In February 1853, the young aristocrat Sir Roger Tichborne left England for South America hoping to soften the disappointment of a failed marriage proposal to his pretty cousin Katherine Doughty. Roger had just turned twenty-four. He was slender, spoiled, and dissolute, prone to heavy drinking and the racy novels of Paul de Kock. His French mother had raised him entirely in her own country over the objections of his English father, so that he “reached the age of sixteen ill-educated, friendless and barely able to speak a word of English.” But when his uncle Henry died in 1849, making him third in line to the title, his father acted decisively to send him to England and finish his education so that he would, should occasion arise, make a proper English baronet.But Roger pressed on with his travels, to Santiago, Lima, Buenos Aires, and Rio de Janeiro.