Date: Sat, 7 Apr 2001
Reply-To: trollope-l@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [trollope-l] John Caldigate: The Gold-Fields of Australia

I didn't get a chance to begin reading John Caldigate until last night but I have been excited about it all week since I read on the cover blurb that he goes to the gold-fields of Australia.

So far I am enjoying it immensely.

Dagny

Date: Sat, 7 Apr 2001
Reply-To: trollope-l@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [trollope-l] Folking

The exact location of houses in Trollope's novels is seldom clear, but in the first chapter of John Caldigate he tells us precisely where Folking is. If you leave Ely on the A142 road, going towards Chatteris, you come to the point where the road is running north-west, and crosses the causeway over the 'Middle Wash'. This is where the two branches of the Great Ouse, known at this point as the Old Bedford River and the New Bedford River run about two hundred yards apart in a north-easterly direction to find their way to the Wash. This is all a part of the great drainage system, started in the seventeenth century, to drain the Fens. This turned the area into the flat region that Trollope describes, which is exactly as it remains today. The middle Wash is an area which is used to relieve the pressure of water at times of heavy rain by flooding a considerable area of arable land. This is the reason for the causeway, which carries the main road across the Middle Wash.

As you come off the causeway, there is a road to the right, exactly as Trollope describes. There is no lodge, but I have often thought that I would like to explore that road, to see if I can see any sign of 'Folking'. A local map shows a house in the right position, called 'Fortrey's Hall', which looks extremely promising. I had intended to drive there this afternoon, since it is only twenty miles away, on my route to Cambridge or Ely. However, as for the past few days, the morning was bright and sunny, but the heavens opened at lunchtime, and I decided that I could not face a wet trudge through the area. Evelyn, my wife, thinks that I should try the morning, but there always seems too much to do. I shall try again tomorrow, and will let you know what I find.

The village of Mepal is located on the opposite side of the Middle Wash, near where Trollope locates Twopenny Hall, the farmhouse of Ralph Holt, Mr Caldigate's tenant. List members may be interested to know that the village has a web site, located at http://www.ukvillages.co.uk/. When you get there, look for Mepal, Cambridgeshire. I am afraid that the content is not very exciting, but it does give access to a map of the area.

Trollope is a bit unfair to the Fens. While they are exceedingly flat, and the area abounds with drains and droves, there is a constant change of view, and a general feeling of contentment and prosperity. The farmers are on the whole very well-to-do - I have a friend who refers to them as 'the fen barons'. Certainly BMWs and expensive four wheel drive off road vehicles abound, and shooting parties take place during the proper seasons. About three miles from Mepal is a village called Wardy Hill. I have never been there, but I am told that it rises about five feet above the surrounding countryside!

Weather permitting, I shall report further on 'Folking' tomorrow. The forecast promises dry, with sunny periods.

Regards, Howard

Date: Sun, 8 Apr 2001
Reply-To: trollope-l@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [trollope-l] Folking

Howard,

I thought your portrayal of Folking and area wonderfully evocative. Had a good chuckle at the dry account of "Wardy Hill... I am told that it rises about five feet above the surrounding countryside!" Reminds me of the landscape of a pastoral property with which I was acquainted some decades ago not so far from Caldigate territory in Australia - it had two prominent rises in an otherwise flattish terrain, both rises between 300 and 400 feet high - they were known as The Mounds, being considered too small to be named as hills - they were also known amongst the jackeroos as "Bardot's t-ts".

Michael

Date: Sun, 08 Apr 2001
Reply-To: trollope-l@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [trollope-l] John Caldigate

How wonderful that Howard has found Folking, or might have. Good sleuthing and thanks for all the local detail.

I was also fascinated at the reference to a steam plough. This was a form of farming much used in the fen country because of the flat fields, terribly high tech at that time. Two steam engines would be placed at either side of the field and a plough on a hawser would run across the field between them, driven by the steam. There was all sorts of science about the depth of ploughing and the nature of draining and levelling. (sorry going on a bit here)

I also have been completely engaged in the descriptions of Australia, but that should wait as I have been reading ahead.

What I wanted very much to post about is John Caldigate and women. We have had hobbledehoy men before in Trollope novels, men who could not resist flirting and then finding themselves in legal and emotional trouble but John Caldigate is the most woman susceptible man I have ever come across in a Victorian novel. There are three women in his path in the first few chapters. One he admires without speaking to, one whom her mother manipulates him into engagement with and one who acts for herself. Perhaps we can come onto Mrs Smith next week. I'm very interested in other people's views about her.

