Fraudsters and Charlatans (31 page)

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 of 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.

William Fitzgerald had been sent to Switzerland, where presumably he was able to establish for himself how thoroughly he had been duped. Despite this he felt able to hold on to his £500 until such time as ‘you [the
Chronicle
] disprove de Rougemont's residence among the blacks'.
⁶²

By now, Newnes himself was under attack.
The London Morning
commented: ‘Sir George Newnes' reputation for a high-minded straightforwardness, which until now no man has had a right to call into question, is in danger of being tarnished . . . everybody will be glad to see him shake himself free from the coils of a deception to which he could never for one instant have been a consciously assenting party.'
⁶³
Newnes Ltd was obliged to insert a printed slip into the November magazine, stating: ‘Since this magazine went to press, certain evidence has come to light which causes us to publicly state that we do not vouch for the truth of this story, although portions of it are admittedly based upon real experiences.'
⁶⁴

As more information about Grin accumulated, so some mysteries were explained. The reason for his absence from England in the summer of 1898 was not an attempt to trace his family – he knew exactly where they were to be found and had used some of his new wealth to visit them and an old sweetheart in Switzerland, where he boasted of his prosperity, which he claimed had come not from writing, but from inventions, one of which he said was a diving apparatus. The
Chronicle
also discovered the origins of his assumed name. One of Grin's youthful friends in Yverdon had been a poor man who nevertheless bore the distinguished name of de Rougemont. No doubt this appealed to Louis a great deal more than his real name: one of his sons in Sydney bore the name Cecil de Rougemont Grien. The picture was complete with the discovery that two of his daughters there were called Blanche and Gladys.

The introduction to the December issue was more apologetic.

Wide World
is a magazine started with the avowed intention of publishing true stories of actual experiences and avoiding fiction. ‘The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont' were commenced under the belief that they were the true account of the life of the author. It now turns out that it is not possible for him to have been thirty years among the savages as stated. . . . after what has transpired, we wish it to be distinctly understood that we do not publish it as a true narrative, but only as it is given to us by the author, leaving it to the members of the public to believe as much or as little as they please. . . . We may conclude, in the witty lines of the
World
: ‘Truth is stranger than fiction.' But de Rougemont is stranger than both.
⁶⁵

Wide World Magazine
continued to prosper. Sir George Newnes announced at the Annual General Meeting in July 1899 that sales were still increasing and the de Rougemont affair had not injured the magazine. De Rougemont ‘wrote an interesting story which the public liked to read, and if the writer had only said at the outset that it was founded on fact, instead of claiming that every line was absolutely true, nobody would have had any ground for complaint'.
⁶⁶
The words seem to contain a note of irritation, and indeed the whole episode had caused no little annoyance, yet Newnes's biographer, Hulda Friederichs, believed that Newnes ‘always retained a sort of unwilling admiration for the man'.
⁶⁷
In the following month Newnes, eager to wring the last penny out of the fiasco, published
The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont
in book form, priced at 6
s
. A comparison with the original articles reveals that a bolder editorial pen was used for the book. The ‘toothsome' cannibalistic ‘dainty' had become a ‘fearsome dainty'
⁶⁸
and the flying wombats are no more – the suggestion of one of de Rougemont's supporters that they might have been ‘bats or flying foxes'
⁶⁹
was accepted verbatim.

Hugh Mill felt that the affair had ‘brought undeserved aspersions on the Association and its officers';
⁷⁰
indeed,
The Sketch
had commented that ‘it is now generally understood among men of science that this is the beginning of the end with the British Association. Henceforth it will only be recognised as a third-rate picnic.'
⁷¹
The Association did recover its reputation, but from time to time Mill and Keltie would be distressed by unfounded claims that they had somehow been in collaboration with de Rougemont. Mill, writing in his autobiography many years later, stated that he and Keltie had been asked only to test the truth of de Rougemont's statement that he had been to Australia. He also claimed that he had opposed the British Association's acceptance of the talks, but the decision to go ahead was carried by a majority.