While preparing a ficititious biography for a friend’s soon-to-be-published first book, I came across Louis De Rougemont, a.k.a. Henri Louis Grin
His story is plenty weird enough to qualify for a blog post. Follow the link to see the long version at Wikipedia, but I have to quote a couple of bits here:
In 1898 he began to write about his invented adventures in the British periodical The Wide World Magazine under the name Louis De Rougemont. He described his alleged exploits in search of pearls and gold in New Guinea and claimed to have spent thirty years living with Indigenous Australians in the Australian outback. He claimed that the tribe with whom he had lived had worshipped him as a god. He also claimed to have encountered the Gibson expedition of 1874.
Various readers expressed disbelief in his tales from the start, for example, claiming that no one can actually ride a turtle.
This is from later in the entry:
In July 1906 De 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.
Aside from the “in your eye!” factor of proving his turtle riding skills, you have to love the impressive through-line of that paragraph. Sequitors not required.
Rougemont’s self-authored work THE ADVENTURES OF LOUIS DE ROUGEMONT is available from Project Gutenberg.
Here’s the chapter head from Chapter 1:
Early life–Leaving home–I meet Jensen–I go pearling–Daily
routine–Submarine beauties–A fortune in pearls–Seized by an
octopus–Shark-killing extraordinary–Trading with the natives–
Impending trouble–Preparing for the attack–Baffling the savages.
By Chapter 8, he’s a cannibal war chief:
In the throes of fever–A ghastly discovery–Pitiful relics–A
critical moment–Yamba in danger–A blood bath–A luxury indeed–
Signs of civilisation–The great storm–Drifting, drifting–Yamba’s
mysterious glee–A dreadful shock–“Welcome home!”–My official
protectors–Myself as a cannibal war chief–Preparations for
battle–A weird apparition–Generosity to the vanquished–The old
desire.
The ending’s a bit anticlimactic, though.
