Phineas Finn, the Irish Member

by Anthony Trollope

  54. (p. 357) the over-dominant spirit of speculative commerce: there may be an allusion in this uneasy concession by the Duke to a main cause of Reform agitation. In May 1866 the House of Over-end and Gurney collapsed, setting off a chain of bankruptcies. Not even a Whig as sanguine as the Duke of St Bungay could pretend that this was in the natural order of things.

  55. (p. 359) best possible 658 members of Parliament: I would guess this ‘authority’ is Thomas Hare (1806–91) who devised a complicated scheme of proportional representation by which voters could transfer votes to candidates outside their constituency. Hare's proposals were much discussed at this period and supported by John Stuart Mill who claimed that ‘an assembly thus chosen would contain the élite of the nation’.

  56. (p. 243) whom it represents: it has been suggested that this echoes a sentence in Lord John Russell's Essay on the History of the English Government and Constitution (1823): ‘The representative body should be the image of the thing represented.’ The allusion, if it is one, is of more than passing interest since it is also suggested that Russell was Trollope's ‘ideal statesman’ (see B. G. Kenney, ‘Trollope's Ideal Statesman’, Nineteenth Century Fiction, XX, 1965).

  57. (p. 360) of the people: this authority is, I guess, Bagehot in the first chapter of The English Constitution: ‘Parliament's majority ought to represent the general average intelligence of that country; its various members ought to represent the various special interests, special opinions, special prejudices, to be found in that community. There ought to be an advocate for every particular sect, and a vast neutral body of no sect – homogeneous and judicial, like the nation itself.’ Since Bagehot's essay was originally serialized in 1866–7 in the Fortnightly Trollope would have been one of the first people in England to have read it.

  58. (p. 362) sent to Cayenne: the French penal settlement suggested by Phineas's mention of a ‘paternal government’. The autocratic nature of French justice under Napoleon III was routinely deplored in the English Liberal Press. The Spectator, for example, in an article entitled ‘The Triumph of Ideas’ (6 January 1866) has: ‘Let the strongest man in Europe try a fall with the Emperor Napoleon and he will be beaten, will probably end his days rowing a boat under the lash through the bayous of Cayenne. Nevertheless, as sure as the idea of freedom is higher than the idea of authority, so surely will Napoleonism pass away.’

  59. (p. 369) such picking: Trollope's proposals for electoral reform on simple urban–rural lines are fictitious. But his description perfectly catches the atmosphere of feverish boundary juggling of the 1866–7 debates on redistribution.

  60. (p. 376) in these days: noted, somewhat ruefully, by Trollope on a number of occasions. The Anti Duelling Association was formed in 1843 after an engagement in which a senior army officer was killed. The Association, increasingly powerful middle-class opinion and royal disapproval successfully made the practice unfashionable. But duels continued to be fought on continental soil and the encounter on Calais sands became part of romantic lore. The Irish, incidentally, were notorious duellers.

  61. (p. 380) in opposition to the ministerial measure: there follows a long passage in the MS: ‘Mr Daubeny had done this in the teeth of counsellors who assured him, in the columns of many newspapers, that he was proving himself to be a dog in the manger, who would rather himself cut the hay of reform… [illegible]. Mr Daubeny was supposed to be well represented as a dog in certain pictures which were provided for the delectation of the multitude, and Mr Turnbull was portrayed as an animal assisting the dog with his heels – another animal for whom the hay might have become an excellent banquet, were it not that some animals prefer thistles, and in the picture the animal endowed with Mr Turnbull's physiognomy had very nearly smashed with his heels the skull of another animal – a very useful but half starved work horse and the work horse was endowed with the physiognomy of our friend Mr Monk.’ Trollope may have removed this as over-digressive, or it may refer to some contemporary cartoon which on second thoughts the novelist felt was too offensive.

  62. (p. 395) spretae injuria formae: a quotation from the first book of Virgil's Aeneid. It describes the continuing rage of Juno at having been scorned by Paris.

  63. (p. 400) Lord Mohuns and Mr Bests: Charles Mohun (1675–1712) the duelling villain of Henry Esmond. Best fought a notorious duel with Lord Camelford (1775–1804) whom he killed.

