Louis de Rougemont
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Louis de Rougemont (1847 – 1921) was a would-be explorer who claimed to have had adventures in the Pacific Ocean.
"Rougemont" was born Henri Louis Grin in 1847 in Suchy, Switzerland. He left home at the age of sixteen. He became a footman to an actress Fanny Kemble, servant to a Swiss banker de Mieville in 1870 and a butler for the governor of Australia Sir William Robinson. In the latest job he lasted less than a year.
He tried various ventures with very little success. He impersonated as a doctor, photographer and, of course, an inventor. He also married and abandoned a wife in Australia.
In 1898 he began to write about his invented adventures to British Wild World Magazine with the name Louis de Rougemont. He described his alleged exploits in search of pearls and gold in New Guinea and a thirty-years long life among Australian aborigines in the Outback. He claimed that natives had worshiped him as a god. He also claimed to have passed the Gibson expedition of 1874.
Various readers expressed disbelief from the start, for example, claiming that no one can actually ride a turtle. Rougemont had also claimed to see flight of wombats. Also the fact that he could not place his travels on the map aroused suspicion. Readers' arguments in the pages of Daily Chronicle continued for months.
Rougemont subjected himself to examination by the Royal Geographical Society. He claimed that he had signed a non-disclosure agreement with a syndicate that wanted to exploit the gold he had found so he could not tell where he had been. He also refused to talk about aboriginal languages he had supposedly learned. Still his supporters continued to find precedents to his exploits.
After September 1898 Daily Chronicle announced that a certain F.W. Solomon had recognized De Rougemont and known him as Louis Green who had presented himself as an entrepreneur. Grin had collected tidbits for his exploits from the Reading Room of the British Library.
Grin tried to defend himself by a letter, using his original name, in which he expressed his consternation that anybody would confuse him with Louis de Rougemont. Daily Chronicle was very willing to publish the letter. The Wide World Magazine just exploited the situation and prepared a Christmas double issue. Sales of both papers soared. Rougemont himself disappeared from the public view.
In July 1906 Rougemont appeared at the London Hippodrome and successfully demonstrated his turtle-riding skills. During World War I he reappeared as an inventor of a useless meat substitute. He died a poor man in 1921.
Books:
- Geoffrey Maslen: The Most Amazing Story a Man Ever Lived to Tell (1977)
External link
- The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont (http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/1194) from Project Gutenberg