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John Caldigate
John Caldigate (1879) possesses in abundance the virtues of Trollope's an engrossing story told by a worldly-wise, kindly, fair-minded narrator, and a tale strong on what Trollope claimed as the leading feature of his novels, "real" characters. But John Caldigate has some striking
and distinctive calls on the reader's Australian gold-mining scenes, the prominence given to matters of law and a criminal trial, and the stronger than usual attack on religious fanaticism. Moreover, the main character is accused of and standing trial for bigamy on the testimony of his
former mistress.
and distinctive calls on the reader's Australian gold-mining scenes, the prominence given to matters of law and a criminal trial, and the stronger than usual attack on religious fanaticism. Moreover, the main character is accused of and standing trial for bigamy on the testimony of his
former mistress.
654 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1879
34 people are currently reading
356 people want to read
About the author
Anthony Trollope
2,291 books1,760 followersAnthony Trollope became one of the most successful, prolific and respected English novelists of the Victorian era. Some of Trollope's best-loved works, known as the Chronicles of Barsetshire, revolve around the imaginary county of Barsetshire; he also wrote penetrating novels on political, social, and gender issues and conflicts of his day.
Trollope has always been a popular novelist. Noted fans have included Sir Alec Guinness (who never travelled without a Trollope novel), former British Prime Ministers Harold Macmillan and Sir John Major, economist John Kenneth Galbraith, American novelists Sue Grafton and Dominick Dunne and soap opera writer Harding Lemay. Trollope's literary reputation dipped somewhat during the last years of his life, but he regained the esteem of critics by the mid-twentieth century.
See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_...
Trollope has always been a popular novelist. Noted fans have included Sir Alec Guinness (who never travelled without a Trollope novel), former British Prime Ministers Harold Macmillan and Sir John Major, economist John Kenneth Galbraith, American novelists Sue Grafton and Dominick Dunne and soap opera writer Harding Lemay. Trollope's literary reputation dipped somewhat during the last years of his life, but he regained the esteem of critics by the mid-twentieth century.
See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_...
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 52 reviews
June 29, 2025
A new favorite Trollope! I highly recommend this as a standalone Trollope. It’s one of his one-plot novels and the story is so engrossing. I was supposed to read it through August with the Trollope Society’s Big Read; I finished it in 23 days. 😂 I actually think this would be a great place to start with Trollope. It’s got a voyage to New South Wales, gold mining, a trial, so many great characters, humor, pathos, a religious fanatic, and a zealous post office worker who Trollope must have loved writing. 😂 I think Trollope handles the tension around the core struggle of the novel brilliantly. There is a lot to discuss here but it’s also a novel to thoroughly enjoy. Bravo Trollope!
December 3, 2009
This is the 23rd novel by Trollope that I have read. I must say that it is one of my favorites. It was amazingly compelling. The 615 pages flew by.
What is interesting here is that in most of Trollope's long novels there is usually a somewhat involved sub-plot and that is what usually accounts for the length. Not here. This book is purely about John Caldigate, a classic Trollope Hobbledehoy, and his woes.
It features the things I have come to love about Trollope: rich, surprising but inevitable plots, incisive character portrayals drawn with penetrating psychology, a witty and warm narrator's voice that often addresses us directly (much to Henry James' dismay!)
I loved this book. Bless my sister-in-law for noodging me to read it!
What is interesting here is that in most of Trollope's long novels there is usually a somewhat involved sub-plot and that is what usually accounts for the length. Not here. This book is purely about John Caldigate, a classic Trollope Hobbledehoy, and his woes.
It features the things I have come to love about Trollope: rich, surprising but inevitable plots, incisive character portrayals drawn with penetrating psychology, a witty and warm narrator's voice that often addresses us directly (much to Henry James' dismay!)
I loved this book. Bless my sister-in-law for noodging me to read it!
December 20, 2017
“Is her position in the world to depend upon a postage stamp?”
On that as well as on a slightly self-righteous judge’s better sense and on the mores of society as such, which just had adopted a different form of bigotry and folly from today’s society, which is, for all that, none the less bigoted and foolish. But let me first give you the broader picture of the conflict centred on in Trollope’s mostly fascinating novel John Caldigate.
The eponymous hero is the son of a liberal-minded squire who has grown used to looking down on his offspring for not sharing his love of books and his more serious, slightly cynical outlook on life. The breach between father and son leads to young Caldigate’s seeking his fortune abroad, in the Australian colony, where he finds gold but, unlike most other adventurers, proves to have enough common sense not to squander his newly-acquired wealth. Instead, he decides to return to England, reconcile himself with his father and take over his paternal inheritance. He also marries Hester Bolton, the daughter of a bank director and his bigoted wife living in the aptly named Puritan Grange, and just when everything seems to work out splendidly, he is faced with a charge of bigamy coming from a divorcee John had become infatuated with during his time in Australia and who now claims to have actually married him. This woman, Euphemia Smith, bases her claim on an envelope which bears the handwriting of John Caldigate and which is addressed to “Mrs Euphemia Caldigate”, and whose authenticity seems to be corroborated by a stamped postage stamp. This latter detail will become of the utmost importance in the course of the novel because while Judge Bramber is absolutely convinced of Caldigate’s guilt and influences the jury accordingly into sentencing him for two years in prison, there is one young post office clerk by the name of Bagwax, originally called as a witness in the trial, who still believes that the stamp has been fraudulently obtained and who goes to great lengths to prove it. As you may imagine, truth will out, once again, in this Trollope novel and people will live, more or less, happily ever after.
Reading this novel was, on the whole, a thoroughly enjoyable experience to me because it shows Trollope at his best. One of his strengths is, to me, the realistic presentation of his characters, warts-and-all: This is especially true of the protagonist John Caldigate, who is surely a man with some flaws, the major one of which may be his inclination to fall in love with any woman that crosses his way or of enjoying having them fall in love with him. Of course, this inclination leads him into awkward situations which make the reader cringe from time to time. Even Caldigate’s obvious merits, for example his ability not only to find gold, which is dependent on luck, but also to keep it, which requires a sense of responsibility and a lot of self-restraint, is downplayed to a certain degree when the hero himself muses on the different lots Fate had in store for him and for his happy-go-lucky friend Dick Shands:
Passages like this make you think about how much of your well-being in life actually depends on your own merit, or on circumstances that are beyond your own control, and it is the insight into this relation between free will and disposition or circumstances that probably enabled Trollope to write so interesting characters. Not all of his characters are equally interesting, though. When it comes to Caldigate’s wife Hester, you need not read on to passages like this one
in order to know that she is a lifeless cut-and-dried cardboard character, but you may know it from her very first appearance in the novel, where she is presented as a young girl who knows her place. Her mother, a mean-spirited religious zealot of the darkest dye, who uses her creed as a means of exerting power over her husband and shutting him off from his children, could be be similarly classed as a flat character, but then Trollope presents her as a mother who truly loves her child Hester, albeit her love is of the egocentric and overbearing kind and therefore not kind at all:
Although Trollope often centres his attention on upper-middle-class and upper-class families, in John Caldigate we also get a hero of humbler origins, the post office clerk Mr Bagwax, who delivers the final clue that sets things right and who does so even at the cost of sacrificing a prospective journey to Australia, something a man of his station could normally never dream of, because he feels it is the only right thing to do. Of course, he makes a lot of his readiness to sacrifice this benefit – unlike a truly Dickensian good guy, who would probably have suffered in silence, but then his grandiloquent references to Lord Nelson’s famous quotation of England and her expectations should not be begrudged him because they make him all the more human. Although he appears relatively late in the novel, he and old Mr Caldigate were my favourite characters.
Another interesting quasi-sideplot – unlike in many other Trollope novels of that length, there are no real sideplots here – was the procrastination that was caused in re Caldigate’s release because neither the judge nor the State Secretary really wanted to take responsibility for it, in case Caldigate might prove a bigamist after all. In this respect, this Victorian novel strikes a very modern tone in that responsibility and state officials often seem at daggers drawn with each other.
I also learned a lot about Victorian society. For example, that a convicted man whose innocence was proved post festum could only be got out of prison through the Queen’s pardon because it was impossible that a jury’s verdict be nullified. That seemed rather odd to me. Or that a woman could be confined to her parents’ house by their simply locking her bonnet away, thus making it nigh impossible for her to walk the streets.
The only thing that slightly detracted from my pleasure in reading this novel was the fact that the composition of the novel seemed, at times, rather slipshod in that the same details – for example the facts about the postage stamp and the testimony of Richard Shands – were rehashed at great length, often even coated in the same words, which tried my patience here and there. This, however, is typical of Trollope and shows that, for all his propensity to allow himself the odd side blow at Dickens, whom he must have been quite envious of, Trollope was no Dickens – a statement he might even have seen in the light of a compliment, whereas to me being compared to the Inimitable is the highest praise an author can be granted.
To finish my review, here are some of the quotations I most enjoyed:
And, best of all:
On that as well as on a slightly self-righteous judge’s better sense and on the mores of society as such, which just had adopted a different form of bigotry and folly from today’s society, which is, for all that, none the less bigoted and foolish. But let me first give you the broader picture of the conflict centred on in Trollope’s mostly fascinating novel John Caldigate.