  64. (p. 401) between those two: the young Palliser's uncomfortable (and unconsummated) affair with the Marchioness of Hartletop, or Lady Dumbello as she then was, is recorded in The Small House at Allington. It is the one discreditable action in his life.

  65. (p. 409) Female Protestant Unmarried Women's Emigration Society: Trollope's joke at benevolent societies like the Association for the Employment of Women (1857). The 1861 census discovered a surplus of women in the population doomed inevitably to spinsterhood. This and the growing activism of the sex helped publicize the unmarried woman's plight.

  66. (p. 426) They don't do it that way in the States: as the reader will appreciate Bunce does not speak for Trollope. His observations on the effects of payment for politicians in America are very harsh. He concluded that ‘gratuitous service’ was a sine qua non in politics. This conviction prevents him from offering any facile solution to Phineas's difficulties.

  67. (p. 445) and an answer must be given: the MS continues ‘She had turned away from him, and he was standing at some little distance from her. When she moved from him, still a step or two further, he followed her, step for step, as she moved, – but not decreasing the distance. He would create no need for those protectors of whom she had spoken.’

  68. (p. 453) as the East Riding: two apiece in 1866. Anomalous examples of this kind were multiplied in the redistribution discussions.

  69. (p. 453) Westmoreland: the tone of Monk's question is ironic as if to ask ‘Would you build Rome in a day?’ Westmoreland was proverbial for electoral corruption since the days of James Lowther, Earl of Lonsdale (1736–1802).

  70. (p. 455) the very mischief: the Thames was an unwholesome neighbour in the summertime, on occasion even enforcing a premature recess. In 1866 an Act was proposed to cleanse the Thames and a Punch cartoon of the period shows a miry Father Thames enquiring how the cleansing of the parliamentary system is getting on.

  71. (p. 457) quarrelling with his nephew: over Plantagenets's delay in producing an heir. The episode is told in Can You Forgive Her? It is in this second half of the novel that Trollope seems to have decided to knit Phineas Finn in with the previous work as part of a multi-novel saga. A necessary part of the process is, as here, a regular nudging of the reader's memory.

  72. (p. 462) in Don Juan: in various versions of the tale, most famously Mozart's Don Giovanni, the seducer is carried off to hell by the mounted statue of an injured father. The allusion provides a whiff of the Duke's unscrupulous way with women.

  73. (p. 467) old dust: our slang might perhaps be ‘square’. This usage of ‘dust’ is noted neither in the massive N.E.D. nor in Partridge's various dictionaries of slang. In a hundred years neither will ‘square’ possibly. Trollope more than most novelists of his time provides a thesaurus of such ephemeral terms in his fiction.

  74. (p. 472) a troop of householders: Madame Max, I take it, puns by confusing franchised borough voters with the troops of Household Cavalry whom she might occasionally see exercising in the Park.

  75. (p. 474) the new Essex borough: in Trollope's lifetime a fictitious constituency. He was interested in what would happen to Essex, however. He lived in the district and in 1867 (he does not say exactly when but it could be while writing this part of the novel) he was invited to stand for one of the county's seats.

  76. (p. 487) the law on your side: he has. By the 1857 Divorce and Matrimonial Causes Act Laura's property is her husband's and he may require her to return it. If she deserts him he can divorce her or demand, by law, restitution of his ‘conjugal rights’, i.e. her body.

  77. (p. 490) for women's right
s: John Stuart Mill (1806–73) the philosopher and politician who had identified himself with the cause of women's rights (see note 88). For ‘women's rights’ Trollope originally wrote ‘women's boroughs’, alluding to Mill's current endeavours to get representation for women in parliament.

  78. (p.498) Say a nice word to me before I am off, Violet: Trollope rewrote the whole of the foregoing scene from the business with the letter to Lord Brentford. As far as one can make out from the MS it is the only major alteration which he made to the novel. It is also a distinct improvement, as is evident from the original version of the scene:

  ‘I think you had better write it yourself.’

  ‘If you bid me, I will. I say Violet, I have cut down Phineas Finn at last.’

  ‘Is that your triumph, sir?’

  ‘I suppose I ought to say that I never feared him at all; – but I did.’

  ‘We will have no more duels, if you please Lord Chiltern. And the next time you go to Belgium you will be good enough to have – somebody with you that can take care of you.’