Angela

Date: Sun, 8 Apr 2001
Reply-To: trollope-l@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [trollope-l] Folking

The sun was shining brightly this morning, so I set off for the Middle Wash causeway. As I crossed the fenland countryside, I again thought that AT had been unfair in his condemnation of the fens as 'washy' and dull. For about ten miles of my journey I drove along the Sixteen Foot Drain, which sounds depressing. In fact it is a man-made channel, presumably sixteen feet deep, since it is about thirty feet wide. There are a number of mile-long straights, but there are regular bends, which add to the interest and keep you awake. This is important, since there is no barrier and only a grass verge between the road and the water. Probably three or four cars end up in the drain each year. The fields are large and square, as Trollope says, but there are plenty of trees and hedges, and the view is certainly not at all boring in bright sunshine. Wet days are different....

I arrived at the beginning of the causeway, and turned left towards the site of what my map told me was Fawtrey's Hall. The road immediately reduces to the width of one car, so that it is necessary to watch ahead, and note the passing places provided. After about a mile a drive runs off to the left, leading to what appears to be a two storey farmhouse. I say appears to be, because there was a foot-and-mouth disinfectant pan at the beginning of the road, and I decided that, since they appeared to have livestock, they wouldn't welcome a stranger, asking questions about a house which had probably never existed. I turned round, had a quick look at Mepal, which seems as uninteresting as its web site, and came home. I had still enjoyed the drive.

I think that it is most likely that Trollope recalled the causeway across the Middle Wash when he was fixing a location for John Caldigate, and decided to position Folking there. He had probably ridden that way while surveying the area for the Post Office. I do not propose to scour the outskirts of Cambridge to look for Puritan Grange.

Regards, Howard

Date: Sun, 8 Apr 2001
Reply-To: trollope-l@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [trollope-l] John Caldigate

Like Angela, I find John Caldigate an interesting character, especially in connection with women. I don't think that I would class him as a hobbledehoy like John Eames in The Small House and The Last Chronicle or Charley Tudor in The Three Clerks. Rather is he the sort of smoothey who attracts every girl, and will make a promise or take a kiss without much consideration of the consequences. The sort of character, in fact, that I used to hate as a young man because I couldn't match his achievements! We shall see the consequences of this as the novel goes on.

His relationship with Euphemia Smith is of a different nature entirely. I don't want to spoil any new reader's enjoyment of the tale, but she undergoes a change of personality in the course of the novel which in my view is only matched by that of the Queen of the Night in Mozart's opera The Magic Flute.

Regards, Howard

Date: Sun, 08 Apr 2001
Reply-To: trollope-l@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [trollope-l] The opening of John Caldigate

I do like the way Trollope opens up John Caldigate, somewhat in the say he opens Orley Farm. We know that eventually, if we keep on reading, the book will contain some sort of a contest which will involve legal dispute. Mrs. Smith, whom we meet in the first six chapters, reminds me somewhat of Mrs. Hurtle in The Way We Live Now

This is about my fifth time through John Caldigate, and I love it more each time. For those of you who haven't read it, you are in for a lovely time.

Last, an especial thanks to Howard for describing the fens around Folking. That's the kind of research I admire: Go where it is.

Sig

Date: Sun, 8 Apr 2001
Reply-To: trollope-l@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [trollope-l] John Caldigate

Howard, thanks so much for posting your travelogue--I thoroughly enjoyed it.

And Angela, I am so glad you explained a steam plough. I hadn't a clue what it was. I guessed it might be a tractor, but didn't see how in the world a tractor could make it through the muck and flooded fields. Thanks!

One thing I noticed about John was that he got into the hands of money-lenders/loan sharks. This seems to happen frequently in novels, so I am wondering how frequent it was in real life.

I read one French mystery by Emile Gaboriau about a man such as Mr. Davis seems to be. He made a practice of lending quite large sums of money to eldest sons with their expectations as collateral. In this novel it was quite a common practice, in fact the "sophisticated" young man who introduced his "naive" friend to the money-lender told him that they all did it--borrow 10,000 francs and pay back 20,000 francs in two years when of age.

Dagny

I agree Howard But I think A T plays carefully enough to make this a heartburn for Caldigateites

Regards Beth McM

Re: John Caldigate, Chs 1-6: Landscapes, Houses & Ships

I too enjoyed very much Howard's description of his journey in search of the partly real partly imagined landscape Trollope alludes to and fills in. It brought home to me once again how often Trollope does this: in his Barsetshire/Palliser series he uses real places to map a landscape, evokes them as they really are, and then fills in with imagined houses, lanes, scenes; so too all the Irish novels share a landscape; in Orley Farm, in The American Senator, in Ayala's Angel he's at it again. Sometimes he does it more deliberately and painstakingly, sometimes more sketchily and allusively, or suggestively. I remember when I came to England to give that lecture to the Trollope Society one of the many high points I experienced with others was when a man named Bill took us through several London areas and streets and we traced where Bonteen had been murdered, how the murderer had managed to do it, where Phineas had been. You could find the streets laid out just as Trollope described them.

