While experts argued about the size of octopi or whether it was possible to ride a turtle, and others just wanted to recover the buried pearls, the Chronicle took a commendably practical view on the mystery and sent its Paris correspondent to check the registers of baptisms. On 19 September it announced to its readers that no trace had been found of the birth or baptism of Louis de Rougemont in Paris between 1840 and 1849. Moreover, the Boulevard Haussmann, where he was supposed to have been brought up, had not existed when de Rougemont was a child. Senior members of the de Rougemont family had been asked if they could identify the traveller from his published portraits, but denied any knowledge of him. It looked increasingly probable that the mysterious adventurer had lied about his name. Criticism in the newspapers was hardening. Becke, having established that, apart from any minor errors that might have crept into the manuscript, it was published essentially as related, now cast considerable doubts on de Rougemont’s ability to handle the schooner as claimed, while David Carnegie, an Australian explorer and prospector who had substantial experience of portable condensers, could not see how a simple kettle could produce enough pure water to keep alive a man and a dog and later the four aboriginals as well. Another letter pointed out that, as the wombat is a burrowing marsupial, it could hardly rise in clouds. ‘How could his editor allow such an absurd statement to appear?’40
Keltie and Mill, backtracking with remarkable rapidity, wrote to the Chronicle saying that they had questioned de Rougemont solely on the nature of the land and the habits of the people, and found his replies ‘in the main accordant with published statements of reputable travellers’.41 In view, however, of the sensational manner in which the story was presented, they had contacted the publisher and asked for their names to be withdrawn.
Wide World Magazine easily weathered the criticism, presumably taking the view of many of de Rougemont’s supporters that, since his experiences were apparently unique, there was no one sufficiently qualified to contradict him. That October, in the introduction to the November instalment, the editor promised ‘some truly amazing developments of the story … Arrangements are already being made for its translation into every European language from Spain to Sweden. M de Rougemont begs his hundreds of thousands of friends not to think him discourteous if he is at present obliged, though pressure of work, to decline all social engagements, lecture arrangements, etc etc.’42
Although the editor was later reluctant to reveal how the published ‘Adventures’ had affected sales, an advertising circular issued that month claimed that ‘No magazine which has been published during the past quarter of a century can claim such a startling increase of circulation as has followed the appearance of this periodical. In less than seven months we are able to announce a solid sale of 400,000 copies per issue.’43
Meanwhile, issues of the magazine had been eagerly bought in Australia, where there was considerable excitement over de Rougemont’s claim to have discovered Gibson. A sketch of the author appeared in the Sydney Daily Telegraph, which resulted in a number of people visiting the newspaper offices to say that they recognised the subject. All gave the same name, Henri Louis Grien, sometimes spelled Grein or even anglicised to Green. He had lived in Sydney, and had gone from there to New Zealand the previous year, leaving behind him a wife and family. Grien, it was said, had a wonderful gift for spinning yarns and often spoke of his pearl fishing adventures and time spent among the savages. The Sydney Evening News located Mrs Grien, a fair-complexioned lady in her early thirties who, shown a picture of Louis de Rougemont, readily identified him as her husband, from whom she had been separated for about two years. The newspapers also located Grien’s lodgings in Sydney, and were told that, after his departure, letters had arrived there from his brother, Pastor François Grin of Suchy in Switzerland. The final pieces of the puzzle began to fall into place. Soon, cables were passing back and forth between Australian newspapers and the London Daily Chronicle, which was rapidly accumulating information that would finally expose the truth about Louis de Rougemont.
Louis de Rougemont’s first public lecture took place at St James’ Hall, Piccadilly, on 3 October 1898. Newnes Ltd advertised the event, stating that the speaker would ‘answer a number of the important questions which have been lately put in the newspapers’.44 Fitzgerald had told a visiting reporter that he was sure de Rougemont could clear up all the queries. He admitted that his protégé had used the name Green in Australia. Forgetting that de Rougemont had claimed only two weeks earlier not to be able to recall the name of the tea firm he had worked for, he said that the firm was called Green and that de Rougemont had used the name while in their employ.
