PHINEAS FINN
The Irish Member
by
ANTHONY TROLLOPE
First published in serial form in _St. Paul’s Magazine_ beginning in
1867 and in book form in 1869
CONTENTS
VOLUME I
I. Phineas Finn Proposes to Stand for Loughshane
II. Phineas Finn Is Elected for Loughshane
III. Phineas Finn Takes His Seat
IV. Lady Laura Standish
V. Mr. and Mrs. Low
VI. Lord Brentford’s Dinner
VII. Mr. and Mrs. Bunce
VIII. The News about Mr. Mildmay and Sir Everard
IX. The New Government
X. Violet Effingham
XI. Lord Chiltern
XII. Autumnal Prospects
XIII. Saulsby Wood
XIV. Loughlinter
XV. Donald Bean’s Pony
XVI. Phineas Finn Returns to Killaloe
XVII. Phineas Finn Returns to London
XVIII. Mr. Turnbull
XIX. Lord Chiltern Rides His Horse Bonebreaker
XX. The Debate on the Ballot
XXI. “Do be punctual”
XXII. Lady Baldock at Home
XXIII. Sunday in Grosvenor Place
XXIV. The Willingford Bull
XXV. Mr. Turnbull’s Carriage Stops the Way
XXVI. “The First Speech”
XXVII. Phineas Discussed
XXVIII. The Second Reading Is Carried
XXIX. A Cabinet Meeting
XXX. Mr. Kennedy’s Luck
XXXI. Finn for Loughton
XXXII. Lady Laura Kennedy’s Headache
XXXIII. Mr. Slide’s Grievance
XXXIV. Was He Honest?
XXXV. Mr. Monk upon Reform
XXXVI. Phineas Finn Makes Progress
XXXVII. A Rough Encounter
VOLUME II
XXXVIII. The Duel
XXXIX. Lady Laura Is Told
XL. Madame Max Goesler
XLI. Lord Fawn
XLII. Lady Baldock Does Not Send a Card to Phineas Finn
XLIII. Promotion
XLIV. Phineas and His Friends
XLV. Miss Effingham’s Four Lovers
XLVI. The Mousetrap
XLVII. Mr. Mildmay’s Bill
XLVIII. “The Duke”
XLIX. The Duellists Meet
L. Again Successful
LI. Troubles at Loughlinter
LII. The First Blow
LIII. Showing How Phineas Bore the Blow
LIV. Consolation
LV. Lord Chiltern at Saulsby
LVI. What the People in Marylebone Thought
LVII. The Top Brick of the Chimney
LVIII. Rara Avis in Terris
LIX. The Earl’s Wrath
LX. Madame Goesler’s Politics
LXI. Another Duel
LXII. The Letter That Was Sent to Brighton
LXIII. Showing How the Duke Stood His Ground
LXIV. The Horns
LXV. The Cabinet Minister at Killaloe
LXVI. Victrix
LXVII. Job’s Comforters
LXVIII. The Joint Attack
LXIX. The Temptress
LXX. The Prime Minister’s House
LXXI. Comparing Notes
LXXII. Madame Goesler’s Generosity
LXXIII. Amantium Iræ
LXXIV. The Beginning of the End
LXXV. P. P. C.
LXXVI. Conclusion
VOLUME I
CHAPTER I
Phineas Finn Proposes to Stand for Loughshane
Dr. Finn, of Killaloe, in county Clare, was as well known in those
parts,--the confines, that is, of the counties Clare, Limerick,
Tipperary, and Galway,--as was the bishop himself who lived in the
same town, and was as much respected. Many said that the doctor was
the richer man of the two, and the practice of his profession was
extended over almost as wide a district. Indeed the bishop whom he
was privileged to attend, although a Roman Catholic, always spoke of
their dioceses being conterminate. It will therefore be understood
that Dr. Finn,--Malachi Finn was his full name,--had obtained a wide
reputation as a country practitioner in the west of Ireland. And he
was a man sufficiently well to do, though that boast made by his
friends, that he was as warm a man as the bishop, had but little
truth to support it. Bishops in Ireland, if they live at home, even
in these days, are very warm men; and Dr. Finn had not a penny in the
world for which he had not worked hard. He had, moreover, a costly
family, five daughters and one son, and, at the time of which we
are speaking, no provision in the way of marriage or profession had
been made for any of them. Of the one son, Phineas, the hero of the
following pages, the mother and five sisters were very proud. The
doctor was accustomed to say that his goose was as good as any other
man’s goose, as far as he could see as yet; but that he should like
some very strong evidence before he allowed himself to express an
opinion that the young bird partook, in any degree, of the qualities
of a swan. From which it may be gathered that Dr. Finn was a man of
common-sense.