I suppose the thing to think about is, Why he does this so thickly in one book -- as here in John Caldigate -- and keeps such a technique to a minimum in another -- many of the shorter books seem latched onto the landscapes of others books or suggestively-alluded to places in England. In John Caldigate the landscape and estate does seem to matter. The problem the father has had is his son doesn't seem to value it. The move to Australia is seen as a desperate measure from the first sentence on, and its difference from England is central to the relationships Caldigate will make when he is away. Trollope emphasizes how life aboard a ship frees people up from their ordinary selves -- while on board. Each of the different houses seem to reflect the personalities of the people in them too. If you are travelling second as opposed to first class, you experience another kind of trip on board a boat.

Place counts in this book.

Cheers to all,
Ellen

Re: John Caldigate: Chs 1-6: Strong Characters, Mrs Smith, Fathers and Sons

Mrs Smith is certainly one of Trollope's more alluring women -- to begin with. As Howard and Sig have both hinted, she changes. However, if we don't thrust ourselves forward, but read her behavior as she appears thus far, Trollope has been unusually sympathetic to a woman with an unchaste past. I have always wondered if Trollope meant to "use" her differently, and as I wrote when we began have been intrigued by his original title for the book: John Caldigate's Wife or Mrs John Caldigate. To me that suggests Trollope wanted us to focus on, Which one?

Even here though and so early Trollope hedges his bets, qualifies his portrait of Mrs Smith. He clearly admires her nerve; he sympathizes with her; she is intelligent, strong, John Caldigate suggests "a delightful companion and capable of enduring the hardships of an adventurous uncertain career' (1995 Folio Society John Caldigate, intro RCTerry, Ch 8, p 59 -- I've cheated just a bit and quoted from next week's chapters). Like John's father she's a reader. She has good tastes. She's also honest. She tells Caldigate her "flowers are gone" although her "stalk is still thin and sensitive" (46). And when Caldigate asks what that means she gives him to understand she is not innocent, has been "bedraggled," and a bit later says a man can recover his reputation, while a woman cannot "recuperate. Yet at the same time there's the captain warning the young man; there's something indefinably wrong here. The talk about the policeman who look suspiciously at her lack of gloves hints at prostitution, at some arrest. Probably John Caldigate's attraction to her is part of the ambiguous presentation of him.

John Caldigate is not only another of Trollope's less than admirable heroes, he is not a hero Trollope normally likes all that much. I agree with Howard that he's not the hobbledehoy. He does well with women. Yet he's not the sleaze-playboy type we've seen lately either (e.g., Frank Houston, Jack de Baron). He's hard, strong like an ox -- the liking for watching rat fights strikes a violent note: it's a peculiarly sordid bloodsport. Trollope has other heroes who go in for this (young Orme in Orley Farm), but here it's used to characterize John Caldigate as preferring the vulgar, the dense. Again Trollope steps back from characterizing Caldigate as dishonest: he does pay Davis. (Trollope cannot have a hero who doesn't respect private property and pay his debts.)

Perhaps one reason John Caldigate does not come off that well here -- and again later -- is we are not allowed to enter his mind. Note how his consciousness is kept from us. This reminds me of Trollope's technique with Mary Lovelace in Is He Popenjoy?. When Trollope is presenting a character whose behavior he wants us to look askance at, think about, but whom he doesn't not want us positively to dislike, he keeps their minds from us. The mind we are allowed insight into is Daniel Caldigate.

The novel begins with the father and it is mangled, failed, disoriented father-and-son relationship that begins the events of the story. John leaves for Australia because his father will not allow him to carry on his idle life. Note the opening sentence of the novel:

Perhaps it was more the fault of Daniel Caldigate the father than of his son John Caldigate, that they two could not live together in comfort in the days of the young man's early youth. And yet it would have been much for both of them that such comfortable association should have been possible to them. Wherever the fault aly, or the chief fault -- for probably there was some on both sides -- the misfortuene was so great as to bring crushing troubles upon each of them (Ch 1, p. 1.)

The father is a proud highly intelligent man who will not bend or conform to the world he finds himself in. He does not suffer fools at all: he won't even pretend to. He finds that his son is not intellectual at all. Not only that his son is not strongly ethical as yet: we have glimpses that the son will turn out to be this man's child: he desires to pay his debt; in his interview with Mr Bolton he acquits himself very well; he does begin to yearn to hold onto the land; he does feel for the father, only does not know how to show it because he thinks the father does not love him, does not respect him.