The eponymous hero is the son of a liberal-minded squire who has grown used to looking down on his offspring for not sharing his love of books and his more serious, slightly cynical outlook on life. The breach between father and son leads to young Caldigate’s seeking his fortune abroad, in the Australian colony, where he finds gold but, unlike most other adventurers, proves to have enough common sense not to squander his newly-acquired wealth. Instead, he decides to return to England, reconcile himself with his father and take over his paternal inheritance. He also marries Hester Bolton, the daughter of a bank director and his bigoted wife living in the aptly named Puritan Grange, and just when everything seems to work out splendidly, he is faced with a charge of bigamy coming from a divorcee John had become infatuated with during his time in Australia and who now claims to have actually married him. This woman, Euphemia Smith, bases her claim on an envelope which bears the handwriting of John Caldigate and which is addressed to “Mrs Euphemia Caldigate”, and whose authenticity seems to be corroborated by a stamped postage stamp. This latter detail will become of the utmost importance in the course of the novel because while Judge Bramber is absolutely convinced of Caldigate’s guilt and influences the jury accordingly into sentencing him for two years in prison, there is one young post office clerk by the name of Bagwax, originally called as a witness in the trial, who still believes that the stamp has been fraudulently obtained and who goes to great lengths to prove it. As you may imagine, truth will out, once again, in this Trollope novel and people will live, more or less, happily ever after.
Reading this novel was, on the whole, a thoroughly enjoyable experience to me because it shows Trollope at his best. One of his strengths is, to me, the realistic presentation of his characters, warts-and-all: This is especially true of the protagonist John Caldigate, who is surely a man with some flaws, the major one of which may be his inclination to fall in love with any woman that crosses his way or of enjoying having them fall in love with him. Of course, this inclination leads him into awkward situations which make the reader cringe from time to time. Even Caldigate’s obvious merits, for example his ability not only to find gold, which is dependent on luck, but also to keep it, which requires a sense of responsibility and a lot of self-restraint, is downplayed to a certain degree when the hero himself muses on the different lots Fate had in store for him and for his happy-go-lucky friend Dick Shands:
”’[…] He and I started together, and I am sometimes aghast with myself when I think of the small matter which, like the point on a railway, sent me running rapidly on to prosperity,—while the same point, turned wrong, hurried him to ruin. I have taken my glass of grog, too, my two glasses,—or perhaps more. But that which would elate him into some fury of action would not move me. It was something nature did for me rather than virtue. I am a rich man, and he is a shepherd, because something was put into my stomach capable of digesting bad brandy, which was not put into his.’”
Passages like this make you think about how much of your well-being in life actually depends on your own merit, or on circumstances that are beyond your own control, and it is the insight into this relation between free will and disposition or circumstances that probably enabled Trollope to write so interesting characters. Not all of his characters are equally interesting, though. When it comes to Caldigate’s wife Hester, you need not read on to passages like this one
”’Why should I not be smart […] when my man has come to me? For whose eyes shall I put on the raiment that is his own but for his? I was much lower than a widow in the eyes of all men; but now I have got my husband back again. And my boy shall wear the very best that he has, so that his father may see him smile at his own gaudiness. Yes, father, I may be smart now. There were moments in which I thought that I might never wear more the pretty things which he had given me.’
in order to know that she is a lifeless cut-and-dried cardboard character, but you may know it from her very first appearance in the novel, where she is presented as a young girl who knows her place. Her mother, a mean-spirited religious zealot of the darkest dye, who uses her creed as a means of exerting power over her husband and shutting him off from his children, could be be similarly classed as a flat character, but then Trollope presents her as a mother who truly loves her child Hester, albeit her love is of the egocentric and overbearing kind and therefore not kind at all:
”That they should live together a stern, dark, but still sympathetic life, secluded within the high walls of that lonely abode, and that she should thus be able to prove how right she had been, how wicked and calamitous their interference with her child,—that had been the scheme of her life.”
Although Trollope often centres his attention on upper-middle-class and upper-class families, in John Caldigate we also get a hero of humbler origins, the post office clerk Mr Bagwax, who delivers the final clue that sets things right and who does so even at the cost of sacrificing a prospective journey to Australia, something a man of his station could normally never dream of, because he feels it is the only right thing to do. Of course, he makes a lot of his readiness to sacrifice this benefit – unlike a truly Dickensian good guy, who would probably have suffered in silence, but then his grandiloquent references to Lord Nelson’s famous quotation of England and her expectations should not be begrudged him because they make him all the more human. Although he appears relatively late in the novel, he and old Mr Caldigate were my favourite characters.
Another interesting quasi-sideplot – unlike in many other Trollope novels of that length, there are no real sideplots here – was the procrastination that was caused in re Caldigate’s release because neither the judge nor the State Secretary really wanted to take responsibility for it, in case Caldigate might prove a bigamist after all. In this respect, this Victorian novel strikes a very modern tone in that responsibility and state officials often seem at daggers drawn with each other.
I also learned a lot about Victorian society. For example, that a convicted man whose innocence was proved post festum could only be got out of prison through the Queen’s pardon because it was impossible that a jury’s verdict be nullified. That seemed rather odd to me. Or that a woman could be confined to her parents’ house by their simply locking her bonnet away, thus making it nigh impossible for her to walk the streets.
The only thing that slightly detracted from my pleasure in reading this novel was the fact that the composition of the novel seemed, at times, rather slipshod in that the same details – for example the facts about the postage stamp and the testimony of Richard Shands – were rehashed at great length, often even coated in the same words, which tried my patience here and there. This, however, is typical of Trollope and shows that, for all his propensity to allow himself the odd side blow at Dickens, whom he must have been quite envious of, Trollope was no Dickens – a statement he might even have seen in the light of a compliment, whereas to me being compared to the Inimitable is the highest praise an author can be granted.
To finish my review, here are some of the quotations I most enjoyed:
”What very righteous person ever believed in the repentance of an enemy?”
In regard to the new culprits, the writer was very loud in expressing his purpose to say not a word against persons who were still to be tried;—but immediately upon that he went on and said a great many words against them.
[…] an old man, certainly, but who looked as though old age must naturally be the happiest time of life. When a man's digestion is thoroughly good and his pockets adequately filled, it probably is so.
He was past the time of life at which men are enthusiastic as to the wrongs of others […]
[…] English judges are always favourable to convictions. The Judge begins with the idea that the man before him would hardly have been brought there had he not been guilty.
Some people doom themselves to an infinity of annoyance because they won't avoid the society of disagreeable people.”
And, best of all:
”’People who read no books are always fools to those who do read.’”
June 5, 2022
This was much better than I expected, having left it to one of the last group of Trollope's novels I have not read. Two things are missing from this that I have come to expect in his better novels: a fox-hunting scene and multiple plot lines. Nope, no one goes hunting (although there is a short reference as to whether it is fair when the fox gets back to his covert) and there is but one plot.
John Caldigate misspent his youth during his college years and redeemed his inheritance to go to Australia and mine for gold. Much happened on the way and in Australia. But he had seen a young woman in Cambridge before he left and he kept her lovely vision with him while there, hoping to return home to marry her. I'll just say that the Australian gold fields weren't the best place for him to keep his eyes on that prize and his life there complicated his life when he returned to England.
In his autobiography, Trollope insists that novels should certainly have a plot, but that they be filled with characters you can recognize is of prime importance. He keeps to that belief here - John Caldigate himself and others. Also in his autobiography, he denies being a feminist and it is just as true that one would never believe in the possibility of his being one based on this novel alone. One woman is from the dance halls but who feeds a lust for gold in Australia, another is a very strong woman, but a goody-two-shoes at the same time, and the third woman is a religious fanatic who speaks of love but you can be assured she has no personal knowledge of what the word love means.
I can't believe I haven't read Trollope in two years! I have so very few of his novels remaining I almost think I might read his Palliser series again and maybe one or two others. We'll see. As much as I loved being back with Mr. Trollope, this isn't in his top tier. But neither is it the bottom of the barrel and I'm not ashamed of finding a 4th star.
John Caldigate misspent his youth during his college years and redeemed his inheritance to go to Australia and mine for gold. Much happened on the way and in Australia. But he had seen a young woman in Cambridge before he left and he kept her lovely vision with him while there, hoping to return home to marry her. I'll just say that the Australian gold fields weren't the best place for him to keep his eyes on that prize and his life there complicated his life when he returned to England.
In his autobiography, Trollope insists that novels should certainly have a plot, but that they be filled with characters you can recognize is of prime importance. He keeps to that belief here - John Caldigate himself and others. Also in his autobiography, he denies being a feminist and it is just as true that one would never believe in the possibility of his being one based on this novel alone. One woman is from the dance halls but who feeds a lust for gold in Australia, another is a very strong woman, but a goody-two-shoes at the same time, and the third woman is a religious fanatic who speaks of love but you can be assured she has no personal knowledge of what the word love means.
