The Fraud

Bogle adapts to the Doughtys’ new lifestyle. He adopts their religion and becomes very pious. Edward starts paying him fifty pounds a year.

News reaches Bogle and the Doughtys about an enslaved uprising on Christmas in Jamaica.

New reforms passed by the British government make progress on voting rights and abolition. Servants from the United Kingdom are sent to the Indies to replace enslaved people. Many of these servants die quickly because their bodies are not used to the environment.

Bogle considers marrying Mrs. Doughty’s Black nurse Miss Elizabeth. He’s not in love with her but figures that she’s a suitable companion and partner.

Henry Doughty dies at age six. Elizabeth agrees to marry Bogle. He gets the Doughtys’ blessing for the marriage. People have become accustomed to the presence of a Black man, but his marriage in a church with a Black woman is nonetheless a scene.

The Doughtys have a daughter named Katherine. Bogle and Elizabeth welcome a son named John Michael, then another named Andrew John. Bogle is increasingly in awe of his stable and domestic home life in England, so different from his upbringing in Jamaica. At night he can’t sleep peacefully.

Britain sets a date for the emancipation of all enslaved people: August 1, 1838. Bogle can’t stop thinking of the many people who were dehumanized and killed under enslavement for hundreds of years.

Elizabeth dies of a sickness. Edward inherits the Tichborne title when his older brother dies.

Bogle’s sons are sent to a Catholic school. Edward’s nephew Roger starts spending more time with Edward’s daughter Katherine (“Kattie”).

The English find Roger’s intimacy with Kattie shocking. He wants to marry her, which angers Edward. Edward bans Roger from his home. The servants all liked Roger because he spent quality time with them and got to know them.

Edward dies, which puts Bogle’s employment and security in a precarious situation. Lady Doughty encourages him to work for Edward’s younger brother, Sir James Tichborne. Life with the Tichbornes is different. James’s wife is racist; she calls Bogle a slur and wipes down anything he touches.

When Bogle’s sons graduate from school, they have difficulty finding apprenticeships and jobs in a racist society. Lady Doughty agrees to keep paying Bogle 50 pounds a year out of loyalty to her deceased husband.

Bogle’s sons grow increasingly frustrated by England. Bogle’s annuity from Lady Doughty can keep him going, but it’s not enough to help his sons. Bogle marries a woman named Jane Fisher, who proposes that they all move to Australia.

The passage to Australia takes three months, which is horrifying to Bogle, who is afraid of the sea. However, Australia proves to be a good move. Bogle’s annuity from Lady Doughty goes further in Australia than in England. Both his sons find jobs, and Bogle and Jane welcome a new son named Henry. Lady Doughty writes to Bogle to inform him of Sir Roger’s death in a shipwreck.

Johanna had once warned that for all good things, bad things will also happen. Jane gives birth to a son named Edward but dies soon after of a hemorrhage. The baby dies soon after.

Lady Mabella de Tichborne, one of the earliest of the Tichborne family’s hundreds-years-long legacy, puts a curse on the family. It takes some centuries, but the Tichborne family start dying young and in unexpected ways.

Bogle tells Eliza that his son Andrew paid for Bogle’s passage back to England, and that only his youngest son Henry could join him. Sir Roger traveled first class with the money Lady Tichborne, his supposed mother, sent him. Lady Doughty ended Bogle’s annuity when he sided with the claimant.

Bogle shows Eliza an old newspaper clipping offering a reward for any information on Sir Roger Tichborne, who might have survived the shipwreck. Bogle discovered Sir Roger in Australia but was never given the reward.

Eliza is stunned at Bogle’s story and very inspired. She has long been searching for meaning in life and has found it. Henry arrives to pick up his father. Eliza gives them her card. When she returns home, she immediately sets out to write Bogle’s story.

Eliza becomes obsessed with all news relating to the Tichborne claimant, who is now in prison with a bail set at an enormous 10,000 pounds. He writes a public statement begging the public for funds. Meanwhile, William has seen a former writer friend of his publish a bad review of his writing. Eliza encourages him not to respond publicly.

The Tichborne claimant is released on bail. Sarah and Eliza go to watch his first public appearance. Speeches are made to impassion the crowd to advocate for a new, fair trial. Andrew Bogle speaks to the crowd and Eliza feels that only she can truly understand him and see him in all his layers.

Eliza realizes that the men in literary salons who once respected her now see her as an old woman unworthy of being listened to. Rather than think about their approval, Eliza wonders about the power of women to be as magnetic and interesting as men.

In a flashback in 1838, Charles Dickens and William are invited to a public literary dinner to honor great writers. On behalf of William, Eliza secretly writes to the host to figure out if it will be William who receives the honor or Dickens.