Phineas had come to be a swan in the estimation of his mother and
sisters by reason of certain early successes at college. His father,
whose religion was not of that bitter kind in which we in England
are apt to suppose that all the Irish Roman Catholics indulge, had
sent his son to Trinity; and there were some in the neighbourhood of
Killaloe,--patients, probably, of Dr. Duggin, of Castle Connell, a
learned physician who had spent a fruitless life in endeavouring to
make head against Dr. Finn,--who declared that old Finn would not be
sorry if his son were to turn Protestant and go in for a fellowship.
Mrs. Finn was a Protestant, and the five Miss Finns were Protestants,
and the doctor himself was very much given to dining out among his
Protestant friends on a Friday. Our Phineas, however, did not turn
Protestant up in Dublin, whatever his father’s secret wishes on that
subject may have been. He did join a debating society, to success
in which his religion was no bar; and he there achieved a sort of
distinction which was both easy and pleasant, and which, making
its way down to Killaloe, assisted in engendering those ideas as
to swanhood of which maternal and sisterly minds are so sweetly
susceptible. “I know half a dozen old windbags at the present
moment,” said the doctor, “who were great fellows at debating clubs
when they were boys.” “Phineas is not a boy any longer,” said Mrs.
Finn. “And windbags don’t get college scholarships,” said Matilda
Finn, the second daughter. “But papa always snubs Phinny,” said
Barbara, the youngest. “I’ll snub you, if you don’t take care,” said
the doctor, taking Barbara tenderly by the ear;--for his youngest
daughter was the doctor’s pet.
The doctor certainly did not snub his son, for he allowed him to go
over to London when he was twenty-two years of age, in order that he
might read with an English barrister. It was the doctor’s wish that
his son might be called to the Irish Bar, and the young man’s desire
that he might go to the English Bar. The doctor so far gave way,
under the influence of Phineas himself, and of all the young women of
the family, as to pay the usual fee to a very competent and learned
gentleman in the Middle Temple, and to allow his son one hundred and
fifty pounds per annum for three years. Dr. Finn, however, was still
firm in his intention that his son should settle in Dublin, and take
the Munster Circuit,--believing that Phineas might come to want home
influences and home connections, in spite of the swanhood which was
attributed to him.
Phineas sat his terms for three years, and was duly called to
the Bar; but no evidence came home as to the acquirement of any
considerable amount of law lore, or even as to much law study, on
the part of the young aspirant. The learned pundit at whose feet he
had been sitting was not especially loud in praise of his pupil’s
industry, though he did say a pleasant word or two as to his pupil’s
intelligence. Phineas himself did not boast much of his own hard
work when at home during the long vacation. No rumours of expected
successes,--of expected professional successes,--reached the ears of
any of the Finn family at Killaloe. But, nevertheless, there came
tidings which maintained those high ideas in the maternal bosom of
which mention has been made, and which were of sufficient strength to
induce the doctor, in opposition to his own judgment, to consent to
the continued residence of his son in London. Phineas belonged to an
excellent club,--the Reform Club,--and went into very good society.
He was hand in glove with the Hon. Laurence Fitzgibbon, the youngest
son of Lord Claddagh. He was intimate with Barrington Erle, who had
been private secretary,--one of the private secretaries,--to the
great Whig Prime Minister who was lately in but was now out. He had
dined three or four times with that great Whig nobleman, the Earl of
Brentford. And he had been assured that if he stuck to the English
Bar he would certainly do well. Though he might fail to succeed in
court or in chambers, he would doubtless have given to him some
one of those numerous appointments for which none but clever young
barristers are supposed to be fitting candidates. The old doctor
yielded for another year, although at the end of the second year he
was called upon to pay a sum of three hundred pounds, which was then
due by Phineas to creditors in London. When the doctor’s male friends
in and about Killaloe heard that he had done so, they said that he
was doting. Not one of the Miss Finns was as yet married; and, after
all that had been said about the doctor’s wealth, it was supposed
that there would not be above five hundred pounds a year among them
all, were he to give up his profession. But the doctor, when he paid
that three hundred pounds for his son, buckled to his work again,
though he had for twelve months talked of giving up the midwifery.
He buckled to again, to the great disgust of Dr. Duggin, who at this
time said very ill-natured things about young Phineas.
At the end of the three years Phineas was called to the Bar, and
immediately received a letter from his father asking minutely as to
his professional intentions. His father recommended him to settle
in Dublin, and promised the one hundred and fifty pounds for three
more years, on condition that this advice was followed. He did not
absolutely say that the allowance would be stopped if the advice were
not followed, but that was plainly to be implied. That letter came
at the moment of a dissolution of Parliament. Lord de Terrier, the
Conservative Prime Minister, who had now been in office for the
almost unprecedentedly long period of fifteen months, had found that
he could not face continued majorities against him in the House of
Commons, and had dissolved the House. Rumour declared that he would
have much preferred to resign, and betake himself once again to the
easy glories of opposition; but his party had naturally been obdurate
with him, and he had resolved to appeal to the country. When Phineas
received his father’s letter, it had just been suggested to him at
the Reform Club that he should stand for the Irish borough of
Loughshane.