I can't believe I haven't read Trollope in two years! I have so very few of his novels remaining I almost think I might read his Palliser series again and maybe one or two others. We'll see. As much as I loved being back with Mr. Trollope, this isn't in his top tier. But neither is it the bottom of the barrel and I'm not ashamed of finding a 4th star.
April 18, 2017
I enjoyed this more the second time around. The little moments, the characters' responses to their situations, and the contrast between rural England and the gold fields of Australia made this fun and intriguing.
April 26, 2007
This was one of the last Trollope novels I read. I had put it pretty far down on my to-read list because I thought it was another of his Australian novels, and experience had taught me that whenever Trollope strayed from England as his setting, even to Ireland, his work slipped a notch or two. I was wrong on two counts. First, very little of the novel takes place in Australia. Second, the Australian scenes are well done.
John Caldigate is an Englishman, from a good family, comfortably off but not rich. But like many others he thinks he may be able to strike it rich in Australia, where gold has been discovered. The romantic notions he had entertained about the idyllic Australian setting are shattered when he comes to the squalor and misery of an actual mining camp. As I said, Trollope, who had traveled extensively in Australia, does these scenes well.
Caldigate endures the squalor and is one of the lucky few who find gold. He sells his interest in his mine to his partner, Timothy Crinkett, and returns to England to marry Hester Bolton, the girl he had left behind.
Then Crinkett appears in England with Euphemia Smith, a woman who claims to have married Caldigate in Australia. They extort money from him by threatening to have him charged with bigamy.
One of the reasons I love Trollope is that he was no moralist, at least not in the traditional sense. He was certainly not a sexual moralist, which comes through in his rather matter-of-fact treatment of the issue of bigamy here (and later in Dr. Wortle's School). And here again, as in so many of Trollope's novels, he makes it clear that religious -- or at least "low church" -- people are responsible for inflicting more than their fair share of society's misery.
As I mentioned in my review of Orley Farm, Orley Farm is the novel I usually recommend to those who want to try Trollope out. But John Caldigate would probably be my second choice, and -- if it matters -- it is a good deal shorter than Orley Farm.
John Caldigate is an Englishman, from a good family, comfortably off but not rich. But like many others he thinks he may be able to strike it rich in Australia, where gold has been discovered. The romantic notions he had entertained about the idyllic Australian setting are shattered when he comes to the squalor and misery of an actual mining camp. As I said, Trollope, who had traveled extensively in Australia, does these scenes well.
Caldigate endures the squalor and is one of the lucky few who find gold. He sells his interest in his mine to his partner, Timothy Crinkett, and returns to England to marry Hester Bolton, the girl he had left behind.
Then Crinkett appears in England with Euphemia Smith, a woman who claims to have married Caldigate in Australia. They extort money from him by threatening to have him charged with bigamy.
One of the reasons I love Trollope is that he was no moralist, at least not in the traditional sense. He was certainly not a sexual moralist, which comes through in his rather matter-of-fact treatment of the issue of bigamy here (and later in Dr. Wortle's School). And here again, as in so many of Trollope's novels, he makes it clear that religious -- or at least "low church" -- people are responsible for inflicting more than their fair share of society's misery.
As I mentioned in my review of Orley Farm, Orley Farm is the novel I usually recommend to those who want to try Trollope out. But John Caldigate would probably be my second choice, and -- if it matters -- it is a good deal shorter than Orley Farm.
August 10, 2025
John Caldigate starts the book as an irresponsible son who sets off to Australia to make his fortune. On the way, he has romantic relations with a woman he meets in board ship called Euphemia. Later, having made a fortune and matured somewhat, he comes home and marries Hester who he had feelings for before he left. But Euphemia returns claiming he is married to her and John is tried as a bigamist. The first part of this novel rattles through and the focus is on his trial and events after that. Is he guilty? The reactions of Hester and both of their families are a real focus. Hester’s mother is quite something and I did love the part where Hester faces her down and wins. I’m not sure John is really worthy of her devotion but I do admire his openness about the allegations with everyone. Not quite up there with my favourite Trollope novels but a good read.
February 13, 2017
I think this is a book for Trollope enthusiasts; I wouldn't recommend it as the first book of his that somebody reads. I found the central character, John Caldigate, very appealing, and for that reason it became a real page-turner -- despite the fact that I was fairly confident that Trollope would deliver a happy ending.
The book is rather unusual for Trollope in its depiction of religious bigotry, especially in the person of Mrs Bolton, and it seems to me that, despite bending over backwards, he fails to pull off his usual feat of making the reader feel sympathetic towards characters who are, basically, unsympathetic. I was left wondering whether he was, at one time, planning to bring the religious people into direct conflict with the elder Caldigate, who, we are told, is a non-church-going free thinker. If Trollope ever did plan this, he changed his mind, or lost his nerve - which is a pity.
An especially attractive and entertaining part of the book concerns the enthusiastic Post Office clerk who is responsible, in the end, for putting right the injustice which John Caldigate has suffered. There's scarcely a book by Trollope which does mention the Post Office and its workings, and, in this book, they come centre stage.
Perhaps the most disappointing feature of the book is that the women characters are less subtle and less well rounded than is usual in Trollope. Hester and her mother are both stock characters -- cardboard cut-outs, almost. (This applied especially to Hester.) Euphemia Smith is very promising in the first part of the book, but she seems to undergo a personality transplant, and becomes a villain whilst remaining entirely the background. I would have loved to read a dialogue between her and Caldigate following his return to England and her accusations, but, alas, Trollope disappoints us.
So I don't rank this among Trollope's greatest achievements, but I'm sure it will give great pleasure to Trollope aficionados who haven't yet encountered it.
The book is rather unusual for Trollope in its depiction of religious bigotry, especially in the person of Mrs Bolton, and it seems to me that, despite bending over backwards, he fails to pull off his usual feat of making the reader feel sympathetic towards characters who are, basically, unsympathetic. I was left wondering whether he was, at one time, planning to bring the religious people into direct conflict with the elder Caldigate, who, we are told, is a non-church-going free thinker. If Trollope ever did plan this, he changed his mind, or lost his nerve - which is a pity.
An especially attractive and entertaining part of the book concerns the enthusiastic Post Office clerk who is responsible, in the end, for putting right the injustice which John Caldigate has suffered. There's scarcely a book by Trollope which does mention the Post Office and its workings, and, in this book, they come centre stage.
Perhaps the most disappointing feature of the book is that the women characters are less subtle and less well rounded than is usual in Trollope. Hester and her mother are both stock characters -- cardboard cut-outs, almost. (This applied especially to Hester.) Euphemia Smith is very promising in the first part of the book, but she seems to undergo a personality transplant, and becomes a villain whilst remaining entirely the background. I would have loved to read a dialogue between her and Caldigate following his return to England and her accusations, but, alas, Trollope disappoints us.
So I don't rank this among Trollope's greatest achievements, but I'm sure it will give great pleasure to Trollope aficionados who haven't yet encountered it.
July 8, 2019
After reading all of the Palliser and Barchester books, I felt a little lost among the many other stand-alone books by Anthony Trollope that I have yet to read. There was more than one book that I put up and picked down, but when I picked up John Caldigate and started to read I realised that I had found the right book. There was exactly the right balance of things that I know that Trollope does well and things that I hadn’t encountered in his books before.
John Caldigate was the only son of a widowed father, Daniel Caldigate. He was a bright and sociable young man, and while he was at Cambridge he fell into debt. His father, a serious-minded man, who had worked hard to establish himself and only married when he was well enough established to support a family, was bitterly disappointed, but he made the necessary arrangements for his son to sell his future interest in the family estate in exchange for a mortgage on said estate, to clear his debts.
Appreciating what his father had done, wanting to repay him but not wanting to wait around for an estate that he might or might not inherit, he resolved to travel to New South Wales in the hope of making a fortune in the goldfields.
He also resolved that, if he succeeded, he would return and marry Harriet Bolton, the daughter of his father’s banker friend who had arranged the mortgage.
John Caldigate did come home, older, wiser and a great deal richer. His father was delighted to welcome the son he had thought he might never see again. The Boltons were less happy when he presented himself as a suitor, but Harriet was charmed and in time her father and her step-brothers were won over.
The couple were married, a son was born, and they could so easily have lived happily ever after; but a past indiscretion came back to haunt John Caldigate.
He and his friend, Dick Shand, had travelled to Australia third class, so that they could begin to adjust to a new life in which they would no longer be ‘gentlemen’. John met a young widow, Mrs Euphemia Smith, he was smitten with her and promised that he would find her as soon as he established himself. His attraction he her soon faded, but he remembered his promise and he travelled to find her. She was performing on the stage, as Madame Cettini.
That lady and two of his former business partners travelled to England, alleging that the mine he had sold them was worked out; that he had married Mrs. Smith in New South Wales; and that his marriage to Hester Bolton was bigamous.
John Caldigate denied the charge of bigamy, but he recognised that there was a moral, though not a legal claim for the return of part of the purchase price of the mine. He wanted to do ‘the right thing’ but he was strongly advised against ‘buying them off’.
