Phineas Finn, the Irish Member

by Anthony Trollope

  But this man, though he sees something, and sees that very clearly, sees only a little. The divine inequality is apparent to him, but not the equally divine diminution of that inequality. That such diminution is taking place on all sides is apparent enough; – but is apparent to him as an evil, the consummation of which it is his duty to retard. He cannot prevent it; and therefore the society to which he belongs is, in his eyes, retrograding. He will even, at times, assist it; and will do so conscientiously, feeling that, under the gentle pressure supplied by him, and with the drugs and holdfasts which he may add, the movement will be slower than it would become if subjected to his proclaimed and absolute opponents. Such, I think, are Conservatives; – and I speak of men who, with the fear of God before their eyes and the love of their neighbours warm in their hearts, endeavour to do their duty to the best of their ability.

  Using the term which is now common, and which will be best understood, I will endeavour to explain how the equally conscientious Liberal is opposed to the Conservative. He is equally aware that these distances are of divine origin, equally averse to any sudden disruption of society in quest of some Utopian blessedness; – but he is alive to the fact that these distances are day by day becoming less, and he regards this continual diminution as a series of steps towards that human millennium of which he dreams. He is even willing to help the many to ascend the ladder a little, though he knows, as they come up towards him, he must go down to meet them. What is really in his mind is, – will not say equality, for the word is offensive, and presents to the imaginations of, men ideas of communism, of ruin, and insane democracy, – but a tendency towards equality. In following that, however, he knows that he must be hemmed in by safeguards, lest he be tempted to travel too quickly; and therefore he is glad to be accompanied on his way by the repressive action of a Conservative opponent. Holding such views, I think I am guilty of no absurdity in calling myself an advanced conservative liberal. A man who entertains in his mind any political doctrine, except as a means of improving the condition of his fellows, I regard as a political intriguer, a charlatan, and a conjurer, – as one who thinks that, by a certain amount of wary wire-pulling, he may raise himself in the estimation of the world.

  The next short extract is from chapter 20 of the Autobiography. It is a forceful expression of Trollope's melioristst convictions. It should be accompanied, however, by a reminder that his optimistic assertion that the world is getting better occurs in discussion of a novel, The Way We Live Now, which is usually taken as a supreme example of the Victorian belief that the world was getting disastrously worse. Liberal-conservatism, as well as demonstrating what Mill called ‘superior comprehensiveness’, indicates certain contradictions in Trollope's attitudes. It is no coincidence that as he was writing Phineas Finn, a work which approves reform, he should also have been writing an approving biography of Palmerston who was, while he lived, the main obstacle to that reform. There is a flawing vein of doubt running through the proclaimed optimism and it is his ‘divided mind’ which makes Trollope much more interesting than any single-minded Liberal or Conservative novelist could be.

  We know the opinion… of our philosopher Mr Carlyle. If he be right, we are all going straight away to darkness and the dogs. But then we do not put very much faith in Mr Carlyle, – nor in Mr Ruskin and his other followers. The loudness and extravagance of their lamentations, the wailing and gnashing of teeth which comes from them, over a world which is supposed to have gone altogether shoddywards, are so contrary to the convictions of men who cannot but see how comfort has been improved, and education extended, – that the general effect of their teaching is the opposite of what they have intended. It is regarded simply as Carlylism to say that the English speaking world is growing worse from day to day. And it is Carlylism to opine that the general grand result of increased intelligence is a tendency to deterioration.

  Appendix B: A Note on the Manuscript

  THE manuscript of Phineas Finn is deposited in the Beinecke Library at Yale. It preserves all the 800 autograph quarto pages which were sent to the printers. Trollope habitually used office paper (some of it is watermarked 1864 and 1865, other sheets bear the GPO crest), black ink, covered both sides of his sheet, wrote an unvarying 250 or so words to a page and left gaps only at the end of chapter units. Clerical training seems to have confirmed temperament in creating the ‘clockwork’ routine which the Autobiography has since made famous.