On the platform at the distinguished occasion were Sir George Newnes, Mr Henniker Heaton and Mr Atherley-Jones QC MP. At first, the talk was, to many, a disappointment. Much of the material had already been covered in the pages of Wide World Magazine, and the speaker was reluctant to anticipate anything that had yet to be published. Queried by the more critical elements in the audience, he excused the size of the octopus as a boyish exaggeration. On the absence of his birth from the Paris registers he could say only that this was where he had believed he had been born. To those who questioned the details of his wanderings he pleaded ignorance of the geography of the area. As the audience filed out, a man rose and asked if de Rougemont would show his arms, a suggestion that caused immediate uproar. The speaker hesitated. ‘If the request had been made in any place but this’, he began, but the rest of his sentence was drowned by cries of derision. ‘But as it is made here, I will show it!’ he went on.45 He then removed his coat and pulled back the sleeves of his shirt to show tanned arms with no sign of any convict markings. What had been a disappointing evening turned into a personal triumph as he received three hearty cheers. Despite his triumph, the ‘marvellous man’ developed cold feet about presenting himself for public questioning a second time, and abruptly cancelled the remainder of his appearances, to the annoyance of André, who instructed his solicitors to take legal proceedings. On 7 October Madame Tussauds waxworks advertised its latest sensation: ‘The Modern Robinson Crusoe, taken from life, M. Louis de Rougemont’.46
It was not only in Australia that people had recognised Louis de Rougemont’s portrait in Wide World Magazine. In London several readers recalled a shabbily dressed man who in the spring of 1898 had approached them asking for financial assistance to develop an invention. On 5 October William May, a noted Australian salvage diver, walked into the Chronicle offices. He was visiting friends in London and had heard about a city firm being approached about a diving apparatus. The story had a familiar ring. He was shown the August issue of Wide World Magazine with de Rougemont’s portrait, a tactical error on the Chronicle’s part, since May, in common with so many others, was at once so amused and diverted by the story that there was great difficulty in bringing his attention back to the subject in hand. He confirmed that the portrait was of a Mr Green he had known in Sydney for three or four years. Green, he said, was a member of a firm called McQuillan (spelt McQuellan in the Australian newspapers) and Green, which had been trying, with some success, to get interested parties to invest in a new design of diving apparatus. Made of copper, it consisted of a frame with holes through which the diver passed his arms, and on to the apparatus was screwed an ordinary diving helmet. It had, said May, one defect: ‘It gave the diver about four and a half pounds of air to live upon when he wanted about thirty. One day, about two years ago, I was asked to inspect the invention. I did so; and I said to the firm that in my opinion they had discovered a highly successful murdering machine.’47 The apparatus had been tested in January 1897, when a Dane, Christien Madsen, dived from a steamer off Dawes Point. Fifteen minutes later he was brought to the surface dead. It was ‘Green’ who had been holding the end of the exhaust pipe. An inquest later found that Madsen’s death was the result of a collapsed spine resulting from an old injury.
May said that when he had first met ‘Green’ in Sydney in 1895 he had s
eemed to be a settled inhabitant and did not appear to have just returned from a long sojourn in the wilderness. The Chronicle sent a telegram to the Sydney Daily Telegraph asking how long Grien had lived in Sydney and the age of his eldest child. The reply was short but revealing: ‘Seventeen years. Frequently away. Eldest child fourteen.’48 As the Chronicle succinctly put it: ‘the names he had given in the Wide World Magazine do not fit, the dates do not fit, the story does not fit’.49 The claim to have spent thirty years in the wilderness was clearly unrealistic.