Dickens and William get along well when they travel to Manchester for the literary dinner together. Eliza, suspicious, reads between the lines of their interaction because she doesn’t trust Dickens.

Back in the present, Eliza starts excusing herself more and more to go to Tichborne meetings in the city. She lies to William and tells him that she’s going to the library to research the Touchet family history.

Tichborne meetings become increasingly chaotic and dangerous. Henry looks after Eliza at these meetings. Eliza realizes that people treat her and Henry with the same sort of prejudice: Henry for being Black, Eliza for being an older woman. Eliza’s admiration for Bogle grows because she finds him so honest and kind.

While waiting for Henry, Eliza admires a façade of nine allegorical ladies etched in stone.

Eliza wishes she didn’t want to write a novel because she’s seen how indulgent novel-writing has made William. In a flashback to 1838, she visits William’s daughters when he refuses to make the trip because he is writing another book.

Dickens joins Eliza on the visit to the Ainsworth girls at their boarding school. The girls feel sad and oppressed away at boarding school.

Charles Dickens, Mr. Forster, and Eliza debate new political discussions about the middle class. Mr. Forster dismisses Eliza’s opinion.

Eliza grows increasingly frustrated by being silenced by men in political debates. She remains silent because she finds their points-of-view myopic and hypocritical.

Back in the present, the Tichborne claimant’s new trial begins. Sarah and Eliza attend. The prosecution argues that Arthur Orton’s siblings have been receiving secret payments from the claimant, that he doesn’t have the same tattoo Sir Roger supposedly had, and that he gave false names for witnesses. The prosecution rejects Bogle’s testimony because he is Black and therefore, according to them, not trustworthy.

The trial is going to be dragged out because the prosecution wants to call over 200 witnesses.

Eliza finds the justice system illogical. She is surprised to see that one of the lawyers is an Irish writer she once knew well named Edward Kenealy. She is excited to tell William about seeing Kenealy after so many decades.

Eliza tells William about seeing Kenealy. She recalls that they stopped meeting with Kenealy because of a scandal. William reminds her that the scandal had been that Kenealy brought a bastard son from Ireland to England and had beaten and strangled him. Kenealy went to prison for this abuse. William speaks to Eliza about his writing and Eliza wonders privately why William feels he is entitled to fame and literary glory.

In a flashback to 1840, Eliza looks after William’s daughters, who are mourning the loss of their mother while William writes two novels in seclusion. William doesn’t seem to notice the misery of his daughters because he is so thrilled at the successful publication of his new novels. They host a party to celebrate William’s success. The writers discuss politics but agree that literary people are not the best at forming political opinions.

The first page of William’s novel The Tower of London is one long sentence of chaotic descriptions and characterizations.

Back in the present, after 85 days of court, Eliza has come to understand that truth is a difficult concept to theorize or prove. Kenealy’s point-of-view is that because so many people have been proven to lie, they can’t be trusted about anything, but that a lie is not necessarily a crime.

Bogle’s testimony in the second trial doesn’t deviate from his first, which makes Eliza trust him even more. Still, she wonders if it’s possible for Bogle to have fed the claimant information, though she doesn’t believe at all in the theory that Bogle is the mastermind of the fraud. Eliza has tried to reestablish conversation with Bogle but he avoids her.

Jean Luie, a steward on the ship that supposedly saved Sir Roger and brought him to Australia, takes the stand, but he is exposed as a convict.

Henry invites Eliza to watch a formal concert of “Ethiopian” music. Eliza is proud of herself for changing with age, unlike the older men she knows who only become more concrete versions of themselves.

The audience at the concert is angry that many of the performers aren’t as dark in skin tone as they had expected. Eliza is entranced by the music.

After the concert, Henry introduces Eliza to one of the singers, Miss Jackson. Eliza can’t tell if Miss Jackson is beautiful or not because she figures she doesn’t have enough experience meeting Black women to figure it out. She can tell that Henry is interested in Miss Jackson. Eliza eagerly asks for Miss Jackson’s story, but Miss Jackson isn’t interested in speaking with Eliza.

Henry invites Eliza to join them on their walk as he shows Miss Jackson the city. When Eliza says no, Miss Jackson looks relieved. Eliza is suddenly very aware of being white. As she walks away from Miss Jackson and Henry, Eliza worries that they’re laughing about her.

In a flashback to 1840, Kathryn Doughty comments on how Mr. Bogle never seems to get angry. However, when Mr. Bogle serves them drinks and overhears the callous way Edward speaks about a recent fire that killed Black people in Jamaica on a plantation, with Edward’s focus on the material things that were lost to the fire and not of the many lives lost, Bogle injures himself by squeezing a glass so hard it shatters in his hand.

In a flashback to 1844, William’s three daughters are beautiful teenagers. The men who come over for literary salons are now only interested in the daughters. William sees a newspaper article written by Edgar Allan Poe, a joke article in which Poe mocks William. William’s feelings are hurt.