  ‘You for instance. Well – I will. We'll go and see the very spot. Do you know I have a wonderful liking for that fellow in spite of everything, and had all along. He looks so well on a horse.’

  ‘Beautiful! said Violet. 'Magnificent – is he not?’

  ‘He can't hurt me now even though you said he was Apollo. I wonder whether he will quarrel with me?’

  ‘No more duels.’

  ‘If he was to ask me, you know -’

  ‘Would you? I'll have a policeman at your heels every moment. But Mr Finn is not such an idiot. And why should he?’

  ‘He cannot gain anything now, can he?’ said Lord Chiltern. ‘If he put me out of the way, you know -’

  ‘Hold your tongue, you wretched man.’ And she slapped his mouth with her hand. ‘And now I must go. And as you are leaving Loughlinter I will say goodbye. When am I to have the honour and felicity of beholding your lordship again?’

  ‘Say a nice word to me before I am off.’

  79. (p. 502) as they used to be: On 1 July 1867 the Canadian colonies became a Confederation. Trollope with his uncanny sensitivity to current events may have anticipated this evolution, but it is more likely that he is here referring to the United States.

  80. (p. 502) of the Rocky Mountains: a reference to the interoceanic railway which was, in fact, finished in 1887. We may be fairly sure what put this venture in Trollope's head. In the Fortnightly for 1865 there is an enthusiastic article by M. Macfie ‘The True North West Passage’, proclaiming the merits of this proposed railroad. Macfie writes: ‘when the deputation from the Canadian Government was recently in this country, conferring with the Colonial Secretary in regard to the proposed British North American Confederation, one of the proposals agreed on was, that the Canadian authorities should negotiate with the Hudson's Bay Company for the transfer to Canada of the entire North West Territory bounded by the Rocky Mountains, that the claims of the Company should be liquidated by fair compensation and that her Majesty's Government should guarantee a loan to be made for that purpose.’ It is, presumably, this project that Phineas is working on here.

  81. (p. 519) Lochinvar: Madame Max is wittily goading Phineas in the language of drawing-room song. Scott's Lochinvar and Jock of Hazeldean are ballads telling of the abduction of high-born ladies by their lovers. Burns's ‘a man's a Man’ asserts the fundamental irrelevance of class distinctions. Madame Max is encouraging Phineas to an act of romantic recklessness.

  82. (p. 531) the same career is open to you: this argument is connected with a debate on the political role of the aristocracy which runs through the Palliser series. Lord Brentford puts forward the Whig ideal of selfless service to the community. The same ideal is expressed succinctly by the Duke of St Bungay in Phineas Redux: ‘I do think that the England which we know could not be the England that she is but for the maintenance of a high-minded, proud, and self-denying nobility. Chiltern opposes his father's social as he does his personal paternalism with the radical Carly-lean view that the English aristocracy have become gilded parasites, good for nothing but field sports. Trollope's own position in the debate seems to have been the conciliatory one defined by Bagehot in his English Constitution that there is a useful cooperation in England between the ‘dignified’ and the ‘practical’ elements. The utility of the aristocracy, in other words, is that they are there as the inactive incarnation of tradition. It is noticeable, however, that his view as the Palliser novels progress moves round to one rather like Lord Brentford's.

  83. (p. 535) another Reform Bill for Ireland: Trollope has prematurely delivered the English Reform Bill and moved on to its logical successor, a sequel for Ireland. His political sense was quite accurate, in 1868, 1869 and 1870 Irish Reform was a major concern in the House.

  84. (p. 544) of the day: an example of Trollope's faithfully recording social ephemera. The practice of giving and receiving photographic cartes de visite had become a standing joke by 1866. It is staple comic fodder for Punch one of whose items in 1866 is a complaint from a portrait painter who claims to have been put out of business by the craze.

  85. (p. 550) because he was known to be the reverse?: Those two sentences were added in proof, presumably with hindsight of Disraeli's unscrupulosity.