On 7 October the Chronicle finally identified Louis de Rougemont to its readership. His real name was Henri Louis Grin, and he had been born in Gressy, Switzerland, in November 1847, later going to live in Yverdon. Over the next few days the paper published more of the history of Henri Louis Grin, eventually compiling the story into a book, illustrated by Punch artist Phil May. Grin’s father, far from being a wealthy merchant, was a notorious drunkard who had hanged himself in prison in 1885. From his earliest years, Louis, as he was usually known, loved stories of adventure and told yarns to anyone who would listen. Leaving home at the age of 17, he obtained a post as travel courier to the actress Fanny Kemble, who was often in Switzerland and was then undertaking reading tours. By 1870 he was in England, where he spent some time in service with the de Miévilles, an Yverdon family with a house in London, and accompanied his master on his travels. While he was diligent and useful, he was unpopular, having ‘overbearing and superior ways’.50 He was particularly insolent towards hotel servants and customs officials, and was once caught trying to smuggle watches in his master’s luggage. It is not known when he left the de Miévilles, but the 1871 London census finds Louis Grin, aged 24, as a house servant with the family of retired merchant John Alexander at 49 Porchester Terrace, Paddington. Early in 1875 he was on the move again, having obtained a place in the household of the Governor of Western Australia, Sir W.C.F. Robinson. While in service at Perth, he waited on tables at elegant dinners where the governor entertained well-known explorers and heard their tales of adventure. In a year he had lost his place, but had accumulated savings with which he might himself taste the adventurous life. At least one part of his adventure stories was possibly true. Captain Jensen did exist and Louis Grien, as he was now calling himself, may have been a pearl fisherman. Their vessel was wrecked in approximately 1877; from then until 1880, Louis’s family had no knowledge of him. During that interval, as the Chronicle admitted, it was possible that Grin had actually lived with an aboriginal tribe and taken a native wife.
He arrived in Sydney around 1880 and was obliged to live off his wits. ‘Our friend is, in fact, well-known in the Antipodes for inventing marvellous projects and floating wild-cat schemes,’ the Chronicle revealed. ‘He has, as we learn from the “Sydney Telegraph”, formed various mining syndicates at different times, which have uniformly failed.’51 In Sydney he was employed by businessman James Murphy as a tout to sell small plots of land on the Holt-Sutherland Estate. In 1881 he met a Miss Ravenscourt, then only 15 years old, whose parents kept a fancy goods shop. He courted her, and they were married in 1883. Seven children were born, of whom three died in infancy. The couple later separated.
Henri Louis Grin arrived in England in March 1898 on the SS Waikato, with ‘no more luggage than would fill a matchbox’,52 having worked his passage as a stoker from Wellington, New Zealand. He had whiled away spare moments on the voyage by telling adventure yarns and conducting spiritualistic séances. He was later to claim that spirits had warned him not to travel on the SS Mataura, which was wrecked in the Straits of Magellan in January – with all hands, according to Grin, but in actuality with no loss of life. He had family in London, a married sister and a maternal aunt. Presumably they were unable to assist him, since he took modest lodgings at 5 Frith Street and considered how he might make a living.
He first tried to raise money to develop the diving suit he had previously worked on in Australia, which he registered at the Patent Office in April. Using the name de Rougemont, he called on Swiss businessmen and families, carrying with him letters of recommendation purporting to come from a Bishop called either Grien or Grin. As he had no model or even drawings of the apparatus, and his description was unconvincing, he was unsuccessful. The firm of Heinke and Co., marine engineers, dismissed him as a crank and thought no more of his visit until recognising his portrait in Wide World Magazine. De Rougemont had claimed that the apparatus had been lost in the wreck of the SS Mataura, but according to William May it was still in a machinery shop in Sydney. Although Australian newspapers attributed the invention of the apparatus to McQuellan, May believed that ‘Green’ was the inventor and that McQuellan had provided the finance. Either way, de Rougemont’s rights to exploit the invention may have been as illusory as his flying wombats.