This proposition had taken Phineas Finn so much by surprise that when
first made to him by Barrington Erle it took his breath away. What!
he stand for Parliament, twenty-four years old, with no vestige
of property belonging to him, without a penny in his purse, as
completely dependent on his father as he was when he first went to
school at eleven years of age! And for Loughshane, a little borough
in the county Galway, for which a brother of that fine old Irish
peer, the Earl of Tulla, had been sitting for the last twenty
years,--a fine, high-minded representative of the thorough-going
Orange Protestant feeling of Ireland! And the Earl of Tulla, to
whom almost all Loughshane belonged,--or at any rate the land about
Loughshane,--was one of his father’s staunchest friends! Loughshane
is in county Galway, but the Earl of Tulla usually lived at his seat
in county Clare, not more than ten miles from Killaloe, and always
confided his gouty feet, and the weak nerves of the old countess, and
the stomachs of all his domestics, to the care of Dr. Finn. How was
it possible that Phineas should stand for Loughshane? From whence
was the money to come for such a contest? It was a beautiful dream,
a grand idea, lifting Phineas almost off the earth by its glory.
When the proposition was first made to him in the smoking-room at
the Reform Club by his friend Erle, he was aware that he blushed
like a girl, and that he was unable at the moment to express
himself plainly,--so great was his astonishment and so great his
gratification. But before ten minutes had passed by, while Barrington
Erle was still sitting over his shoulder on the club sofa, and before
the blushes had altogether vanished, he had seen the improbability of
the scheme, and had explained to his friend that the thing could not
be done. But to his increased astonishment, his friend made nothing
of the difficulties. Loughshane, according to Barrington Erle, was
so small a place, that the expense would be very little. There were
altogether no more than 307 registered electors. The inhabitants were
so far removed from the world, and were so ignorant of the world’s
good things, that they knew nothing about bribery. The Hon. George
Morris, who had sat for the last twenty years, was very unpopular. He
had not been near the borough since the last election, he had hardly
done more than show himself in Parliament, and had neither given a
shilling in the town nor got a place under Government for a single
son of Loughshane. “And he has quarrelled with his brother,” said
Barrington Erle. “The devil he has!” said Phineas. “I thought they
always swore by each other.” “It’s at each other they swear now,”
said Barrington; “George has asked the Earl for more money, and the
Earl has cut up rusty.” Then the negotiator went on to explain that
the expenses of the election would be defrayed out of a certain fund
collected for such purposes, that Loughshane had been chosen as a
cheap place, and that Phineas Finn had been chosen as a safe and
promising young man. As for qualification, if any question were
raised, that should be made all right. An Irish candidate was wanted,
and a Roman Catholic. So much the Loughshaners would require on
their own account when instigated to dismiss from their service
that thorough-going Protestant, the Hon. George Morris. Then “the
party,”--by which Barrington Erle probably meant the great man in
whose service he himself had become a politician,--required that
the candidate should be a safe man, one who would support “the
party,”--not a cantankerous, red-hot semi-Fenian, running about to
meetings at the Rotunda, and such-like, with views of his own about
tenant-right and the Irish Church. “But I have views of my own,” said
Phineas, blushing again. “Of course you have, my dear boy,” said
Barrington, clapping him on the back. “I shouldn’t come to you unless
you had views. But your views and ours are the same, and you’re
just the lad for Galway. You mightn’t have such an opening again
in your life, and of course you’ll stand for Loughshane.” Then the
conversation was over, the private secretary went away to arrange
some other little matter of the kind, and Phineas Finn was left alone
to consider the proposition that had been made to him.
To become a member of the British Parliament! In all those hot
contests at the two debating clubs to which he had belonged, this
had been the ambition which had moved him. For, after all, to what
purpose of their own had those empty debates ever tended? He and
three or four others who had called themselves Liberals had been
pitted against four or five who had called themselves Conservatives,
and night after night they had discussed some ponderous subject
without any idea that one would ever persuade another, or that their
talking would ever conduce to any action or to any result. But each
of these combatants had felt,--without daring to announce a hope on
the subject among themselves,--that the present arena was only a
trial-ground for some possible greater amphitheatre, for some future
debating club in which debates would lead to action, and in which
eloquence would have power, even though persuasion might be out of
the question.
Phineas certainly had never dared to speak, even to himself, of such
a hope. The labours of the Bar had to be encountered before the dawn
of such a hope could come to him. And he had gradually learned to
feel that his prospects at the Bar were not as yet very promising. As
regarded professional work he had been idle, and how then could he
have a hope?
