-two young women were said to be in the house. We have one named witness on the page.

Timeline

1845-46, Neuwelcke, then in Livonia, now LatviaSagee takes a post. Pupils notice a second figure at lessons, at meals, in the garden while the living woman is seen elsewhere in the grounds. One account puts her gathering flowers while the double sits in her chair in class. Strength is said to drain when the double is out. The school loses pupils. She loses the post. Nineteen prior places are claimed in the later chain, which is a large number to take on trust.

1857-60Owen collects the story from Julie's family and publishes Footfalls on the Boundary of Another World. That book is the tap. Flammarion and Aksakov drink from it.

No 1845 school minute book has surfaced in public with Sagee's dismissal written in a rector's hand. No Dijon civil register is tied cleanly to the woman in Owen. The case lives on a memoir chain.

Later occult encyclopedias repeat the class of thirteen and the garden. They do not add a second independent 1845 pen.

Key figures

Emilie Sagee is the teacher, if the name on Owen's page is hers. She is said not to have seen the double herself, which is either the saddest detail or the tell.

Julie von Guldenstubbe is the only direct pupil named. Thirteen in 1845, source for the rest of her life.

The other girls are a crowd in the telling. They do not sign the 1860 chapter.

Owen is the writer who made the pensionnat a classic. He is later than the slate.

Physical and documentary trail

The trail:

One: the blackboard incident as Julie told it, two Sagees, one writing, one mimicking.

Two: further doubles in garden and classroom the same season, always through the same witness line.

Three: the school's reported loss of pupils and Sagee's reported dismissal.

Four: Owen's 1860 chapter drawn from the Guldenstubbes.

There is no 1845 letter from another named girl. There is no staff log. There is no image.

They were exactly alike; and they used the same gestures, only that the real person held a bit of chalk in her hand, and did actually write, while the double had no chalk.

Things you might not know

• She was 32. Sagée is said to have been hired as the French teacher in 1845, at that age.
• The school had 42 pupils. Most were daughters of noble Livonian families.
• Thirty of them left. After eighteen months only 12 of the 42 remained, and she was asked to resign.
• It was her nineteenth post. On being let go she is supposed to have said: "Ah! the nineteenth time! It is very, very hard to bear!"
• The witness was thirteen. Julie von Güldenstubbe was a schoolgirl at the time, and the whole story rests on her account.
• Flammarion went looking for her. He found no Sagée family in the Dijon registers, only an Octavie Saget born on the same day, 3 January 1813, who might be her.

Competing explanations

Bilocation as reported. This is Julie's class. It has many implied witnesses and one named pen. It has no second 1845 document.

Optical or nervous contagion in a boarding school. Possible among tired girls and a striking teacher. The garden-and-classroom split is the part this reading works hardest for.

A tale grown in spiritualist hands between 1845 and 1860. Owen's chain is long enough for embroidery. It is also the only chain we have.

Later life of the case

After Owen printed it in 1860, the story passed to Camille Flammarion and Alexander Aksakov and from them into nearly every book of doubles and doppelgängers, usually with the thirteen girls and the garden. Each retelling still traces back to Julie von Guldenstubbe's memory. For another story that has survived on a single line of chroniclers, see the Green Children.

Finding

Girls at Neuwelcke said Emilie Sagee stood at a blackboard in 1845 and also stood beside herself without chalk, and Julie von Guldenstubbe carried that sentence until Owen printed it. A schoolgirl does not need a double to make a teacher memorable.

What still will not resolve: a second named pupil on an 1845 page, or a school book that records the dismissal in a rector's hand.