This was the strangest novel, and probably had it not been written by Zadie Smith, I would not have picked it up.
The setting is a household. Living in the house is an author, and at first his wife and two daughters, then once the wife, Frances, has died, another woman, Sarah joins the family with Clara, her daughter by the author – born out of wedlock Clara was not recognised as the legitimate heir until sometime after the deaths of both Eliza and William. Presiding over the domestic and social sphere is the author’s cousin, Eliza Touchet, and it is her pen that scratches out the narrative.
The chapters are short and cover a wealth of information: who came to dinner, what was drunk (hardly ever what was eaten) and what they talked about. Unusually for the time, Eliza stayed even after the port was brought out. Partly, possibly, because Frances was ill, and then died and Eliza had no one to “retire to the drawing room” with. The characters at the dining table were, for the most part, the literary elite of the time.
Head of the household was William Harrison Ainsworth, at his table on any one day might be Charles Dickens, George Cruikshank, William Thackeray and many another. Over the period of the novel, which runs randomly and out of sequence, there might have been a falling out with one person or another and then a rapprochement; a character (notably CD) may have died and been interred in Westminster Abbey but will then be fully alive and chatting with Ainsworth later on; regular spats between the authors (who reviewed each others’ work) and especially with Cruikshank who thought that he alone was entitled to illustrate WHA’s books, though that didn’t also preclude him from illustrating the new man on the block, Charles Dickens, caused social friction.
Running alongside the evenings with these literary giants, is the story of the trial of the Tichbourne case. Eliza and the second Mrs Ainsworth are duly fascinated with this trial and attend as many of the hearings as they can.
The Tichbourne Claimant has just one staunch ally, an enslaved African recently liberated from Jamaica; the trial, slavery and racism, the iniquities and the abolitionists are much discussed at the famous dinner table and say a lot about the illusions of the elite as to the welfare of the slaves. Eliza and Sarah both sneak off to attend abolition rallies and radical meetings about votes for women.
The Fraud is a fascinating account of the gossip, the speculation and the literary output of the time. London is expanding, railways are snaking across the country and one of the longest trials in history is taking place. Also of interest is the Queen, her wayward offspring and her widowhood, this being something that Eliza at least, knew about.
The Tichbourne case takes us in the imagination to South America, Australia, Wapping, Willesden (especially St Mary’s Church and its Black Madonna, already missing from its alcove) and the Court of Criminal Justice and ultimately to Newgate. The Ainsworth entourage were frequently on the move, sometimes up market and sometimes down – it depended on his pen and his novels. Hard to imagine now, but WHA was more successful that Dickens. Who reads him now (apart from me)?
The novel is full of wry humour, Eliza has a shrewd outlook, and black comedy often illuminates her observations, mostly in the line of men’s apparent superiority as borne out by the women they consort with. You may imagine what Eliza thinks of that, she makes her views abundantly clear.
deborahjs 