A few comments in terms of the story: Daniel Caldigate is called by others cold and stern and unbending because he persists in disinheriting his son. But consider: 1) John has shown no interest in the estate whatsoever; 2) he has gotten badly into debt; 3) he has thrown away his opportunity to get a university degree; 4) he is himself cold to his father and keeps his distance, chooses to remain with other relatives. All these causes are cited in the opening chapter as having led to the rupture and the replacement of John with George as heir.

Then consider how Trollope presents the old man from within. We are told the man was himself passionate: "He was jealous, jealous to hot anger, at being neglected, but could not bring himself to make advances to his own son" (p. 7). When the relatives reason with the old man, he does offer to give the son the property, but the son prefers to have his debts paid and does not want to live as squire in Folking. He wants adventure, to hunt gold.

In Chapter Three there are a number of really touching moments--at least I found them so--in which the father longs to reach out to his son but cannot. For example, when the son half- apologized, "'Of course I have been weak,'" the father says: "'Do no suppose for a moment that I am finding fault. It would be of no avail, and I would not thus embitter our last hours together'" (p 26). Consider also the father's words when he asks if he could hear "from you sometimes:" "It will give an interest to my life if you will write occasionally'" (p 27). The boy is touched and says he need not hurry away tonight, which offer the father refuses gently in the following words:

"'I don not know that you will do any good by staying A last month may be pleasant enough, or even a last week, but a last day is purgatory. The melancholy of he occasion cannot be shaken off. It is only the prolonged wail of a last farewell'" (p 27).

The son suddenly says "it is very sad," to which the father replies:

"'Therefore, why prolong it? Stand not upon the order of your going but go at once'" (p 27).

He may not cry, but at one point the narrator says he stands there silently because he does not trust himself to get through anything else (I am afraid I can't find the sentence right now, but it's there). The scene concludes with the father suddenly recalling the son back with a kind of "murmur rather than a word,--but in that moment he had resolved to give way a little to the demands of nature" (p. 28).

The father loves the son very much, but has been hurt, sees the son as someone who does not love him and does not want to replace him, thus far a wastrel. So he cannot show what he feels because it would do no good. He wishes the boy a "'God bless you and peserve you," and lets him go. It is actually the best for Caldigate who has some growing up to do, some oats to sow.

In this paradigm Trollope is meditating his relationship with his son Fred. Not literally. I rush to insist that I don't mean any literal one-on-one relationship. Fred paid his debts, married pretty quickly and so on. Metaphorically. Fred had to escape his father; Fred did not do well in school; Fred was not intellectual. There are many signs of estrangement between Trollope and his sons. Among them Fred's going away. Trollope also had problems with his younger son, Henry -- who got himself involved with a woman who was either lower class or not chaste -- it's not clear. Henry was quickly shipped out to his brother in Australia. Henry never had Trollope's gifts -- and he knew it. There is a sharp comment by Margaret Oliphant over a manuscript of Henry's Trollope coerced her into accepting -- and then editing up to par. Trollope was a strong man, highly gifted, aggressive or determined in his character . A very hard act for a son to follow. So I see in this exploration of these two characters Trollope bringing in his own knowledge of how people can misunderstand one another, feel affection, become estranged and desperate and do things they regret, but not be able to show even the regret.

In the story of Mrs Smith I cannot pinpoint any autobiography as Trollope has skillfully precluding us from looking by telling us in his Autobiography about his youth in London cruising (would be the modern world), about Kate Fields whom he loved, and at the close about how he was always allured by and (apparently) followed his instincts upon more than one occasion over a pretty women, but never betrayed anyone, kept in bounds. He does this several times. But we do have some suggestive stories: there's "Journey to Panama" where we have an intense shipboard romance, and "The Ride Across Palestine" where the woman feels deeply angry because the man never told her he was married.

A strong book in which Trollope is giving of himself, using his gifts within the constraints of the genre and his audience's mores.

Cheers to all,
Ellen

Date: Mon, 09 Apr 2001
Reply-To: trollope-l@yahoogroups.com Subject: [trollope-l] John Caldigate: Chs 1-6: Strong Characters

Ellen: I liked what you said about the warmth between old Daniel Caldigate and his son, even down to the younger man's waning minutes in the tale. This is one of the signs of genius in Trollope: he can show us two very reasonable people being reasonable and yet disagreeing with each other. Not every writer can pull this off. p with this week's chapters, but did want to chime in with the contingent that's really loving this book. I'm especially curious about Hester, and whether or not she'll turn out to be a major player in the book. Will the pretty little Puritan remain so, or will the dashing rake John Caldigate bring out a different side in her? I'll be curious to see.