He found himself on trial, and the case against him looked very bad.
There was much drama, inside and outside the courtroom.
The Bolton family turned against John Caldigate and, as Harriet stood firmly by her husband, they took extreme measures to bring her back to the family home and keep her there!
Dick Shand had failed as a miner and turned to drink. He came home knowing nothing about the bigamy case, he wanted to speak in his friend’s defence, but was told that his word was worthless in the light of his past!
Mr Bagwax of the Post Office travelled to Australia to test a key point of the prosecution’s case – an envelope with a stamp and a postmark – that he was sure was forged!
I have never found Trollope to be good at handling suspense, but he managed it quite well in this book. Though I had a fair idea how the story would play out I was by no means certain that it would, and I did question whether or not there had been a marriage in Australia.
There was – of necessity – a gap in the part of the story set in Australia; but what Trollope could tell of the story there I loved. I could have happily spent more time there and rather less on the voyage and the run-up to the trial. His pacing of this story didn’t quite work for me.
The central question of the story was intriguing: how should John Caldigate, who had made youthful mistakes, whose success came from good luck as much as hard work, be judged?
John Caldigate was a wonderfully nuanced character, he was a fundamentally decent man but he was horribly fallible; as was his father. I loved the way that they both changed and the way that their relationship evolved over the course of the story.
The women on this book were not so well done – I loved Harriet’s devotion to her husband, I loved that she loved her mother despite her trenchant opposition to her son-in law, but her character needed more and it simply wasn’t there.
So, my final verdict is a little mixed.
The story never failed to entertain, I loved the human drama – the gold mining scenes and the trial scenes were particularly good – but Trollope has written better books.
John Caldigate was the only son of a widowed father, Daniel Caldigate. He was a bright and sociable young man, and while he was at Cambridge he fell into debt. His father, a serious-minded man, who had worked hard to establish himself and only married when he was well enough established to support a family, was bitterly disappointed, but he made the necessary arrangements for his son to sell his future interest in the family estate in exchange for a mortgage on said estate, to clear his debts.
Appreciating what his father had done, wanting to repay him but not wanting to wait around for an estate that he might or might not inherit, he resolved to travel to New South Wales in the hope of making a fortune in the goldfields.
He also resolved that, if he succeeded, he would return and marry Harriet Bolton, the daughter of his father’s banker friend who had arranged the mortgage.
John Caldigate did come home, older, wiser and a great deal richer. His father was delighted to welcome the son he had thought he might never see again. The Boltons were less happy when he presented himself as a suitor, but Harriet was charmed and in time her father and her step-brothers were won over.
The couple were married, a son was born, and they could so easily have lived happily ever after; but a past indiscretion came back to haunt John Caldigate.
He and his friend, Dick Shand, had travelled to Australia third class, so that they could begin to adjust to a new life in which they would no longer be ‘gentlemen’. John met a young widow, Mrs Euphemia Smith, he was smitten with her and promised that he would find her as soon as he established himself. His attraction he her soon faded, but he remembered his promise and he travelled to find her. She was performing on the stage, as Madame Cettini.
That lady and two of his former business partners travelled to England, alleging that the mine he had sold them was worked out; that he had married Mrs. Smith in New South Wales; and that his marriage to Hester Bolton was bigamous.
John Caldigate denied the charge of bigamy, but he recognised that there was a moral, though not a legal claim for the return of part of the purchase price of the mine. He wanted to do ‘the right thing’ but he was strongly advised against ‘buying them off’.
He found himself on trial, and the case against him looked very bad.
There was much drama, inside and outside the courtroom.
The Bolton family turned against John Caldigate and, as Harriet stood firmly by her husband, they took extreme measures to bring her back to the family home and keep her there!
Dick Shand had failed as a miner and turned to drink. He came home knowing nothing about the bigamy case, he wanted to speak in his friend’s defence, but was told that his word was worthless in the light of his past!
Mr Bagwax of the Post Office travelled to Australia to test a key point of the prosecution’s case – an envelope with a stamp and a postmark – that he was sure was forged!
I have never found Trollope to be good at handling suspense, but he managed it quite well in this book. Though I had a fair idea how the story would play out I was by no means certain that it would, and I did question whether or not there had been a marriage in Australia.
There was – of necessity – a gap in the part of the story set in Australia; but what Trollope could tell of the story there I loved. I could have happily spent more time there and rather less on the voyage and the run-up to the trial. His pacing of this story didn’t quite work for me.
The central question of the story was intriguing: how should John Caldigate, who had made youthful mistakes, whose success came from good luck as much as hard work, be judged?
John Caldigate was a wonderfully nuanced character, he was a fundamentally decent man but he was horribly fallible; as was his father. I loved the way that they both changed and the way that their relationship evolved over the course of the story.
The women on this book were not so well done – I loved Harriet’s devotion to her husband, I loved that she loved her mother despite her trenchant opposition to her son-in law, but her character needed more and it simply wasn’t there.
So, my final verdict is a little mixed.
The story never failed to entertain, I loved the human drama – the gold mining scenes and the trial scenes were particularly good – but Trollope has written better books.
March 24, 2019
A lesser known work by Anthony Trollope but well worth the read
The errors of youth catch up with the reformed and successful John Caldigate. In this novel, as in his others, Trollope creates a central issue which has rights and wrongs on both sides of it, and follows his characters as they wrestle with the dilemma he has presented them with.
The errors of youth catch up with the reformed and successful John Caldigate. In this novel, as in his others, Trollope creates a central issue which has rights and wrongs on both sides of it, and follows his characters as they wrestle with the dilemma he has presented them with.
July 29, 2025
Another really engaging and enjoyable Trollope. John Caldigate falls out with his father, goes out to Australia to make his fortune, but just before leaving England meets and falls in love with a young girl with whom he has barely spoken. On the voyage, he meets another young woman who piques his interest. What happens in this relationship?
This novel centres around a serious court and legal drama, and questions of family loyalty, religious fervor, parent-child vs. marital love and duty, and evidence based on post-office issues (dear to Trollope’s heart). Any Trollope fan will love this one!
This novel centres around a serious court and legal drama, and questions of family loyalty, religious fervor, parent-child vs. marital love and duty, and evidence based on post-office issues (dear to Trollope’s heart). Any Trollope fan will love this one!
December 18, 2021
I really enjoyed this great novel by Anthony Trollope!
December 17, 2023
This took me a looong time to read and I wouldn’t rank it as one of my favorite Trollopes , but like all his books, it was well-written, and the characters and plot were carefully developed. I think part of the reason it felt slow to me is that there was no secondary plot, so one is just following the fortunes of Caldigate with nothing else to catch one’s interest. I did enjoy the descriptions of gold-mining in New South Wales. Also enjoyable were the parts of the plot that hinged on post office matters, as I got the distinct impression that Trollope was referring to his own post office experience.
December 16, 2018
Trollope has stealth feminism in many of his books. Were it not for the fact that I've read much of his oeuvre, I might despise the writer of John Caldigate entirely, for making the woman who chose to live, unmarried, with John Caldigate for so long, a grasping amoral villain, and the woman who "never pressed her lips to his" before marriage a spotless heroine.
I believe it's significant that this book was written not long after The Way We Live Now. When John Caldigate meets the widow Mrs Smith on his voyage of semi-exile to Australia, there are many parallels with Mrs Hurtle, the American woman that Paul Montague gets entangled with before the commencement of The Way We Live Now.
Both Mrs Hurtle and Mrs Smith are women who, at first glance, there is nothing necessarily wrong with, but who fit uneasily in the society of Victorian England and are more acceptable as companions in the New World or Colonies. Mrs Hurtle shot at a man, and divorced another! Mrs Smith is shunned by passengers on the outbound ship - presumably for good reason - and dances as Madame Cettini in Sydney! Both extract a promise of engagement from an Englishman who finds himself unwilling with his head to keep the promise but entangled nonetheless.
Mrs Hurtle was not a bad woman. But she lost out to her English rival because her English rival was a modest young girl, and Trollope, in his famous spoiler for most of his novels, declared in his Autobiography that he did not believe any modest girl would arise from his books less modest than before. Thus it is a foregone conclusion that Hetta Carbury will marry Paul Montague rather than have Mrs Hurtle retain him.
Perhaps, then, in John Caldigate, Trollope sought to explore the Mrs Hurtle character type in isolation, before we have much in the way of interaction with the modest young girl. And he sought to make her as bad as bad can be. It's a flexing of his authorial muscles rather than a declaration that unorthodox women must be whorish and thievish.
Many of Trollope's favourite themes come together in John Caldigate. His interest in the Colonies/New World. (Travels, The American Senator, He Knew He Was Right.) His interest in complex court cases. (Orley Farm et al.) His interest specifically in the ramifications of bigamy (Doctor Wortle's School, Lady Anna). Religious fanaticism of a woman in a family who has no other outlet for her desire for mastery (too many to count). Barristers, judges and solicitors having a chinwag about a case (Phineas Redux, Lady Anna).