  The seamless aspect of Trollope's manuscript is enhanced by his practice of taking up invisibly from where he left off and his making surprisingly few corrections. It is common to read page after manuscript page unblemished by error or afterthought. The ink seldom runs dry, suggesting a steady rather than a turbulent flow of writing and where there are changes these are often no more than clearer inscriptions for the printer (Trollope's handwriting, rather degenerate copperplate, is regular but confusing). Occasionally an infelicity is removed, a clashing word replaced by a synonym, a topical reference inserted or a too-topical reference taken out, but generally Trollope seems to have written his first and final draft with remarkable confidence. The ‘literary ghouls’, as Shaw called them, ‘who dig up and publish all an author's mistakes and slips and redundancies’ thrive not with Trollope. Nonetheless some small changes of intention are detectable: Chiltern, for instance, seems originally to have been a more villainous conception, and Monk less the political paragon. Names caused some initial muddle. For much of the early novel Fitzgibbon was to have been ‘Flanagan’, Kennedy ‘Lambert’ and Bunce ‘Connell… foreman to a maker of military kettledrums’ before Trollope renamed and transferred him to a more likely branch of the vellum industry. In general, however, confusion was kept at a low level by the schematic plans and time-tables Trollope drew up for his fiction (I have not located those for his Phineas Finn but it is safe to assume that they existed).

  Trollope did not, like his fellow serialists Dickens and Thackeray, publish his novel as he was composing it, believing as he did that ‘the author should see the end of his work before the public sees the commencement’. But, surprisingly perhaps, he did not use the overview he enjoyed to substantially alter Phineas Finn. As far as one can make out only one scene was rewritten (Chiltern's fourth proposal) and even where revision would have been desirable (as in the clumsy time-shifts of chapters 19 and 20) there is little tampering with what was first put on paper. Instead the leisure which his prudent holding back allowed was used for precise metrication. Trollope was almost obsessive about parcelling his narrative into units – giving every page an instalment, chapter and serial number. But in Phineas Finn, apart from the first chapters where he was still finding his length, not much juggling was required. The novelist evidently had a sure sense of the proportions of his story as he went along: his chapters and instalments are invariably well contained and finish naturally on a period or a good curtain line. He was not, however, so sure about paragraphs, which would often turn out to be too long and which he would simply chop up: as a result the run of Trollopian prose on the printed page is sometimes oddly jerky. Finally at this revision stage he would comb his chapters for errors, title them and, it seems, add a little unobtrusive polish to their contents.

  Trollope was, handwriting apart, kind to the printers. He made only a few alterations at the proof stage (the more significant are recorded in the notes which follow). And after Phineas Finn was published in Saint Paul's he did not, as far as one can make out, take any more interest in his novel.

  Notes

  TROLLOPE was not a writer to make his novels difficult for the reader. His Latin tags are the most obvious and he takes care to explain any parliamentary procedures which may be unfamiliar. But he did, quite reasonably, expect his readers to be aware of recent events and the prevailing political atmosphere. Topical allusions and hints easily picked up by a contemporary public may be quite mysterious to that of a century later, and it is this loss which the notes are primarily intended to supply.

 
1. (p. 46) eat his terms: other editions have ‘sat his terms’. Both make sense since dining in would be required of Phineas.

  2. (p. 47) the Reform Club: It needs no note to point out that clubs are very important in Trollope's political world. But it may be useful to explain the way in which the social, political and personal attributes of a gentleman were reflected in the Clubs he belonged to. The Reform, as its name implies, was associated with the enthusiastic wing of the Liberal cause, though less so in Phineas's time. The Carlton was its Conservative counterpart. Brooks's, a club to which Phineas aspires, was more exclusive than these. Exclusive too was the notoriously social ‘Shakespeare’ (by which I take it Trollope means the Garrick Club) of which, at this early stage in his career, Phineas would dearly like to be a member. We measure the hero's progress in the world by the fact that at the end of the novel he has been nominated for the Athenaeum, the most exclusive club of all. The Athenaeum elected only nine members annually, each of whom was required to have achieved eminence in his sphere of activity. The only other club which need be mentioned is the Travellers', to which the boisterous Lord Chiltern belongs. This required that its members should have travelled at least 500 miles in a straight line from London. Phineas would be ineligible, even if he wanted to join, which he does not. Trollope's clubs at the time he wrote Phineas Finn were the Garrick and the Athenaeum.