Lisa Guidarini

Date: Tue, 10 Apr 2001
Reply-To: trollope-l@yahoogroups.com Subject: [trollope-l] John Caldigate

Dear list,

I finally had the opportunity to start on the novel yesterday, and was amazed by what a strong start it has. Trollope minces no words about the relationship between father and son, nor does he beat about the bush regarding John's character and feelings. This is the sort of Trollope novel I love, I can tell it already. It's a very strong and intense book, thus far, filled with very well-defined characters. I'm still not quite caught up ...

Judy Geater

Date: Thu, 12 Apr 2001
Reply-To: trollope-l@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [trollope-l] John Caldigate: Chs 1-6: Strong Characters

Dear list,

did get caught up on John Caldigate_ the other day but I've been too busy to post any comments. However, I have been enjoying everyone's comments immensely, especially those dealing with Mrs. Smith. I liked this woman immediately, I suppose because she seems interesting and mysterious and because she's strong and not easily intimidated. I understand something about her will change within the course of the book, which sounds ominous to me!

Judy Geater

Date: Thu, 12 Apr 2001
Reply-To: trollope-l@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [trollope-l] John Caldigate: Chs 1-6

One of the most interesting aspects of our first installment of John Caldigate is the treatment of class distinctions abord ship. We are made quite aware of the somewhat artificial distinction between the two classes, because not only is Caldigate a "gentleman," but everyone can tell he is by the way he carries himself. Nevertheless, at the time of the dance in the first-class section, we are told that:

"though there was probably not a girl or a dancing married woman there who would not have been proud to stand up with Mr John Caldigate of Folking, there was not one who would have dared to take the hand of a second-class passenger."

Mrs Smith quizzes Caldigate about his own attitudes toward class distinction ("If you were among them would you dare to come out and ask me to join them?"). This little discussion between them during the dance (Chapter 6) is choice. It is a little complex, because much of what she says makes a great deal of sense, but she is, after all, a second-class passenger --even worse, one with an unknown past -- so I wonder whether or not we are supposed to trust her. For that matter, how much are we supposed to trust Caldigate's attitudes. At the moment he is too close to the situation, with his emotions becoming involved in the matter of a second-class passenger, to be completely reliable. Are the his opinions regarding class the same ones he would express were he in a different situation? This interplay of attitudes is very intriguing, and it is developed further in Chapter 7.

Wayne Gisslen

To Trollope-l

April 13, 2001

Re: _John Caldigate_, Chs 1-6: Class & Sex

Wayne brings up an interesting element in this week's six chapters: many people in the US like to assert that we have a very fluid class system; indeed, some like to deny there is one. There are only "distinct" markers like money, education, tastes. I've gathered that many people in the older European societies (well beyond the English) like to assert that rank is more solid and less fluid than it is. By placing his characters in board a ship where -- as in a plane -- people will often speak more frankly and get into relationships where they can release attitudes for a while precisely because they know the relationship will cease when the two or three or group "return" to society outside the space and time of the travel -- Trollope puts a number of new perspectives on human behavior before us. We can see that people do behave to one another in ways that are a function of their personalities and histories and supercede class and rank. This happens a little in real life, and especially when outside a public forum -- hence all the chaperoning of women in the Victorian period.

More: as in Lady Anna and several other of Trollope's shorter less well known books, he plays upon the reality that in England class and rank is not as easily identifiable or consistent as many people suppose. As it seems to be in the interest of the going "mores" and establishments or groups in power in the US (it being such a big country there are many different regions and cultures in it too), to assert there is no hard and fast distinction of class hard to overcome, so it seems to be in the interest of the smaller narrower European establishments to insist that class is not fluid. People are really their ranks; they don't rise easily, and if they fall it is somehow a moral fault. What is going to happen in John Caldigate is we are going to see him and Dick Shand response to a wide open world and each find his place in accordance with something which is not commensurate with their moral outlook. It goes deeper: into the instinctive physiology, the cunning of the appetite, some inner self which holds fast to itself and demands respect. That's what Jonathan Stubbs had. Remember how Trollope said everyone knew he was a gentleman instinctively: it was not just a matter of dress or wealth or where he stood. So here we are getting the same kind of statement about John Caldigate -- but do not get it of Dick Shand.

Mrs Smith does not seem to place easily. She exists between groups, as it were. She seems to belong nowhere: she has the manners, tastes, education of a gentlewoman. That she's travelling second-class is to be attributed to her lack of funds and displacement. Thus we could surmize that she could easily go up: let us imagine her marrying Caldigate, he striking it rich, and them returning to England without offering much background to anyone. There might be those who would look down on her for her demi-monde background (who was Mr Smith? was there a Mr Smith?), but, as (among other characters in various English novels) Mary Crawford observes, luxurious parties, rich tables, and a carriage will do much.