Trollope famously, in one of his most enduringly popular books, Barchester Towers, disavowed a no-spoiler policy because he didn't want anybody to stop reading his books on the basis of a spoiler. He told his readers early that Eleanor would not marry Mr Slope in the no-spoiler discussion. The aforementioned line from his Autobiography is also a frustrating spoiler, most infuriatingly, for me, in The Claverings. TEAM JULIA! say I.
Yet he surprises us in John Caldigate.
When a character begins an adventure in his life which is defined by the beginning (the refusal to immediately sink money into somebody else's goldmine and the effort in personal mining being rewarded by that first speck of gold) it's not at all uncommon for most of the wordcount to relate to the start and for the rest of it to be skated over. It's particularly easy in John Caldigate because we switch to the perspective of John's father receiving John's letters from the goldfields. Only later do we, the readers, learn that for much of this time he had Mrs Smith as a mistress. Even other characters know before we do!
"Hester knows all about it. You are much mistaken if you think there are secrets between myself and Hester."
This is not much of a spoiler for me, a reviewer, to give you to you, anybody who's reading this. It's an early revelation. It's simply unusual in that Trollope so rarely keeps anything from his readers.
I return to the stealth feminism. When Hester's husband is under suspicion of bigamy, should she return to her family with her baby, lest she be accused of knowingly committing adultery? It might be said that a modest young girl would do so. In that case, Trollope has betrayed his own claim. Because Hester sticks to her husband, even declaring that in the worst possible scenario, "[she] would be his mistress."
I've wandered a bit. Conclusion: good book.
I believe it's significant that this book was written not long after The Way We Live Now. When John Caldigate meets the widow Mrs Smith on his voyage of semi-exile to Australia, there are many parallels with Mrs Hurtle, the American woman that Paul Montague gets entangled with before the commencement of The Way We Live Now.
Both Mrs Hurtle and Mrs Smith are women who, at first glance, there is nothing necessarily wrong with, but who fit uneasily in the society of Victorian England and are more acceptable as companions in the New World or Colonies. Mrs Hurtle shot at a man, and divorced another! Mrs Smith is shunned by passengers on the outbound ship - presumably for good reason - and dances as Madame Cettini in Sydney! Both extract a promise of engagement from an Englishman who finds himself unwilling with his head to keep the promise but entangled nonetheless.
Mrs Hurtle was not a bad woman. But she lost out to her English rival because her English rival was a modest young girl, and Trollope, in his famous spoiler for most of his novels, declared in his Autobiography that he did not believe any modest girl would arise from his books less modest than before. Thus it is a foregone conclusion that Hetta Carbury will marry Paul Montague rather than have Mrs Hurtle retain him.
Perhaps, then, in John Caldigate, Trollope sought to explore the Mrs Hurtle character type in isolation, before we have much in the way of interaction with the modest young girl. And he sought to make her as bad as bad can be. It's a flexing of his authorial muscles rather than a declaration that unorthodox women must be whorish and thievish.
Many of Trollope's favourite themes come together in John Caldigate. His interest in the Colonies/New World. (Travels, The American Senator, He Knew He Was Right.) His interest in complex court cases. (Orley Farm et al.) His interest specifically in the ramifications of bigamy (Doctor Wortle's School, Lady Anna). Religious fanaticism of a woman in a family who has no other outlet for her desire for mastery (too many to count). Barristers, judges and solicitors having a chinwag about a case (Phineas Redux, Lady Anna).
Trollope famously, in one of his most enduringly popular books, Barchester Towers, disavowed a no-spoiler policy because he didn't want anybody to stop reading his books on the basis of a spoiler. He told his readers early that Eleanor would not marry Mr Slope in the no-spoiler discussion. The aforementioned line from his Autobiography is also a frustrating spoiler, most infuriatingly, for me, in The Claverings. TEAM JULIA! say I.
Yet he surprises us in John Caldigate.
When a character begins an adventure in his life which is defined by the beginning (the refusal to immediately sink money into somebody else's goldmine and the effort in personal mining being rewarded by that first speck of gold) it's not at all uncommon for most of the wordcount to relate to the start and for the rest of it to be skated over. It's particularly easy in John Caldigate because we switch to the perspective of John's father receiving John's letters from the goldfields. Only later do we, the readers, learn that for much of this time he had Mrs Smith as a mistress. Even other characters know before we do!
"Hester knows all about it. You are much mistaken if you think there are secrets between myself and Hester."
This is not much of a spoiler for me, a reviewer, to give you to you, anybody who's reading this. It's an early revelation. It's simply unusual in that Trollope so rarely keeps anything from his readers.
I return to the stealth feminism. When Hester's husband is under suspicion of bigamy, should she return to her family with her baby, lest she be accused of knowingly committing adultery? It might be said that a modest young girl would do so. In that case, Trollope has betrayed his own claim. Because Hester sticks to her husband, even declaring that in the worst possible scenario, "[she] would be his mistress."
I've wandered a bit. Conclusion: good book.
June 22, 2016
I first discovered Trollope a year ago and have become somewhat obsessed! So far I have read over thirty of his novels, starting with the Barchester series and then the Palliser series. My expectation then was to be relatively disappointed since I had read the "best". But none have been poor and many very good. "John Caldigate" was very good and while recognizably "Trollope," somewhat atypical. It has strongly moving plot that mak s it hard to put down, which is one of the things things that make it seem more modern. John Caldigate is a typciacal Trollope young gentleman who has managed to graduate from Cambridge but before deeply disappointing his reserved father by accumulating terrible debts from betting on horse racing. He trades his inheritance to pay his debts and have some capital to go to Australia to mine for gold. Before he leaves two young women fall I love with him, he falls in love with a very young girl he baerely knows, and then engages in avery serious flirtation with an attractive and mysterious widow during the long voyage. These situations set the twisting plot in play by his poor choices, as well as the not inconsiderable humor. I love Trollop's usual happy endings but they can be somewhat light weight. For the first with a Trollope novel, I cried for the last few chapters due to the tension of the plot. Only disappointment compared to many of his other novels, the women were drawn somewhat thinly. But John Caldigate is fascinating.
March 26, 2018
I've read, and thoroughly enjoyed, a great many of Anthony Trollope's novels. John Caldigate, which features one of Trollope's most interesting plots, was yet another enjoyable experience for me.
August 8, 2025
Having just finished Anthony Trollope’ s John Colligate I am in an unusual rush to post a review. My version is part of Delphi Complete Works of Anthony Trollope, Kindle edition which it seems I have owned for exactly 10 years.
This book that had me thinking I understood it, only to have it turn into something else. Thus I felt I had nailed it at least twice before I realized AT was writing something else and then it turned into something more. It must be granted that the novel is padded out as was the style of the time and no doubt the long habits of writers working for serial syndication rather than being paid by the book. But you must be cautious. Within much of the padding are sharp psychological discussion of characters, and consistent proof that within the minds of all the major characters are significant internal arguments that their opinions are right and their actions necessary. Thus, we see many aspects of a case as it effects many family members and friends, with only the few villains blameworthy for not aligning with the hero and his even more heroic loyal wife.
John Colligate is presented to us as a recent university graduate with bad habits that had him deep in debt, turned away by his father and forced to sell the family estates. He seems be presentable and amiable, but has a habit of collecting young ladies all with reasons to believe he will be their much-loved husband.
He then leaves England for the gold fields of Australia, and maintains, indeed deepens his shipboard romance, universally decried by everyone on board from the Captain down. Our hero adopts the rough life of a gold miner, but continues and deepens his relationship with Miss Smith(the shipboard inappropriate lady).
At this point the book seems to be about the vulnerability of women and how unfairly they can be treated by society. The man of course freely recovers from his missteps.
Wait, there is more!
John defies the odds, makes serious money from gold, and returns to his father and buys back his inheritance and still being single he married the girl of his dreams. His dreams because they had hardly shared as much as one word or two extremely brief social contacts. Single? Free to marry?
Not according to Ms. Smith, or is she Mrs. Colligate? We have seen that John professed his love to her and had certainly talked of them as to be married, and there is physical evidence and eye witnesses.
Suddenly we have an instance wherein the man is forced into an extended set of ill consequences for his wayward ways. Now maybe this book is about the fact that men do not always get away free. Free. Emphasis on the word free.
Side note. I have long admired Anthoney Trollope’s way of methodical variations on a theme. The exact means by which JC entangles himself with so many possible wives is a list of a wide variety. From kinship in youth, to parental machinations and hisown clumsy waywardness. No white innocent is our John. Indeed, we have many reasons as reader to side with his accuser. So does the entire family of his English wife. Trollope again rotates through a number of people having legitimate interests in John, if not his case and we get detailed analysis of why each person so chooses and why their choice -usually is a function of what is good in that character.
But wait! There is more!
Trollope then gives us an extensive judicial process novel. The wheels of the law grind fine and slow. He investigates in depth the thinking processes of characters from the Secretary of State to a wonderful minor postal employee wonderfully named Mr Bagwax. His self-initiated investigations seems a like a mix of between Dickensian characters and modern TV science police procedurals, I am thinking of Bones or Abby from NCIS.
