The Last Chronicle of Barset (3 page)

When Trollope was nineteen his mother obtained for him the position of junior clerk in the newly established General Post Office. He got into a little debt and made a bad impression at his work. It was not until he applied for and got the job (that no one else seemed to want) of postal surveyor's clerk in Ireland that his life changed. Trollope spent sixteen happy years in Ireland, during which he became respected in his postal career, married and had two sons, and wrote his first novels. By the time he returned to England in 1859, he had become one of the most popular novelists of the day.

While writing
The Last Chronicle
he was coming to the decision to leave his job at the Post Office. He was now fifty-one. In his long civil service to the GPO he had contributed significantly to one of the many great eighteenth-and nineteenth-century institutions and inventions (such as Brunel's bridges and ships, canals, macamadized roads, the railways and the telegraph) which created an infrastructure and networks of communication across Britain, and indeed over much of the world. These networks were tremendously important to Trollope. In the early 1850s he was asked to extend and ensure the delivery of letters to rural Ireland and then over a large part of Britain, and he later wrote that, ‘during those two years it was the ambition of my life to cover the country with rural Letter Carriers'.
⁸
To him is credited the establishment of the pillar box in Britain, and he worked tirelessly so that letters should be delivered reliably and free of charge ‘to the public in little villages'.
⁹
Later he travelled to Egypt, the USA, the West Indies and Cuba, among other places, to establish reliable postal networks worldwide. He had, over these years, ‘imbued myself with a thorough love of letters, – I mean the
letters which are carried by the post, – and was anxious for their welfare as though they were all my own'.
¹⁰
To create these seamless networks in which all is accounted for, every piece properly delivered, was important to him not only as a surveyor of letters, but as a ‘man of letters' also. Trollope was a master of the Victorian multiplot novel and was anxious that all the plots and characters should be properly traced, accounted for and delivered. The creation of a flawless network of postal letters and fictional plots was satisfying, perhaps, in the increasingly modern and fragmented Victorian world, providing the illusion at least of some order and sanity in a time of rapid expansion and change. So it is with the understanding of both the civil servant and the novelist that Trollope tells the story of Reverend Crawley's anguish and unravelling sanity at not being able to account for a cheque for twenty pounds. His is the nightmarish doubt and irrational guilt of anyone who has worked in an office, or paid the bills, or filled in forms – the panic which arises from an inability to answer when the voice of officialdom demands to know where something is, or, as in the title of chapter
19
, ‘Where Did it Come From?'

All Barsetshire, from the butcher to the bishop, are asking this question of Josiah Crawley, but at the close of chapter
19
it is his wife who asks, and Crawley's response reveals something of what is at stake for the man who cannot remember, who cannot account for a bit of paper:

‘Yes,' said he; ‘yes; that is the question. Where did it come from?' – and he turned sharp upon her, looking at her with all the power of his eyes. ‘It is because I cannot tell you where it came from that I ought to be – either in Bedlam, as a madman, or in the county gaol as a thief.'

The fragmenting pauses of Crawley's language here reveal the fragmentation of his own mind: ‘How is a man – to think himself – fit – for a man's work… They should take me to Bedlam at once – at once – at once.' ‘And am I a thief?' he asks himself at the end of chapter
12
, ‘standing in the middle of the road, with his hands up to his forehead'. It is a powerful image of a man almost literally trying
to hold his head together. To be, as Crawley puts it, ‘fit for a man's work' is crucial to Victorian definitions of manliness; this fitness is constituted of values which enable the man to hold his head high, to struggle against the shame of debt and the vulnerability of dependence or poverty, to be the trusted and respected public man, and the paterfamilias in public and private.

For the Victorian gentleman a classical education taught the pagan virtues, put forward in Aristotle's
Politics
, of justice, prudence, temperance and fortitude. These were just as important, if not more so, than the Christian virtues of faith, hope and charity in the formation of the Victorian ideal of manliness. A gentleman should be whole and unassailable in his practical wisdom and fortitude, and can be held accountable for his actions. This makes it very difficult for Mrs Crawley to ask her husband where the cheque for twenty pounds came from because she ‘could not endure to make him think that she suspected him of any frailty either in intellect or thought. Wifelike, she desired to worship him, and that he should know that she worshipped him' (ch.
19
).