In another flashback, Charles Dickens’s novella A Christmas Carol is published to great acclaim, making him famous even in America. William’s next novel is not good.

Still in the 1840s, Eliza and William receive a letter from their friend Crossley asking to help him buy books at the auction of a once-wealthy man. Eliza attends the auction on Crossley’s behalf as William travels around Europe. William is gone for over a year. Clearly, there are women he’s seeing in Europe that he can’t bring back to England with him.

Eliza has a theory that nothing really happens in England and that all of England’s real happenings occur in other places.

In a flashback to 1851, Eliza brings William’s daughter to an exhibition. The exhibition is about progress and highlights people and artifacts from other countries in the world the English deem uncivilized.

William’s daughters are beautiful, but William doesn’t have the money to make a good dowry for them, so they don’t have good prospects for marriage. Eliza thinks nostalgically of her once-rich social life. She attends a fire sale for an estate that is closing and buys two porcelain figures of Black children called “A Dark Secret.”

William returns from Europe with a copy of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. He announces that they must move to Brighton because they can no longer afford London. Their years in Brighton are devoid of socializing, but Eliza is genuinely happy to be alone with William and his daughters.

In a flashback to the 1860s, Anne-Blanche gets married at the age of 31 to a military Captain. From their home in Brighton, they watch the marriage of Ann Forbes Bonetta to an African royal; Ann Forbes Bonetta was born in Africa and sent to Queen Victoria as a gift. Meanwhile, Eliza keeps up with the news of the Civil War in America.

The working class of England protests enslavement in America during the American Civil War by refusing to buy and work with cotton planted and exported from the American South. Eliza finds this admirable, but William believes that in freeing enslaved people and ending enslavement in the United Kingdom, England has done enough for the cause of abolition. Eliza is offended that William would think that England has paid their debt to the enslaved people they spent hundreds of years abusing.

Back in the present, Kenealy’s final argument is that Sir Roger would never endanger his claim by visiting the Orton family in Wapping. It becomes increasingly clear that the Tichborne claimant will lose this second trial.

Another lawyer for the prosecution, Hawkins, argues that the Tichborne claimant has done a dishonorable thing pretending to have been intimate with a noblewoman like Kitty Doughty.

Eliza receives a letter from Lizzie and Grace, two girls who claim that Eliza’s money from her late husband’s will should be shared with them because their mother, who is now dead, used to get money from that will too because she was Eliza’s late husband’s daughter. Eliza receives a letter from her lawyer encouraging her to withdraw her money and refute these claimants.

Eliza goes into the city to meet with the lawyers. She meets the two claimants, two little girls who look like Eliza’s late husband but also not. It’s explained to her that their mother was supposedly biracial. Eliza wants the girls to have a hundred pounds a year—the money that used to go to their mother. Eliza doesn’t like the way the Touchet money was made from enslavement and believes the girls should have the money to help them in their lives.

A jury meets to decide the fate of the Tichborne claimant case. They find Arthur Orton guilty, and he is sentenced to 14 years in prison.

In the aftermath of the Tichborne case, Arthur Orton becomes a symbol. Kenealy plans an Indignation Meeting.

Eliza attends Kenealy’s Indignation Meeting. Speakers use the Tichborne case as evidence of the need for a more radical, Marxist approach to land ownership and social hierarchy. Bogle concedes defeat and though he doesn’t know what’s next for him, he knows he has always been resilient. Eliza privately thinks that there could be a world in which she and Bogle were together.

Eliza meets with Henry. They discuss the nature of freedom. Eliza tries to make the point that, as a woman, she is not free. Henry disagrees and points to her freedom of mobility. Henry makes the point that being free is his fundamental human right and shouldn’t be bestowed on him or taken away from him by governments. He encourages Eliza not to wait around for men to give women more freedom, but rather to understand her inherent freedom and to fight for it.

Henry believes his father is too complacent in this fight. Eliza argues that policies in governments do change for the better with time, but Henry declares that freedom cannot wait. Eliza leans on her religious beliefs to consider the souls of the oppressors, but Henry cares about his imprisonment, not the soul of those who imprison him. Their debate becomes a tense argument and Eliza cries.

Eliza hears the news of Andrew Bogle’s death in 1877. He died so poor that his grave is unmarked.

In a book about William Ainsworth, an anecdote is shared in which Kenealy’s daughter Arabella, a novelist, is on a train criticizing Ainsworth’s novels when the man she is speaking to reveals himself to be the one and only William Ainsworth.

Eliza is present for William’s death. Eliza is devastated over this death of the one person who truly knew and loved her. She has written a manuscript about the Tichborne case called The Fraud and is still thinking through male pen names.