I book that takes you to so many places and into so many minds and reminds us why good people disagree and why the law Must grind slow is a highly recommended novel. If only someone can tell me why Ms Euphemia Smith did not attempt a civil case based on Breach of Promise?
This book that had me thinking I understood it, only to have it turn into something else. Thus I felt I had nailed it at least twice before I realized AT was writing something else and then it turned into something more. It must be granted that the novel is padded out as was the style of the time and no doubt the long habits of writers working for serial syndication rather than being paid by the book. But you must be cautious. Within much of the padding are sharp psychological discussion of characters, and consistent proof that within the minds of all the major characters are significant internal arguments that their opinions are right and their actions necessary. Thus, we see many aspects of a case as it effects many family members and friends, with only the few villains blameworthy for not aligning with the hero and his even more heroic loyal wife.
John Colligate is presented to us as a recent university graduate with bad habits that had him deep in debt, turned away by his father and forced to sell the family estates. He seems be presentable and amiable, but has a habit of collecting young ladies all with reasons to believe he will be their much-loved husband.
He then leaves England for the gold fields of Australia, and maintains, indeed deepens his shipboard romance, universally decried by everyone on board from the Captain down. Our hero adopts the rough life of a gold miner, but continues and deepens his relationship with Miss Smith(the shipboard inappropriate lady).
At this point the book seems to be about the vulnerability of women and how unfairly they can be treated by society. The man of course freely recovers from his missteps.
Wait, there is more!
John defies the odds, makes serious money from gold, and returns to his father and buys back his inheritance and still being single he married the girl of his dreams. His dreams because they had hardly shared as much as one word or two extremely brief social contacts. Single? Free to marry?
Not according to Ms. Smith, or is she Mrs. Colligate? We have seen that John professed his love to her and had certainly talked of them as to be married, and there is physical evidence and eye witnesses.
Suddenly we have an instance wherein the man is forced into an extended set of ill consequences for his wayward ways. Now maybe this book is about the fact that men do not always get away free. Free. Emphasis on the word free.
Side note. I have long admired Anthoney Trollope’s way of methodical variations on a theme. The exact means by which JC entangles himself with so many possible wives is a list of a wide variety. From kinship in youth, to parental machinations and hisown clumsy waywardness. No white innocent is our John. Indeed, we have many reasons as reader to side with his accuser. So does the entire family of his English wife. Trollope again rotates through a number of people having legitimate interests in John, if not his case and we get detailed analysis of why each person so chooses and why their choice -usually is a function of what is good in that character.
But wait! There is more!
Trollope then gives us an extensive judicial process novel. The wheels of the law grind fine and slow. He investigates in depth the thinking processes of characters from the Secretary of State to a wonderful minor postal employee wonderfully named Mr Bagwax. His self-initiated investigations seems a like a mix of between Dickensian characters and modern TV science police procedurals, I am thinking of Bones or Abby from NCIS.
I book that takes you to so many places and into so many minds and reminds us why good people disagree and why the law Must grind slow is a highly recommended novel. If only someone can tell me why Ms Euphemia Smith did not attempt a civil case based on Breach of Promise?
July 29, 2025
A bit stretched out, but one of Trollope's most enjoyable standalone later novels.
It is hard to separate John Caldigate the man from ‘John Caldigate,’ the book (1879). ‘John Caldigate,’ as a book, has an excellent plot, if a little Wikie Collins-ish in its sensationalism. It has bigamy, blackmail and a trial that becomes in itself a sensation.
John Caldigate is tried fot the crime of bigamy. His Australian wife claims that his marriage to her predated the marriage to his present wife, and produces documents and witnesses to swear to her testimony. The defence counsel is one of England's leading lawyers, while the judge is very fair. Too fair, some might say, as whatever the defence alleges – falsity, blackmail or a conspiracy – does not contradict the prosecution’s statement, that a form of wedding had taken place in a small goldmining town in the depths of New South Wales. The defendant himself had admitted to having co-habited with the lady, proposed to her, and written letters to her addressed to ‘Mrs John Caldigate.’ And finally there was the twenty thousand pounds paid to the conspirators when there was no legal or moral obligation to do so. And John is sent to serve a two year sentence behind bars.
It has to be admitted that from his youth, John Caldigate had been almost dissolute, driving his father to disinherit him, and going so far as getting his consent to breaking the entail in return for the payment of all his debts. Other than gambling, John had proved himself, if not actually a womaniser, then at the very least, a great hit with the ladies. On the ship going to Australia to redeem himself and his fortunes, he is engaged or half-engaged to two girls in England, in love with a third, and then finds a passionate, secretive widow on board ship, with whom he conducts a very shocking shipboard romance. Almost everyone on the ship from his best friend to the ship’s captain to the doctor, to the ladies who are the lady’s official chaperones, warm him against her, but John rebuffs them. His unashamed affair continues even in Australia. This is the woman who later charges him with bigamy – and wins.
There is, therefore, a very dark, manipulative element to his nature, despite the fact that he is very successful in Australia and comes home a rich man. He is reconciled to his father, and marries happily, and soon becomes a father.
Several things stand out about ‘John Caldigate’ the book. While it is about social and legal justice, Trollope gives a us a colourful, realistic picture of Australia’s gold rush, and the speed at which men become rich or destroy themselves by drink.
Always amazing in a Victorian novelist, is the strength of Trollope's women. Trollope drew powerful females, never caricatures and this book has plenty of them. Of course we pity the the wronged wife, but that begs the question, who, in this case, is the wronged wife? All the women have very forceful minds and independence of mind and speech, even the ones with minor rôles. And the current wife's mother is bigoted and so fanatical that she slowly sends her husband close to death.
Trollope uses his experiences in the British Post Office to add a touch of glamour to the detective work that forms part of the case for an Appeal. After the very fair judge examines the case in the light of the new evidence, he sends it back to the Home Office, commenting that there might be a case for a retrial, as well a new trial for perjury against the ‘conspirators,’ but the new evidence did not by itself proclaim that there was no earlier marriage.
The Home Office finally issues a pardon to Caldigate and he regains his liberty after three months. This is not a reversal of the conviction, and not a vindication of John’s innocence. But, as the judge reflects, so do we: what if there were a retrial, and what if the new trial were to deem the first marriage valid in the sight of God and the eyes of man?
It is hard to separate John Caldigate the man from ‘John Caldigate,’ the book (1879). ‘John Caldigate,’ as a book, has an excellent plot, if a little Wikie Collins-ish in its sensationalism. It has bigamy, blackmail and a trial that becomes in itself a sensation.
John Caldigate is tried fot the crime of bigamy. His Australian wife claims that his marriage to her predated the marriage to his present wife, and produces documents and witnesses to swear to her testimony. The defence counsel is one of England's leading lawyers, while the judge is very fair. Too fair, some might say, as whatever the defence alleges – falsity, blackmail or a conspiracy – does not contradict the prosecution’s statement, that a form of wedding had taken place in a small goldmining town in the depths of New South Wales. The defendant himself had admitted to having co-habited with the lady, proposed to her, and written letters to her addressed to ‘Mrs John Caldigate.’ And finally there was the twenty thousand pounds paid to the conspirators when there was no legal or moral obligation to do so. And John is sent to serve a two year sentence behind bars.
It has to be admitted that from his youth, John Caldigate had been almost dissolute, driving his father to disinherit him, and going so far as getting his consent to breaking the entail in return for the payment of all his debts. Other than gambling, John had proved himself, if not actually a womaniser, then at the very least, a great hit with the ladies. On the ship going to Australia to redeem himself and his fortunes, he is engaged or half-engaged to two girls in England, in love with a third, and then finds a passionate, secretive widow on board ship, with whom he conducts a very shocking shipboard romance. Almost everyone on the ship from his best friend to the ship’s captain to the doctor, to the ladies who are the lady’s official chaperones, warm him against her, but John rebuffs them. His unashamed affair continues even in Australia. This is the woman who later charges him with bigamy – and wins.
There is, therefore, a very dark, manipulative element to his nature, despite the fact that he is very successful in Australia and comes home a rich man. He is reconciled to his father, and marries happily, and soon becomes a father.
Several things stand out about ‘John Caldigate’ the book. While it is about social and legal justice, Trollope gives a us a colourful, realistic picture of Australia’s gold rush, and the speed at which men become rich or destroy themselves by drink.
Always amazing in a Victorian novelist, is the strength of Trollope's women. Trollope drew powerful females, never caricatures and this book has plenty of them. Of course we pity the the wronged wife, but that begs the question, who, in this case, is the wronged wife? All the women have very forceful minds and independence of mind and speech, even the ones with minor rôles. And the current wife's mother is bigoted and so fanatical that she slowly sends her husband close to death.
Trollope uses his experiences in the British Post Office to add a touch of glamour to the detective work that forms part of the case for an Appeal. After the very fair judge examines the case in the light of the new evidence, he sends it back to the Home Office, commenting that there might be a case for a retrial, as well a new trial for perjury against the ‘conspirators,’ but the new evidence did not by itself proclaim that there was no earlier marriage.
