The Last Chronicle of Barset Read Online Free Page A

women worshipping their lovers or husbands as gods or heroes, and this adulation can carry a potent erotic charge. Hero worship was a popular pastime among both men and women in this period, and war heroes such as the Duke of Wellington and Lord Nelson were especially marked out for adulation. The Duke of Wellington makes an appearance in
The Last Chronicle of Barset
, in an excruciating scene in chapter 53 which brings together some of the important undercurrents of the novel: the pagan virtues, hero-worship, definitions of manliness, and female sexuality. The scene, which is really the crisis of the Lily Dale plot, occurs when Lily Dale is riding along Rotten Row in Hyde Park while on a visit to London friends, and sees Adolphus Crosbie for the first time since he left her three years ago. Trollope is meticulous in his mapping of London and of the fictional Barchester, and, on a smaller scale, in his attentionto the way his characters occupy space and proximity to each other; but in this scene the characters are even more specifically located than usual:
    As they were standing, Lily’s horse was turned towards the diverging path, whereas Mr Dunn was looking the other way, towards Achilles and Apsley House. Mr Dunn was nearer to the railings, but though they were thus looking different ways they were so placed that each could see the face of the other. Then, on a sudden, coming slowly towards her along the diverging path and leaning on the arm of another man, she saw – Adolphus Crosbie.
    She had never seen him since a day on which she had parted from him with many kisses – with warm, pressing, eager kisses – of which she had been nowhat ashamed. He had then been to her almost as her husband… She had been in his arms, clinging to him, kissing him, swearing that her only pleasure in the world was to be with him…
    Lily’s situation, facing these diverging paths, sharpens the reader’s anticipation of which ‘path’ or lover she will choose. Crosbie’s appearance marks, as Trollope writes later in the novel, ‘the momentary vision of the real man by which the divinity of the imaginary Apollo had been dashed to the ground’ (ch. 59 ), and in the moment of his appearance she has turned her back on ‘Achilles and Apsley House’. This would have held a peculiar significance for nineteenth-century readers: Apsley House was the London home of Arthur Wellesley, first Duke of Wellington. After the Duke’s death in 1852, it became one of the most popular London houses to visit, not only for the art collection, but especially, as the
Authentic Catalogue
of 1853 describes, because of the ‘privilege of admission to the Private Apartments’ which effects an ‘intimate introduction’ to the Iron Duke. 11 Six chapters after their meeting in Hyde Park, Lily Dale encounters Crosbie again, for the last time, while viewing the private apartments in Apsley House. The only times that they meet involve an association with the Duke of Wellington, but Lily’s icy rejection of Crosbie, her physical repugnance at his proximity, are poignantly contrasted both with her former erotic response to him, and with the atmosphere offemale desire which was supposed to cling to the figure of the Duke of Wellington.
    Wellington held cult-hero status in this period, but it is the Achilles statue, paid for by a public subscription of patriotic ladies and erected in 1822 to honour the Duke, which underlines his perceived status as an object of female desire. Upon its unveiling the statue was immediately hailed as scandalous and indecent, even though its ‘antique nudity’ had, after much debate, been veiled by a fig leaf. This made it the butt of many ribald jokes; dubbed the ‘Ladies’ Fancy Man’ and the ‘Ladies’ Trophy’, it became a byword for what was seen as the frenzied desire of women for the war hero. 12
    When Adolphus Crosbie approaches