This fluidity is an important theme in this book. I mentioned Lady Anna because at its close after the lady married the tailor, they went to live in Australia. Trollope had planned a sequel, but was deterred by the castigation his book received: this was worse than Felix Holt said the reviewers. He broke caste. Now Australia was thought to be a place where such things didn't count so very much because they couldn't. From the final paragraph of Lady Anna it seems Trollope was half- thinking of bringing his couple back to England after they "made good". Now he carries a character away to Australia in company with a woman who cannot be placed because her chastity is in question. His hero is a man who does well with women, of strong appetites and a determined will, someone who instinctively knows not to show vulnerabilities. We do have an apparent conventional heroine in the background: Hester Bolton, and her mother's intense religious fundamentalism and clear determination to keep her daughter away from sex, nay adulthood: we are told she is dressed far younger in style than a girl her age would normally be; her hair is tied back tightly somehow -- hair was an overt symbol for sensuality and sexuality in the Victorian period.

Through Mrs Smith Trollope makes a statement about how one's class or rank for a woman depends heavily on one's perceived chastity; what will be the parallel reinforcement or ironic counterpart Hester will serve? Through John Caldigate and Dick Shand Trollope explores a man's positioning in his society. Both sets of characters, male and female, plot some transition which takes into the fluidity of and truths about class and station.

Cheers to all,
Ellen Moody

*************************************

I have appended to the above the series of postings I wrote about John Caldigate when in 1997 I with a group of people on Ms Thompson's list began to read John Caldigate. I was forced off this list by a man who hectored and insulted me for admiring Mrs Smith (a "polluted" woman), with the insinuation I was the same way. I have saved these postings and put them on here as I still think them worthwhile for anyone interested in reading other people's readings of this wonderful novel.

To Trollope List

June 14, 1997

Re: John Caldigate, Chs 1-8: Mrs Smith & Emily Viner ("Journey to Panama")

I like Mrs Smith; I only wish Trollope liked her more than he does. He clearly admires her spunk; he sympathizes with her; she is intelligent, strong, John Caldigate suggests "a delightful companion and capable of enduring the hardships of an adventurous uncertain career' (1993 Oxford paperback, ed N.John Hall, Ch 8, pp 75-6). But alas she's not a virgin, probably not even chaste (meaning faithful to one man at a time). She tells Caldigate her "flowers are gone" although her "stalk is still thin and sensitive" (46). And when Caldigate asks what that means she gives him to understand she is not innocent, has been "bedraggled," and a bit later says a man can recover his reputation, while a woman cannot "recuperate.

Thus at least in this full-scale novel while our hero, Caldigate, is allured, attracted by the adventure, awed at his own courage or frightened by his nerve (hard to say), Trollope cannot allow us for even a short while to think Mrs Smith is going to be our permanent heroine. When Caldigate actually thinks of marrying her, half-engages himself to her, Trollope says, "a man who is brought up among soft things is so imbued with the feeling that his wife should be something better, cleaner, sweeter, holier than himself," that he cannot be comfortable allying himself or "marrying this all but nameless widow of some drunken player" (76).

said "in this full-scale novel" because in "Journey to Panama" Trollope does make such a woman his heroine, and gives her strong words which move the reader, as for example, about her "friends" and relatives who have coerced her into selling herself as wife to a man she's never met,

"Oh, Mr Forrest, if you knew what it was to have to live with such people as those.' And then, out of that, on that evening, there grew up between them something like the confidence of real friendship" (Sutherland, 1991 Oxford paperback, Early Short Stories, 387).

As to the wealth her forced marriage is going to bring her, which the male in this story, a Mr Ralph Forrest, likens to " a palace in Peru," this woman, Emily Viner says,

"An English workhouse would be better, but an English poorhouse is not opene to me. You do not know what it is to have friends--no, not friend, but people belonging to you--just so near as to make your respectability a matter of interest to them, but not so near that they should care for your happiness. Emily Viner married to Mr Gorlock [the rich old man who awaits her] is put out of the way respectably" (391).

And then in another dialogue she says, "there are worse things Mr Forrest than being alone in the world. It is often a woman's lot to wish she were let alone" (384).

Trollope allows Forrest genuinely to fall in love with this woman; their conversations are full and detailed; it is true they part when the ship comes to shore, but not because Mr Forrest wants to part. Although Mr Gorloch has died and Emily could become wife to Forrest, Emily really wants to be free, and makes this interesting statement about their relationship and conversations during the voyage:

"While he [Mr Gorloch] lived,it seemed to me that in those last days I had a right to speak my thoughts plainly. You and I were to part and meet no more, and I regarded us both as people apart, who for a while might drop the common usages of the world" (396).