The Home Office finally issues a pardon to Caldigate and he regains his liberty after three months. This is not a reversal of the conviction, and not a vindication of John’s innocence. But, as the judge reflects, so do we: what if there were a retrial, and what if the new trial were to deem the first marriage valid in the sight of God and the eyes of man?
July 17, 2025
A new favorite Trollope-thanks so much, Elizabeth, for the excellent review that prompted me to get back to reading his books. This was a new title to me, but it is available as a free ebook through the Gutenberg library; I found a lovely Librivox recording on the Internet Archive.
This doesn’t have multiple subplots, as many of Trollope’s novels do; we follow the title character as he is disowned by his squire father, and heads to the gold fields of Australia with his Cambridge friend, Dick Shand. They decide to travel second class and get used to rough living, as they realize the life will be spartan, and the work hard.
Dick is interested in a mysterious but pretty young woman traveling second class on the boat. She holds herself aloof from the other second class passengers, but eventually becomes very close with Caldigate - so close, in fact, that a matron on board, and even the captain himself, warns our hero against such close, persistent contact with a woman about whom little is known or shared. It’s obvious that roughly dressed as they are, the two are educated gentlemen. She, on the other hand, is “no better than she should be” - an insult I’ve never quite grasped, but read and heard it enough in period pieces to know is just about calling a female a trollop up to no good!
Anyway, Caldigate refuses to give up his lady friend, and they make plans to meet once ashore in Sydney. The two adventurers head into gold country; they learn a lot, work a lot, Dick drinks a lot, John discovers some gold and eventually heads home. He’s dreamed of marrying the daughter of a friend of his father’s back in Cambridge. He does so, reconciling with his father along the way,mand all seems rosy - until the dreadful mysterious lady comes to town after writing that he married her out in Australia, and is therefore a bigamist.
There’s a trial and understandable family drama all round as people take sides, John’s youthful stupidity gets a good airing, and Trollope uses the opportunity to skewer religious hypocrisy (Caldigate’s nutty mother-in-law, a smarmy cleric hilariously named Mr. Smirkie!), and hypocrisy in general. There’s humor, adventure, romance, a trial, and more than we ever wanted to know about the post office (to do with a letter introduced in evidence by the mysterious woman claiming to be the real Mrs. Caldigate). Some great characters, too; I’d forgotten how readable and enjoyable Trollope is, I won’t go so long without reading more of his books!
This doesn’t have multiple subplots, as many of Trollope’s novels do; we follow the title character as he is disowned by his squire father, and heads to the gold fields of Australia with his Cambridge friend, Dick Shand. They decide to travel second class and get used to rough living, as they realize the life will be spartan, and the work hard.
Dick is interested in a mysterious but pretty young woman traveling second class on the boat. She holds herself aloof from the other second class passengers, but eventually becomes very close with Caldigate - so close, in fact, that a matron on board, and even the captain himself, warns our hero against such close, persistent contact with a woman about whom little is known or shared. It’s obvious that roughly dressed as they are, the two are educated gentlemen. She, on the other hand, is “no better than she should be” - an insult I’ve never quite grasped, but read and heard it enough in period pieces to know is just about calling a female a trollop up to no good!
Anyway, Caldigate refuses to give up his lady friend, and they make plans to meet once ashore in Sydney. The two adventurers head into gold country; they learn a lot, work a lot, Dick drinks a lot, John discovers some gold and eventually heads home. He’s dreamed of marrying the daughter of a friend of his father’s back in Cambridge. He does so, reconciling with his father along the way,mand all seems rosy - until the dreadful mysterious lady comes to town after writing that he married her out in Australia, and is therefore a bigamist.
There’s a trial and understandable family drama all round as people take sides, John’s youthful stupidity gets a good airing, and Trollope uses the opportunity to skewer religious hypocrisy (Caldigate’s nutty mother-in-law, a smarmy cleric hilariously named Mr. Smirkie!), and hypocrisy in general. There’s humor, adventure, romance, a trial, and more than we ever wanted to know about the post office (to do with a letter introduced in evidence by the mysterious woman claiming to be the real Mrs. Caldigate). Some great characters, too; I’d forgotten how readable and enjoyable Trollope is, I won’t go so long without reading more of his books!
May 28, 2021
A hero who has a weakness for loving and misleading too many women is a common theme for Trollope. However, I found this story interesting, and unusual, for the tension between the New and Old Worlds of Australia and England. One of Trollope's sons married and lived in Australia for many years, and Trollope himself spent a year Down Under, visiting his son and travelling around the colonies. Despite the fact that his son decided to marry and settle in Australia, Trollope himself does not see Australia as a place to put down roots. In his book Trollope re-writes his son's story by having his hero return to live and marry in England. John Caldigate earned a fortune for himself on the gold field, but at the expense of having lived a life of relaxed moral standards among disreputable people who plague his life back in England. As an Australian I felt somewhat depressed by Trollope's instance on the drunken, debauched nature of gold field 'society'. Trollope apparently professed to being a liberal, but he has a deeply conservative instinct that the landed gentry who do their duty in their communities are the essential backbone of a society, giving definition to moral values and all that is good and worthy. Rootless, mysterious women such as Mrs Smith are inherently untrustworthy. And the Australian gold fields, without a landed gentry, is necessarily a corrupt place.
More positively, Trollope suggests individuals such as Caldigate, and even the reformed Shand, were 'made' by their experience of the constant battle to survive that Australia presents, while perhaps if they had remained in England they never would have found their own strengths.
I also enjoyed the snap shot of imperial and colonial pride at the end of the book, where it was suggested that 'a very good thing would be done to the colony of New South Wales if that ingenious and skilful master of post-marks [Mr Bagwax] could be sent out to Sydney with the view of setting matters straight in the Sydney Office.' In Australia Mr Bagwax was 'treated with extreme courtesy by the Sydney officials, and was able to bring him with him a treasure in the shape of a newly-discovered manner of tying mail-bags. So that when the 'Sydney Intelligencer' boasted that the great English professor who had come to instruct them all had gone home instructed, there was some truth in it.'
More positively, Trollope suggests individuals such as Caldigate, and even the reformed Shand, were 'made' by their experience of the constant battle to survive that Australia presents, while perhaps if they had remained in England they never would have found their own strengths.
I also enjoyed the snap shot of imperial and colonial pride at the end of the book, where it was suggested that 'a very good thing would be done to the colony of New South Wales if that ingenious and skilful master of post-marks [Mr Bagwax] could be sent out to Sydney with the view of setting matters straight in the Sydney Office.' In Australia Mr Bagwax was 'treated with extreme courtesy by the Sydney officials, and was able to bring him with him a treasure in the shape of a newly-discovered manner of tying mail-bags. So that when the 'Sydney Intelligencer' boasted that the great English professor who had come to instruct them all had gone home instructed, there was some truth in it.'
July 5, 2019
Trollope never ceases to amaze me with his astute psychological observations and sharp social commentary. Young John Caldigate is a rather common figure in the literature of this time—a young man who spent his university years in frivolity and in running up large debts. He and his friend Dick Shands resolve to go to Australia and try their hands at gold mining. Neither one of these coddled young gentlemen has the slightest idea of what is in store, but John makes good through backbreaking hard work and some good luck. While he shows admirable maturity in managing his money—specifically in not drinking it away—he falls all too easily into the clutches of a dangerous, manipulative woman.
When Caldigate returns to England and marries sheltered, but strong willed Hester, he soon finds that his Australian mistress has hatched a plot to accuse him of bigamy and extort large sums of money from him. In the course of all of Caldigate’s tribulations and ensuing trial and imprisonment, Trollope reveals an impressive ability to psychoanalyze his characters’ thoughts and actions. This is exhibited brilliantly in Hester’s mother, the rigidly puritanical Mrs. Bolton, who is unwilling to share her daughter’s love with anyone, and whose machinations to protect her daughter’s immortal soul are revealed to be rooted in actual fear for her own salvation. Trollope rages against the hypocrisy of the unforgiving puritanical mindset in an exchange between Old Caldigate and the hero’s smarmy cousin-in-law, Reverend Smirkie, in which the old man says of Hester, “...if you knew anything about her, I think you would refrain from threatening her with divine wrath; and as you know nothing about her, I regard such threats, coming from you, as impertinent, unmanly, inhuman, and blasphemous.” As if all this were not enough, Trollope pays delightful homage to the country’s unsung heroes in the postal service, and makes impassioned pleas for a court of appeals in Britain, as there was no venue for overturning a wrongful verdict in his day; in the rare cases when it was discovered that a jury decision must be overturned, the only option was a pardon and release from prison, with no restitution.