Before he jilted her, and probably after as well, Lily Dale worshipped her fiancé Adolphus Crosbie. He had been to her an ‘Apollo'; she ‘had ever pictured to herself the lover whom she had preferred as having something godlike in his favour' (ch.
59
). Trollope frequently depicts 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 attention
to 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 of
female 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 Lily Dale on the diverging path in Hyde Park he is no longer god-like or heroic, but a tired and disappointed man, beleaguered by debt. Lily has turned her back on the Achilles, that popular monument to female erotic fantasy, in the same moment as she becomes disillusioned with the man who has for years been the secret object of her sexual and emotional desires. Some critics have accused Lily Dale of being sexless, or afraid of sex, and in this a typical Victorian heroine. However, a closer and less prejudiced look at the Victorian novel gives ample evidence of the sexual desires of both women and men, and Trollope's novels are no exception. Lily Dale has given and received Crosbie's embraces, passionately. Her rejection of John Eames, which has thwarted the wishes of so many readers, partly accounts for the mistaken idea that she is afraid of sex, but her rejection of the worthy lover means not that she fears sexual intimacy, but that she cannot face such closeness with one whom she has always loved platonically. Sexuality is indeed so important to her that after her euphemistic ‘worship' of Crosbie, she cannot ‘give herself ' to Eames in marriage, no matter how much it may fulfil her social and domestic life. In the scene of Lily and Crosbie's encounter on Rotten Row, Trollope veers from his usual style to employ a more sensational language in describing Lily's former relationship with Crosbie: she had ‘given herself to the man entirely, and had determined that she would sink or swim, stand or fall, live or die, by him and by his truth. He had been as false as hell' (Ch.
53
). Of course Lily Dale does not suddenly become the
high-flown heroine of a sensation novel – those aspirations are left to the comic Madalina Demolines – but the close of this intensely rendered paragraph gives some idea of the subtext of sexual frustration and potential violence in Lily's erotic disillusionment: ‘Now he was before her, walking on the footpath, almost within reach of her whip' (Ch.
53
).

In chapter
23
Trollope writes ‘to Lily, who knew that her mother was always thinking of her, and of her alone, her mother was the only human divinity now worthy of adoration'. Lily may write ‘Old Maid' after her name, but in her self-imposed role as a single woman she does not become a poor governess, seamstress or ‘Magdalen', the three dreaded fates of many unmarried women as represented in the periodical press, paintings and literature of the period. Lily has the safety of the ‘small house' at Allington and the very close and loving relationship with her mother to return to. Nevertheless, even in the small house, Trollope shows the cruelty and manipulation that can exist between those who love each other best. This can be seen most clearly in a scene which has been designated by some critics the most moving, and by others the worst in the novel. It consists of a long conversation between Lily and her mother, after Lily has read the letter from Adolphus Crosbie asking to be allowed to approach her again with his love. The two women debate whether or not Lily should reopen the relationship with this man who has betrayed her. Their language is subtly complicated by biblical subtext. Trollope and many of his contemporary readers would have been familiar with the verses from Matthew's Gospel that are employed here by Lily and her mother, and with the verses which follow and precede them. Mrs Dale, for example, speaks of ‘grapes and thistles' but does not dare quote the previous passage, which is far closer to what she wants to say: ‘Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves' (Matthew 7:15). To her thinking Crosbie is a ravening wolf, but to say so openly would antagonize her daughter. Instead she relies upon the biblical subtext to insinuate her disapproval and to manipulate Lily by indirect means.

In this scene Mrs Dale inflicts upon her daughter a wound which must be the sharpest she has received since the jilting which will
always mark her. Lily says to her mother that Crosbie has ‘been unhappy' and the ‘remedy' he proposes for himself is to marry her because he still loves her. She asks her mother:

‘Do I flatter myself if I allow myself to look at it in that way?'

Perhaps he thinks he is offering a remedy for your misery.'

As this was said Lily turned round slowly and looked up into her mother's
face. ‘Mamma,' she said, ‘that is very cruel. I did not think you could be so
cruel. How can you, who believe him to be so selfish, think that?'

Mrs Dale effectively tells her daughter that the man she still loves may have approached her simply because he feels sorry for her. It is a bitter insult, and one with which Mrs Dale intends to control her daughter, as she knows that Lily's pride could not bear pity. Her fear that her daughter will be hurt again by Crosbie makes her savage. Trollope explores the pain that can exist in even the most loving of mother–daughter relationships, a bond which was held as almost sacred in this period.