The second string to his bow was photography, in which he had some skill, but he was unable to find much work in that line. His claim to be an artist was equally fruitless – his art was no more than making drawings from photographs. He was commissioned to make a portrait of the head of a Swiss firm, with the assumption that he would produce an original drawing, but his avoidance of appointments for a sitting and repeated requests for a photograph aroused suspicion, and this too came to nothing. His third idea was to write a book. He sought the advice of his brother, who had published a number of books, but he wisely advised him that authorship was not an easy way to make his fortune.
It was at this low ebb that he at last had a stroke of luck. He chanced to bump into James Murphy, who had come to England to exploit the Western Australian financial boom, and told him about his attempts to make money. Whether it was the ties of friendship or something about Grin that Murphy saw could be exploited is unclear, but Grin left his shabby lodgings to share Murphy’s apartments at 13 Bloomsbury Street. As the idea of the book took shape, it must have been apparent that it would be better and probably easier to publish as true memoirs rather than as fiction. Grin obtained a reader’s pass for the British Museum under his real name, and soon his slight gaunt figure and heavily seamed face became well known in the reading room, where he devoured books of travel and adventure.
Before meeting Mr Henniker Heaton, he had taken his story to a number of potential patrons, including a Mr Townend, a well-known Australian journalist, who asked the very pointed question ‘whether M de Rougemont’s statement was in effect that he had for twenty or thirty years been trying to get back to civilisation and had failed’.53 On being told it was, he declined to accept the story.
Throughout the publication of these revelations, de Rougemont, according to an English acquaintance who preferred to remain anonymous, maintained his good spirits, making light of the Chronicle’s attacks. ‘He had a patronising manner when he chose, and I fancy it has carried him a good bit in the world.’54 On 7 October de Rougemont and Murphy called upon the acquaintance, who commented ‘it’s getting pretty hot, isn’t it?’55 ‘Oh,’ said Mr Murphy, ‘we have a complete answer – a complete answer’, a sentiment echoed by de Rougemont. ‘You had better get it out, for the thing is a long distance past an advertisement for you,’ replied the acquaintance emphatically. As the two men left, de Rougemont turned back and exclaimed: ‘You understand: all engagements cancelled!’56 They left and never returned.
The Chronicle was blunt: ‘Sir George Newnes can do nothing else but stop this egregious imposture, and leave this strange creature, who has gulled even the British Association, to the derision of the public.’57 It denounced the syndicate as a myth, and demanded Fitzgerald’s £500, which it proposed should be invested for the benefit of the abandoned wife and family in Sydney. Sir George Newnes, however, maintaining that the groundwork of the story was true and that the public wanted to read it, relentlessly went ahead and published the remaining instalments. The November number had already been printed, and Newnes was naturally unwilling to sustain the loss of withdrawing the entire issue. A Norwegian paper was less accommodating. It had bought the copyright o
f the story, and in mid-October ceased to publish it.
Further information arrived. On 11 October a colonial gentleman called at the Chronicle’s offices to say that he had known Louis Grien in Sydney in 1879. He and an old seafaring man called Jensen owned a small sloop, and it was believed that the two were engaged in ‘black-birding’, the kidnapping of men from the South Pacific islands to labour in Australian sugar-cane plantations. The Chronicle commented that Grin’s ‘available leisure as a “cannibal chief” is growing very narrow indeed’,58 and the paper later decided to ‘withdraw its admission that he lived for any notable time out of touch with civilized men’.59
There was one last attempt to prove that the Chronicle’s conclusions were untrue. On 12 October an undated letter signed ‘H.L. Grin’ with no address was received by the editor, the writer claiming that he was a private person who had never called himself de Rougemont or lived with savage people, and that it was the details of his life and not that of the author of the ‘Adventures’ that the Chronicle had been publishing. ‘We do not suppose anyone will be deceived by this silly trick,’ commented the editor.60 The writer of the letter was invited to attend the offices of the Chronicle, which stated: ‘We shall publish anything he has to say.’61 The writer did not appear. On 13 October Henri Louis Grin left his Bloomsbury lodgings without any luggage other than a rug, and bought a ticket to Lausanne.
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