When Caldigate returns to England and marries sheltered, but strong willed Hester, he soon finds that his Australian mistress has hatched a plot to accuse him of bigamy and extort large sums of money from him. In the course of all of Caldigate’s tribulations and ensuing trial and imprisonment, Trollope reveals an impressive ability to psychoanalyze his characters’ thoughts and actions. This is exhibited brilliantly in Hester’s mother, the rigidly puritanical Mrs. Bolton, who is unwilling to share her daughter’s love with anyone, and whose machinations to protect her daughter’s immortal soul are revealed to be rooted in actual fear for her own salvation. Trollope rages against the hypocrisy of the unforgiving puritanical mindset in an exchange between Old Caldigate and the hero’s smarmy cousin-in-law, Reverend Smirkie, in which the old man says of Hester, “...if you knew anything about her, I think you would refrain from threatening her with divine wrath; and as you know nothing about her, I regard such threats, coming from you, as impertinent, unmanly, inhuman, and blasphemous.” As if all this were not enough, Trollope pays delightful homage to the country’s unsung heroes in the postal service, and makes impassioned pleas for a court of appeals in Britain, as there was no venue for overturning a wrongful verdict in his day; in the rare cases when it was discovered that a jury decision must be overturned, the only option was a pardon and release from prison, with no restitution.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 30, 2025
I suppose Trollope wrote so many novels , never mind non fiction , that this one slips under the radar for many . That's a shame because it stands up to the more famous and celebrated works despite following a single plot thread , taking us half way round the world and focusing on the now arcane taboo of bigamy .
John Caldigate is a typical Trollopian Hobbledehoy, whose youthful misdemeanors and risk taking in New South Wales , both in love and finance, reap consequences that threaten to derail his settled life in Cambridgeshire.
There's enough of the scandal / sensation novel here to keep you turning the pages with a detective element , an imprisonment, a fortune lost , made and disputed and a zealot of a mother in law . Whether or not the Australian gold mine scenes are authentic. it's clear that Trollope brings his ability to create complex and dynamic personalities to the page so that , although the issue of bigamy is the sole plot driver , the reaction to it lays open the moral code of Victorian society and the pressure on familial ties and loyalties in the face of accusations .
I expect to his contemporary readers the idea of prison for such a deception seemed fair and just : these days it feels open to question and less on sacramental grounds than percuniary .
I read this while staying in Cambridge and my bus route often took me through Chesterton, where quite a chunk of action takes place , so this was an additional bonus although Puritan Hall is certainly imaginary .
John Caldigate is a typical Trollopian Hobbledehoy, whose youthful misdemeanors and risk taking in New South Wales , both in love and finance, reap consequences that threaten to derail his settled life in Cambridgeshire.
There's enough of the scandal / sensation novel here to keep you turning the pages with a detective element , an imprisonment, a fortune lost , made and disputed and a zealot of a mother in law . Whether or not the Australian gold mine scenes are authentic. it's clear that Trollope brings his ability to create complex and dynamic personalities to the page so that , although the issue of bigamy is the sole plot driver , the reaction to it lays open the moral code of Victorian society and the pressure on familial ties and loyalties in the face of accusations .
I expect to his contemporary readers the idea of prison for such a deception seemed fair and just : these days it feels open to question and less on sacramental grounds than percuniary .
I read this while staying in Cambridge and my bus route often took me through Chesterton, where quite a chunk of action takes place , so this was an additional bonus although Puritan Hall is certainly imaginary .
July 24, 2025
John Caldigate goes to Australia in disgrace after running up debts at university and being disinherited by his father. There he mines for gold and returns seven years later a rich man. He is reconciled with his father and marries the daughter of a very religious family, whom he admired before he went away. Then a woman he knew in Australia (Mrs Smith aka Mrs Caldigate) claims he is married to her and John is tried for bigamy.
More than any other Trollope novel I have read, this is a really suspenseful page-turner. Trollope is sly in glossing over and then only gradually revealing the true nature of John's dealings with Mrs Smith, in contrast to his usual habit of being up front with the reader. The sections in Australia were brief enough to be interesting, the evidence turned up by Mr Bagwax was reminiscent of a modern crime novel and the Boltons were excellent characters. I struggled to believe much in the love Mrs Bolton and Hester allegedly felt for one another, but the determination of the Boltons to convict John was shocking and convincingly narrated. Trollope created an even more than usually morally compromised/nuanced character in John Caldigate and overall there was a pacy, "modern" feel to the whole story.
More than any other Trollope novel I have read, this is a really suspenseful page-turner. Trollope is sly in glossing over and then only gradually revealing the true nature of John's dealings with Mrs Smith, in contrast to his usual habit of being up front with the reader. The sections in Australia were brief enough to be interesting, the evidence turned up by Mr Bagwax was reminiscent of a modern crime novel and the Boltons were excellent characters. I struggled to believe much in the love Mrs Bolton and Hester allegedly felt for one another, but the determination of the Boltons to convict John was shocking and convincingly narrated. Trollope created an even more than usually morally compromised/nuanced character in John Caldigate and overall there was a pacy, "modern" feel to the whole story.
March 10, 2021
This is one of the Trollope novels that one would only read if one is a die-hard Trollope fan who is reading everything. But of the lesser-known-Trollope-novels I've read, this is one of my favorites. It is set mostly in the rural surrounds of Cambridge, England but also takes a multi-chapter excursion to Australia. The plot includes young men making really stupid decisions, true and faithful love, religious fundamentalism, and courtroom drama. Trollope's depiction of religious conviction in this novel and the way that unyielding religious practices can tear apart family relationships was particularly well-wrought. And, my absolute favorite part of this novel is the minor plot involving a pair of postal employees who help with a criminal investigation by examining postal impressions and stamps. Trollope's loving and hilarious depiction of the earnestness of these servants of the postal system was delightful. If you're completing your reading of lesser-known Trollope novels, put this one at the top of your stack.
September 15, 2025
A powerful book, centring on a wayward young man, rejected by his father, and his journey from a selfish lifestyle and a rash love affair to successful gold mining in Australia and redemption. He returns home to a now supportive father, a happy marriage, albeit against the wishes of the girl's mother with her extreme and bigoted religious beliefs and then his past catches up with him. Accused of bigamy and convicted, the story evolves through the agonising attitudes of the law and the wife's family until the evidence of a postage stamp and the return of an old friend raise hopes of a (slow) dénouement. (For a time Trollope had worked in the Post Office and is credited with the still current red pillar box.) Not perhaps as good as Trollope's Barsetshire and Palliser novels but an eloquent exposure of then current practices and frustrations.
March 23, 2020
Having, sadly, worked my way through Trollope's greatest hits, I didn't expect much from this little-known work. What a pleasant surprise! Young John Caldigate gets himself in trouble and debt at school and with his father, and so sells his inheritance to strike out for Australia.
Along the way he foolishly gets involved with three different women, and of course pays for it terribly once he has wised up and married a fourth gal.
Trollope's villains are a proud, strict woman who masks her own weaknesses with religious talk, and a judge who loves his justice more than his compassion. Strangely, the villains are NOT the Australian crew that causes the trouble! Rather subtle and altogether well done.
Along the way he foolishly gets involved with three different women, and of course pays for it terribly once he has wised up and married a fourth gal.
Trollope's villains are a proud, strict woman who masks her own weaknesses with religious talk, and a judge who loves his justice more than his compassion. Strangely, the villains are NOT the Australian crew that causes the trouble! Rather subtle and altogether well done.
March 5, 2018
A slightly sloppy Trollope, but still a good read, and very interesting in having a plot whose elements the evolution of law, not to mention science, guarantees could never happen now. Bigamy and illegitimacy were the stuff of genteel horror. Trollope pens one of his warped and evil female characters, but he never seems to inhabit their point of view so as to connect the restrictions placed on their lives with how they subsequently developed. Disappointingly, he idealizes those women who completely adapt to the completely patriarchal status quo.
January 18, 2024
The hero of this book reminds me of Phineas Finn.
A little naughty, a little innocent, a lot attractive to women and very lucky.
The shift between the first and second volume was so abrupt, I wondered if the audiobook had skipped some chapters. Trollope is usually so tidy. But what happened in the interregnum is the pivot around which volume 2 spins and we end the book assured that Caldigate sowed his wild oats honorably.
Can we forgive him? Since his sweet, steely wife can and does, we can, too.
A little naughty, a little innocent, a lot attractive to women and very lucky.
The shift between the first and second volume was so abrupt, I wondered if the audiobook had skipped some chapters. Trollope is usually so tidy. But what happened in the interregnum is the pivot around which volume 2 spins and we end the book assured that Caldigate sowed his wild oats honorably.
Can we forgive him? Since his sweet, steely wife can and does, we can, too.
March 24, 2024
So, the moral of the story is that John Caldigate is a fuckboi and his mother is law is the actual Worst. Seriously, Mrs. Bolton made me so, so angry any time she showed up. Hester forgiving her for being so awful is par for the course for Hester being like, a Victorian Feminine Ideal, but I am struggling to imagine a real daughter who wouldn't resent her mother for all of that. (Also, like religious fundamental fanatics are a pretty hard sell for me as likeable characters even when they aren't essentially the novel's antagonist).
July 29, 2024
A minor Trollope, as such things go, with familiar themes, notably the oppression of women in Victorian Britain, but particularly interesting historically because of the central "author's message" about the need for a legal system of appeals to right a wrongful conviction. The main weakness of the story is that in order to present the dramatic conclusion with full force, a lot of the key action happens "off stage" and we only learn about it in effect as a flashback. But still worth reading.
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