In the 1860s and ‘70s, Victorian England was obsessed with “The Tichborne Claim.” In 1854, 25-year-old Roger Tichborne, heir to the title and fortune of an aristocratic family that traced its lineage to the Norman Conquest, was thought to have died in a shipwreck off the coast of Australia. When rumors of survivors reached England, Roger’s mother placed advertisements in Australian newspapers, offering a reward for information.
The Claimant who came forward bore little physical resemblance to young Roger, exhibited working class speech and manners, and could not remember details of his early life. But a former slave, Andrew Bogle, who had worked on the family’s plantation in Jamaica and estate in Hampshire affirmed he was the missing heir. When the Claimant returned to England, Lady Tichborne embraced him, but the rest of the family remained certain he was an imposter. Two trials ensued, the second lasting almost a year, the longest in British history, with hundreds of witnesses testifying for each side.
In “The Fraud,” Zadie Smith (whose highly acclaimed novels include “White Teeth,” “The Autograph Man,” “On Beauty,” “NW” and “Swing Time”), takes the Tichborne Claim as her point of reference, and asks how, if at all, we can arrive at the truth; who, if anyone, should we trust; and whether fiction can qualify as history without the footnotes.
When Eliza Touchet, the central character, was abandoned by her husband, she became the housekeeper, and for a time the lover, of William Ainsworth. Her cousin by marriage, Ainsworth was a prolific, once successful, but not very talented writer of historical fiction (in real life and Smith’s novel). Men, we learn, found Touchet “spiky, and probably a tad severe, but also witty and lively in conversation.” She abhorred the clichés in novels — “you can be too good for this world” — but in her own life, “they rushed to greet her, robed as truths.” She wondered what we really can know about other people — and how easily we deceive ourselves.
Touchet was utterly fascinated by the trial and deeply moved by Bogle’s story of his father’s enslavement, and his own life as a slave and a free man, in Jamaica, England and Australia. Already an advocate for the abolition of slavery, she believed that “cruelty stands apart.” In any degree, cruelty is a crime. “It is the very worst we can do.”
Touchet admired Bogle, a “strange stranger,” because his testimony “never exceeded its bounds, never turned to conspiracy or illogic.” She found Bogle “simply immovable for truth,” even though she could not accept that “what he steadfastly repeated was, indeed, the truth.” Perhaps, she concluded, “Bogle needed to believe, could not afford disbelief.”
“The Fraud” will be challenging for some readers. The novel rewards prior knowledge of the Tichborne Claim, moves back and forth in time, and has several subplots, including Touchet’s fraught relationships with Ainsworth’s two wives, encounters with authors Charles Dickens (the only person to say “Touché Mrs. Touchet” — and laugh at his own joke) and William Makepeace Thackery.
That said, Zadie Smith is a gifted storyteller and prose stylist. And “The Fraud” makes a compelling case that historical fiction can lie to tell the truth.
Readers will no doubt also notice that Ms. Smith has her eye on contemporary politics. A publication called The Tichborne Gazette, she tells us, devoted whole pages to “the anti-vaccination movement, for who knew the true intentions of these rich men and their needles.” The Claimant personally appealed to “every British soul who is inspired by a love of justice and fair play” to contribute to The Tichborne Defense Fund.
And, Ms. Smith reminds us, a fake news article by Edgar Allan Poe in 1844 announced that eight men, including Ainsworth, had crossed the Atlantic in three days in a balloon. “Is he making fun of me, Lizzie?” Ainsworth asked, feeling stricken and needy.
“Am I a fraud?”
Glenn C. Altschuler is the Thomas and Dorothy Litwin Professor of American Studies at Cornell University.
Zadie Smith will be reading at Carnegie Lecture Hall at 7:30 p.m. Sept. 18th. Tickets and information are available via Pittsburgh Arts and Lectures.
First Published: September 16, 2023, 9:30 a.m.