  3. (p. 49) they knew nothing about bribery: which means they were very green indeed. In small boroughs there were rich pickings for the unscrupulous voter. Just how rich is shown by the findings of the Election Committee whose report on Totnes, a borough of 380 electors, was published as Trollope was writing: ‘The moral of the case is the enormous extent to which bribery goes on in a constituency of a few hundreds. Not only did Mr Harris [a voter] get the offer of £200 or £300 a year but the current price of votes seems to have been fixed in hundreds, instead of tens, according to the more common tariff. A hay dealer was promised £100 to vote for the Liberals, and voted the other way, which was an exceptional act of virtue, if nothing more remains to be told. A confectioner declined to listen to any offer under £200. A gardener was offered £200 by the Tory Mr Screach, and replied that Mr Michelmore – the gentleman who was not the proved agent of the Liberal candidate – had said it did not matter what Screach offered, for he would give more.’ (Saturday Review, 31 March 1866.) The boroughs were tolerated (and it will be noted that Trollope's description of Loughshane is a tolerant one) because it was felt that they provided a necessary and flexible counterweight to the geographically large county and numerically large urban constituencies. After trying for a borough in 1868 and experiencing the corruption at first hand Trollope's attitude became somewhat less tolerant. It was, incidentally, unusual for young men, especially independent young men, to succeed in borough contests. In 1866 Gladstone calculated that there was only one member under thirty in the House holding such a seat.

  4. (p. 50) semi-Fenian… tenant-right and the Irish Church: Although it was founded in 1858 Fenianism made little headway until 1865 when a series of terrorist outrages made it infamous in England. Two of the principal grievances inspiring the movement were the Irish farmer's insecurity of tenure and the obligatory tithes which Catholics had to pay to the Protestant church: these issues were looming on the political horizon in 1866–7 (see note 86). At the time Trollope was writing ‘Fenian’ would have the same horrifying novelty to the English ear as ‘Mau Mau’ in 1952 or ‘Eoka’ in 1954. The heavy stress in these early pages on the undeserved wealth of the Protestant clergy in Ireland, Fenianism, Phineas's Catholicism and even his excessively Irish name suggest to me that Trollope may originally have intended more of a social-problem novel than Phineas Finn in fact turns out to be.

  5. (p. 58) dwellers in political caves: the first readers of Phineas Finn would certainly take this as a hit at the ‘Cave’ and the ‘Adulla-mites’, so called by the radical John Bright (after the refuge of David in the Book of Samuel). ‘The Cave’ were those dissident Liberals – notably Lowe – who by voting Conservative had foiled the Russell–Gladstone bill of 1866. This happened just before Trollope began to write. Erle, the epitome of the party organization-man. would indeed loathe such independence.

  6. (p. 63) in spite of her lumpy hair: deleted in the manuscript there follows: ‘which in all probability has been died’.

  7. (p. 68) Dubby: in the manuscript Trollope originally wrote ‘Dizzy’. Dizzy was, of course, the common nickname for Disraeli.

  8. (p. 68) as the Tories used to have half a century since: one of the many references in these early chapters to the rarity and fragility of Conservative ministries since the Corn Law débâcle of 1846 (see, for example, the authorial comment in chapter 5: ‘Conservative governments in this country are especially prone to die’). It should be remembered that the Conservatives had just succeeded in forming a ministry as Trollope began his novel, a ministry which the novelist clearly expected to be short-lived. Indeed, with scornful certainty he actually has the Daubeny–Terrier ministry promptly expire when in fact the Conservatives held office until well after Phineas Finn was completed. This unusual longevity may well have been an embarrassment to Trollope in working out the later stages of his plot.