  86. (p. 552) see his way to that: there is real political meat in this and the foregoing pages. The issue as regards Irish landlord and tenant is put by Trollope's colleague J. Godkin in the Fortnightly, June 1865: ‘now the mass of the Irish occupiers are tenants-at-will. On many estates they receive notices to quit yearly or half-yearly. This is done that the landlord may maintain his political power; that the perpetual threat of eviction may secure servility; and that the tenant may feel himself at the mercy of the agent… This practice operates powerfully against the civilization of the country. In the first place it prevents the improvement of the land; the tenant, feeling that any outlay he makes beyond what is absolutely necessary goes directly to the landlord, takes care not to improve at all. In the second place, if he is making money by the farm, he anxiously conceals his prosperity, when going to pay his rent he appears in his worst dress, and assumes the most poverty stricken aspect. He is afraid to make his family appear comfortable, or to have his dwelling-house clean, neat and comfortable. His out-offices remain in a state of dilapidation, and his fences are neglected. His object is to get as much out of the land with the smallest outlay. The result was war between the landlord and tenant. The problem of the protestant church in Ireland was as acute. Catholics outnumbered protestants five to one yet were obliged to pay tithes to the established church. Trollope wrote a sensible article on the problem in the Fortnightly of August 1865 in which, without going the whole way, he argued that the revenue from tithes should go to improve the condition of those who paid them. Phineas's position with regard to Irish reform would be tricky. Under his parliamentary oath he would be required to pledge himself to defend the settlement of property within the realm, as established by law.

  87. (p. 553) Maynooth and the ballot: Maynooth, the Catholic Irish college, received a government grant which, following repeated parliamentary protest, was commuted in 1869. In July 1866 as he had done since 1848 Francis Berkeley (1794–1870) brought his ‘annual motion’ proposing the ballot. The motion and its regular defeat were a standing joke at Westminster.

  88. (p. 566) unless Mr Mill can pull us through: Mill had championed the cause of women's rights for many years and treated it as a sacred crusade after the death of his wife in 1858. His great tract The Subjection of Women was written in 1861 though not published until 1869. Mill was elected as member for Westminster in 1865 and became famous as ‘the man who wants girls in parliament (hence Violet's joke). During the reform period there were a number of petitions demanding the franchise of women and in May 1867 (the month Phineas Finn was finished) Mill in a blaze of publicity brought an amendment to the Representation of the People Bill advocating the vote for women. It was defeate
d 194–73.

  89. (p. 568) Pjinskt: the contemptuous extravagance of these outlandish names should perhaps be explained. It was a matter for public resentment in the mid 60s that foreign musical artists, simply by virtue of being foreign, took precedence over their native counterparts. The Annual Register for 1866 comments: ‘English composers and artistes are of an opinion, perhaps not altogether unjustly, that they must step into the background as soon as a foreign competitor appears.’ It goes on to list examples of English musicians who have assumed foreign names to catch the public's attention.

  90. (p. 569) houri: one of the female comforters of Mahomet in Paradise, though it is hard to believe that Trollope does not intend us to think of the coarser term which might suggest itself to the Duke's mind.

  91. (p. 609) plough: Horace, Epistles, I, xiv, 1, 43.

  92. (p. 616) there might be an end of him?: what follows, to the end of the chapter, was added in proof. It is the only example in the novel of Trollope making extensive revision in the proofs. The intention, of course, is to prepare the reader for the end of the novel.

  93. (p. 618) eight-and-twenty: Gladstone held office at this unusually young age. He was a junior lord of the Treasury at twenty-five, Under-Secretary for War and Colonies at twenty-six, Vice-President of the Board of Trade at thirty-two and a cabinet member at thirty-four.

  94. (p. 649) Canada, and Jamaica, and the Cape: three hotspots for the Colonial Office in 1865–6, Phineas's presumable period in office. The Jamaica crisis was caused by its Governor, Edward Eyre (1815–1901), putting down an insurrection in 1865 with what many thought was criminal severity. Controversy raged about this and a royal commission of inquiry was sent out. Eyre was recalled in the summer of that year and this provoked further controversy (see Carlyle, Shooting Niagara). The Cape would be in Phineas's mind on account of the dispute between Bishop Colenso (1814–83) and the church establishment who had deposed him for heterodoxy. In 1866 the Rolls Court decreed that Colenso was still Bishop of Natal, a judgment which many found sensational. In Canada there were the Fenian raids (see note 96). For contemporary readers the mere names of these places would recall the recent furore.