I have the whimsical notion that Zadie Smith was one day reading a novel combining two plot lines across different time scales (Possession, perhaps, or Alias Grace) and thought “hold my coat”. Because The Fraud combines three different plot and time lines. Firstly and centrally we have the fascinating story of the ‘fraud’ of the title, also known as ‘the claimant’ or ‘the Tichborne heir’. This is Arthur Orton, who in 1866 came forward to claim to be the missing heir to the Tichborne baronetcy and the estate that came with the title.
Roger Tichborne, heir to the family’s title and fortunes, went missing after the ship he was travelling in in South America was shipwrecked with the loss of all on board. His mother refused to believe her son was dead, and after hearing rumours that he had survived and somehow travelled to Australia, she advertised for him in Australian newspapers, offering a reward. Years later a butcher from Wagga Wagga came forward claiming to be Tichborne. He was accepted by Lady Tichborne as her son, although other family members were unconvinced. Imposters claiming to be long lost nobility are nothing new, but this story had just the right combination of elements, at just the right time. It quickly because a case people identified with, a battle between the ‘common man’ and ‘the establishment’. This is of course bizarre, because if Orton was Tichborne as he claimed he was a quintessential part of the establishment, but then again that hasn’t stopped Donald Trump portraying himself as an outsider or Nigel Farage as a man of the people. (In the additional material provided in the Waterstones edition of the hardback, Smith specifically mentions Trump as a source of inspiration for the novel, and while she isn’t explicit about this it is surely in the hysterical way people support Trump/Tichborne no matter how outrageous his lies). Because the striking things about the Tichborne claimant was the profound unlikelihood of his claim. He was strikingly different from every report of the heir including in his dramatically different appearance, the languages he spoke, and his knowledge of his early life and family. His claim in other words was laughably implausible, but that didn’t stop thousands of people believing in him utterly, donating large amounts of money to his cause, travelling to his public rallies, and agitating on his behalf. The more his lies were exposed the more people believed in him, seeing every bit of evidence against him as further proof of a grand conspiracy to deprive him of his legacy. As well as the comparisons with Trump there are also similarities with the flat-earth conspiracy theorists who see every photograph of the curvature of the earth as proof of NASA’s far-reaching ability to control ‘fake news’.
The story of the Tichborne case is told from the perspective of Mrs Touchet, a regular attendee at his two, long-running trials, first to hear his original claim to the baronetcy, and subsequently his criminal trial for perjury. This is our way into the second storyline, following the history of the family of the (real) Victorian novelist William Ainsworth. Ainsworth was a contemporary of Dickens, Thackeray, Disraeli, Walter Scott and a host of other figures from Victorian literary society. Mrs Touchet is his cousin, housekeeper and occasional lover. By the time of the trial Ainsworth is a forgotten figure, still churning out worthless novels (he had over 40 published in his lifetime). Mrs Touchet portrays him as rather pathetic by this stage, even though authors such as Thackeray wrote large numbers of novels largely for the income they provided without becoming a figure of ridicule. Several extracts from his novels are held up to the reader for examination with the implication that they are terrible. This felt unfair – taken out of context this is not a difficult trick to play on just about any author. Every generation will have their jobbing writers whose work fades away quickly after their death, and sometimes before. But you would never know from reading Mrs Touchet’s account that Ainsworth remains in print to this day and first editions of his better known works are available from booksellers for thousands of pounds. Not the cringingly bad literary failure she describes him as, a judgment in which Smith seems to concur – nothing is ever offered by way of corrective to Mrs Touchet’s criticisms.
Mrs Touchet is a widow, and sees in the Tichborne trials (although she is convinced Orton/Tichborne is a fraud) some reflections of her own, rather diminished situation, always in the shadow of her child-like cousin. Mrs Touchet is a political radical and a passionate supporter of the anti-slave trade movement, which continued to campaign long after slave trading was abolished across the British Empire (initially slave trading was abolished, and it was not until several years later that slave ownership was criminalised). One of the Claimant’s long-standing advocates was a former slave and then manservant working for the Tichborne family, Mr Andrew Bogle. Mrs Touchet takes him for lunch and slowly persuades him to tell his story, which becomes the third element of the novel – an account of slavery on a Jamaican plantation in the years either side of abolition. This segment of the novel felt a bit disconnected from the main narrative, dropped into the central storyline as an extended cutaway – and I did wonder if this was a separate work that the author decided to include in this novel simply in order to use it?
Apart from the extended diversion into the Jamaican section of the novel, the other narrative threads are woven tightly together. The novel jumps lightly from one time period to another and back again. If there is a ‘now’ it is the 1870’s and the time of the criminal Tichborne trial, by which time Mrs Touchet is a slightly cranky widow, often looking back nostalgically on the times when Ainsworth was a much more successful and popular novelist (we are reminded more than once that his novel Jack Shephard in its day outsold Oliver Twist) and could afford a higher standard of living. She also suffers with forbearance his new and much younger wife who is very common and a source of some slapstick comedy. Her internal monologue drives most of the narrative – she is cynical and more than a little embittered, frustrated by the lack of opportunities available for women, especially those such as herself on the brink of independence, but never quite ready to take that final step (she has an additional inheritance of £100 a year, doubling her income, which she never claims unless to finally give it away).
The novel ends on something of an anti-climax. Ainsworth dies never really having expressed any further feeling for his cousin who has loved him for decades without hope or expectation, watching his literary talents dwindle away without him ever realising it. The novel portrays him as a failure compared to his literary peers, which as I have said felt unfair. The trial ends in the claimant’s conviction for perjury, a long prison sentence, and an ignominious death in poverty. Of the protagonists it is probably Bogle who lives the most rewarding life, ironically given his origins as a slave.
That’s what happens, but the question you probably came her for is whether the novel is any good? It’s not a demanding read – there’s never much doubt as to who is narrating, what’s happening, who is sleeping with who and so on. The storyline moves on quickly enough and the writing is unobtrusively good, without ever being demonstrative or flashy. I didn’t warm to Mrs Touchet, which would have helped, and her cynical digs at her cousin, Dickens, Cruickshank and the whole Victorian literary circle seemed mean spirited. Perhaps it was a boy’s club that never really confronted the main social issues of the day, but the idea that there was therefore no literary merit in their work (as is suggested) is uncharitable. The claimant himself remains an elusive presence in the novel, barely speaking and only ever described through his supporters or companions. There may well still be a novel to be written about Tichborne/Orton that centralises his story and tries to understand its strange grip on Victorian England rather than just using it as background ‘colour’.
The Reading Bug 