Since the "common usages" kick back in again, she bids him adieu.

So Trollope can sympathize deeply with and for a few pages make an unconventional woman his heroine. Probably he felt he could afford it. In the longer book he is willing to risk less. This is how I explain the enigmatic nature of the encounter, the stiffness of Trollope's presentation of Mrs Smith--the love talk is sudden, explosive, and turned away from very quickly--and the hints at her darker nature. The talk about the policeman who look suspiciously at her lack of gloves hints at prostitution, at some arrest. Trollope deliberately makes Mrs Euphemia Smith hard and bitter to begin with. I don't mind; I prefer it to Mary Thorne. I would much prefer Mrs Smith as heroine to Hester Bolton. But Trollope doesn't; Caldigate couldn't So it's necessary that we are kept at a distance and notes of distrust are thrown in.

What she means by her "present outward woman" (50) I'm not sure, but I guess it is the role she is playing today for Caldigate. It protects her to appear as a respectable enough widow with a second-class ticket. It stands "in lieu of the housemaid's broom" which protects the housemaid, and the chaperons who protect the servant girls or their daughters and sisters.

Ellen Moody

Re: John Caldigate, Chs 1-8: Father and Son

Mrs Smith is not the only interesting or unusual character in this novel. There's the father and John Caldigate too. The father is intelligent and deep feeling and has been estranged from hs son. Caldigate himself is not quite a Harry Clavering. Would Harry go off and chance the rigors of mining in Australia? This is going to mean dressing down, giving up for a long while all those comfortable and lovely things which provide the cocoon of caste within which Harry Clavering exists. Going out on second-class is just the start.

John Caldigate is a rebel in his way; he is hard. He may be susceptible to traps laid for him by older women so that he shall marry one of the young girls among them, but he is not content to accept life passively.

Ellen Moody

Re: John Caldigate, Chs 1-8: The Goldfinder

Trollope spent much time aboard ships, and I find his analysis of shipboard life and presentation of the feel of what it's like to be at sea compelling. The first time I went to England I did so on a student boat which took 10 days to get there; the experience was remarkable, not least because I lost all sense of a clock marking time. In the whole of the sequence aboard the Goldfinder I found the not only the descriptions of the sea, the shore, the colors, but the rhythms of the sentences, and also the curious use of passive constructions again and again capture life on the vast ocean (see for example in the 1993 Oxford paperback NJohn Hall, pp 44-5). It's not only what Trollope says of the hierarchical interlude, but how he says it.

As to the parents putting their children in one class and taking another, maybe it strikes us as odd because perhaps we are to assume these people have servants and the servants are taking care of the children. When we imagine ourselves similarly parted from our children--let us suppose ourselves on a train in which we have taken one compartment and put the children in another--we don't think of having servants as our replacements. Most people still economize on their children in those areas they think children don't care about.

Re: John Caldigate, Chs 1-8: The Satire on Novels & Thomson's The Seasons.

Since on another list I am on we have been reading a novel by George Eliot, I was very alive to the possible satire of Eliot's books in the form of "Michael Bamfield," a book Caldigate says "is hard work, perhaps very thoughtful, if you can digest that sort of thing," to which Mrs Smith says, genially, "I hate thought." My Oxford edition has a long note in which the books are identified. The Michael Bamfield reference may also be to George Meredith. It also refers the interested reader to a discussion in TLS_ in which several people tried to guess who was referred to. The dates show that not everyone had only WWII on their minds: 19 Oct 1940; 22 Nov 1940; 22 Nov 1941; 20 Dec 1941; 2 Jan 1942.

I was touched that Molly Strand gave Caldigate her Thomson's Seasons. Coleridge says the book remained popular, beloved, and much read well into the century. Madame Roland had The Seasons in her pocket during her time in prison waiting to be guillotined.

Ellen Moody

June 15, 1997

Re: John Caldigate, Chs 1-8: Daniel Caldigate

Marion while I agree that John Caldigate's father seems cold and stern and unbending because he persists in disinheriting his son, consider the points either Duffy Pratt & Robert Wright made: 1) John has shown no interest in the estate whatsoever; 2) he has gotten badly into debt; 3) he has thrown away his opportunity to get a university degree; 4) he is himself cold to his father and keeps his distance, chooses to remain with other relatives. All these causes are cited in the opening chapter (see Oxford pp 6-7) as having led to the rupture and the replacement of John with George as heir.

Then consider how Trollope presents the old man from within. Until Chapter 3, i's quiet, the strokes are subtle, but they are there. We are told the man was himself passionate: "He was jealous, jealous to hot anger, at being neglected, but could not bring himself to make advances to his own son" (p. 7). When the relatives reason with the old man, he does offer to give the son the property, but the son prefers to have his debts paid and does not want to live as squire in Folking. He wants adventure, to hunt gold.