  9. (p. 70) a comfortable club: a commonplace, but Trollope may have been thinking of Twemlow's remark in chapter 3 of Our Mutual Friend (1864), that the House of Commons ‘is the best club in London’.

  10. (p. 71) the Queen's speech read: Trollope chooses his words carefully. After the death of Albert in 1861 Victoria never again delivered the Queen's speech in person, although she silently attended its reading after 1865. According to the best chronological scheme I can make Phineas's swearing-in took place in 1864.

  11. (p. 77) something approaching to ferocity: This paragraph was partly rewritten to soften the characterization of Chiltern. In the MS a deleted version is legible: ‘There was something in the countenance of the man which struck him almost with dismay [del.] horror of almost [del.] something approaching to ferocity and mixed with that there was that redness of eye which tells of habits intemperate.’ There are a couple of other references elsewhere in the MS to Chiltern's immoderation in drinking and gambling which Trollope chose to remove.

  12. (p. 79) unless he could get paid for his parliamentary work: M.P.s were not paid until 1911. Government ministers and holders of office were, but in return were required to be absolutely loyal to their employers. It is perhaps unnecessary to add that this state of affairs is centrally important to Phineas's political career.

  13 (p. 91) said Mr Bonteen: the period 1866–8 was marked by very small but decisive majorities and this atmosphere of frenzied head-counting would have struck a contemporary reader as familiar. The reform bill of 1866, for example, passed its second reading in April by five votes and the government was defeated soon after by eleven.

  14 (p. 104) the new offices in Downing Street, already half built… new Law Courts in the neighbourhood of Lincoln's Inn: parliamentary permission for the building of new government offices on the south side of Downing Street was given in 1856. The competition for their design was won by the architect G. G. Scott (1811–78). Later Trollope actually talks of Phineas working in these offices, which is premature, since the first of them were not finished until 1868, i.e. a year after Phineas Finn was completed. An exhibition of designs proposed for the new Law Courts was shown in February 1866. This and the ensuing controversy over who should be appointed architect was probably in Trollope's mind here.

  15. (p. 106) there's no getting at ‘em: one of the privileges of the nineteenth-century M.P. was to be immune from arrest for debt while parliament was sitting.

  16. (p. 106) lodgers were not as yet trusted with the franchise: again Trollope chooses his words carefully. Enfranchisement of the lodger and the non-rate-paying tenant (like Bunce) was one of the proposals of the abortive 1866 reform bill. Trollope seems to have anticipated with his ‘as yet’ that the political picture might have changed by the
time his novel reached print. This is borne out by the MS, which shows that the sentence ‘He was a lodger… as yet trusted with the franchise’ was added in proof.

  17. (p. 109) Monk, who is the most unfit: Trollope originally wrote ‘most dishonest.’ The novelist seems to have changed his notion of Monk somewhat: in chapter 9 the term ‘violent’ was dropped from the description ‘Mr Monk was a violent radical’, and in chapter 22 a comment in MS about Monk's Irishness was removed. As he finally emerges Mr Monk is, of course, a scrupulously honest, English and moderate radical.

  18. (p. 113) my Dr Fells: I do not love thee, Dr Fell, The reason why I cannot tell.

  19. (p. 120) leather and prunella: one of Trollope's catch phrases. It denotes something of unimportance. The phrase originates in Pope's Essay on Man where the cobbler (‘leather’) is contrasted to the parson (‘prunella’, the material of the clerical gown). ‘Worth makes the man, and want of it the fellow,/The rest is all but leather and prunella.’

  20. (p. 121) It is not so in the United States: Trollope visited North America in 1861. He was not impressed by the political morality he discovered there. ‘The corruption of the venal politicians of the nation stinks aloud in the nostrils of all men’ he wrote with passion, if somewhat mixed metaphor, in North America (1862). This is one of a number of anti-American reflections in the novel.