But in Chapter Three there are a number of really touching moments--at least I found them so--in which the father longs to reach out to his son but cannot. For example, when the son half- apologized, "'Of course I have been weak,'" the father says: "'Do no suppose for a moment that I am finding fault. It would be of no avail, and I would not thus embitter our last hours together'" (p 26). Consider also the father's words when he asks if he could hear "from you sometimes:" "It will give an interest to my life if you will write occasionally'" (p 27). The boy is touched and says he need not hurry away tonight, which offer the father refuses gently in the following words:

"'I don not know that you will do any good by staying A last month may be pleasant enough, or even a last week, but a last day is purgatory. The melancholy of he occasion cannot be shaken off. It is only the prolonged wail of a last farewell'" (p 27).

The son suddenly says "it is very sad," to which the father replies:

"'Therefore, why prolong it? Stand not upon the order of your oing but go at once'" (p 27).

He may not cry, but at one point the narrator says he stands there silently because he does not trust himself to get through anything else (I am afraid I can't find the sentence right now, but it's there). The scene concludes with the father suddenly recalling the son back with a kind of "murmur rather than a word,--but in that moment he had resolved to give way a little to the demands of nature" (p. 28).

I feel the father loves the son very much, but has been hurt, sees the son as someone who does not love him and does not want to replace him, thus far a wastrel. So he cannot show what he feels because it would do no good. He wishes the boy a "'God bless you and peserve you," and lets him go. It is actually the best for Caldigate who has some growing up to do, some oats to sow.

Kate is right that many of the novels show us young men who have some growing up to do, but except for The Landleaguers perhaps (which I've not read but must get to), they do not show the world out of the eyes of a child and do not show that child gradually turning into adolesence and then adulthood as across the central part of the narrative. The only place Trollope does this is in his own Autobiography.

Ellen Moody

Re: John Caldigate, Chs 1-8: The Use of Suspense

Of Installments 1-2, RJ remarks: "Trollope is playing his cards close to the vest," and that he finds himself wondering what will happen next and wanting to read on to find out. I also will look at chapter headings as a way of peering in the crystal ball of the author's mind.

One of the writer's tasks is to keep the reader reading, and we might say there are two basic ways a work can be organized to keep the reader at it. The first is dramatic irony: we know many things the characters don't and we watch them from our Olympian heights. The author may lead us to be amused or appalled or horrified or saddened, but an essential part of the enjoyment derives from our knowing what is to come. In such texts the development of character is often paramount. Trollope makes a strong use of dramatic irony in many of his novels; in some he goes so far as to say he is above suspense, above plotting, not for him this artificial holding out on the reader, and, then promptly spills the beans--in Barchester Towers he assures us early on Eleanor Harding will not marry Mr Slope. Not to worry. But it is to be noted that he does not tell us she will marry Mr Arabin. In fact Trollope often tells us only a part of what's to come; he combines dramatic irony and suspense all the while at once crowing and teasing us with the information he does give us. Books which work like this include: Dr Wortle's School, An Eye for an Eye. Orley Farm is a case in point because as long as it suits his purpose Trollope does not tell us whether Lady Mason is guilty; once it does not he tells us she is. The first half of the novel leaves us fretting, anxious, not knowing, wondering; the second is an exploration of the woman's character and what really happens at a trial (we need to know she is guilty to get the full irony of how everyone behaves).

But there are some books in which Trollope relies very heavily on suspense. John Caldigate is one of them. I think one is still engrosses even knowing how each of the many crisis in the plot turns out because Trollope still makes character and moral vision paramount, and until the last moment of the last climax the result or consequences are never the result of a single factual revelation. Still the book is suspenseful, and Trollope gives away very little. It is not until 2/3's of the way through that we find out some things about John Caldigate and Mrs Smith's relationship that are essential for the most basic knowing of what they meant to one another. Chapter 9 just opens on Caldigate's return to England; very little is told about some of what happened in Australia until late in the book. At each turn Trollope keeps us uninformed of certain aspects of a situation, and I was startled a couple of times; something I didn't expect to happen, happened. I would say that Mr Scarborough's Family works more like John Caldigate than it does like Dr Wortle's School. I am curious if Is He Popenjoy? works this way. (I haven't read it, but the descriptions of it suggest that suspense would be the way to go.)

Trollope is a tricky novelist, and his narrator is often not as reliable or candid with us as he pretends. He also usually withholds something to the end to make us read on. John Caldigate seems to me one of those novels which much more consistently than most of Trollope's novels relies on suspense.

Ellen Moody