And now this thing, which he regarded as being of all things in the
world the most honourable, had come to him all at once, and was
possibly within his reach! If he could believe Barrington Erle, he
had only to lift up his hand, and he might be in Parliament within
two months. And who was to be believed on such a subject if not
Barrington Erle? This was Erle’s special business, and such a man
would not have come to him on such a subject had he not been in
earnest, and had he not himself believed in success. There was an
opening ready, an opening to this great glory,--if only it might be
possible for him to fill it!
What would his father say? His father would of course oppose the
plan. And if he opposed his father, his father would of course stop
his income. And such an income as it was! Could it be that a man
should sit in Parliament and live upon a hundred and fifty pounds
a year? Since that payment of his debts he had become again
embarrassed,--to a slight amount. He owed a tailor a trifle, and a
bootmaker a trifle,--and something to the man who sold gloves and
shirts; and yet he had done his best to keep out of debt with more
than Irish pertinacity, living very closely, breakfasting upon tea
and a roll, and dining frequently for a shilling at a luncheon-house
up a court near Lincoln’s Inn. Where should he dine if the
Loughshaners elected him to Parliament? And then he painted to
himself a not untrue picture of the probable miseries of a man who
begins life too high up on the ladder,--who succeeds in mounting
before he has learned how to hold on when he is aloft. For our
Phineas Finn was a young man not without sense,--not entirely a
windbag. If he did this thing the probability was that he might
become utterly a castaway, and go entirely to the dogs before he was
thirty. He had heard of penniless men who had got into Parliament,
and to whom had come such a fate. He was able to name to himself a
man or two whose barks, carrying more sail than they could bear, had
gone to pieces among early breakers in this way. But then, would
it not be better to go to pieces early than never to carry any
sail at all? And there was, at any rate, the chance of success. He
was already a barrister, and there were so many things open to a
barrister with a seat in Parliament! And as he knew of men who had
been utterly ruined by such early mounting, so also did he know of
others whose fortunes had been made by happy audacity when they were
young. He almost thought that he could die happy if he had once taken
his seat in Parliament,--if he had received one letter with those
grand initials written after his name on the address. Young men in
battle are called upon to lead forlorn hopes. Three fall, perhaps,
to one who gets through; but the one who gets through will have
the Victoria Cross to carry for the rest of his life. This was his
forlorn hope; and as he had been invited to undertake the work, he
would not turn from the danger. On the following morning he again saw
Barrington Erle by appointment, and then wrote the following letter
to his father:--
Reform Club, Feb., 186--.
MY DEAR FATHER,
I am afraid that the purport of this letter will startle
you, but I hope that when you have finished it you will
think that I am right in my decision as to what I am going
to do. You are no doubt aware that the dissolution of
Parliament will take place at once, and that we shall be
in all the turmoil of a general election by the middle of
March. I have been invited to stand for Loughshane, and
have consented. The proposition has been made to me by my
friend Barrington Erle, Mr. Mildmay’s private secretary,
and has been made on behalf of the Political Committee of
the Reform Club. I need hardly say that I should not have
thought of such a thing with a less thorough promise of
support than this gives me, nor should I think of it now
had I not been assured that none of the expense of the
election would fall upon me. Of course I could not have
asked you to pay for it.
But to such a proposition, so made, I have felt that it
would be cowardly to give a refusal. I cannot but regard
such a selection as a great honour. I own that I am fond
of politics, and have taken great delight in their study
--(“Stupid young fool!” his father said to himself as he
read this)--and it has been my dream for years past to
have a seat in Parliament at some future time. (“Dream!
yes; I wonder whether he has ever dreamed what he is to
live upon.”) The chance has now come to me much earlier
than I have looked for it, but I do not think that it
should on that account be thrown away. Looking to my
profession, I find that many things are open to a
barrister with a seat in Parliament, and that the House
need not interfere much with a man’s practice. (“Not if
he has got to the top of his tree,” said the doctor.)
My chief doubt arose from the fact of your old friendship
with Lord Tulla, whose brother has filled the seat for I
don’t know how many years. But it seems that George Morris
must go; or, at least, that he must be opposed by a
Liberal candidate. If I do not stand, some one else will,
and I should think that Lord Tulla will be too much of a
man to make any personal quarrel on such a subject. If he
is to lose the borough, why should not I have it as well
as another?
I can fancy, my dear father, all that you will say as to
my imprudence, and I quite confess that I have not a word
to answer. I have told myself more than once, since last
night, that I shall probably ruin myself. (“I wonder
whether he has ever told himself that he will probably
ruin me also,” said the doctor.) But I am prepared to ruin
myself in such a cause. I have no one dependent on me;
and, as long as I do nothing to disgrace my name, I may
dispose of myself as I please. If you decide on stopping
my allowance, I shall have no feeling of anger against
you. (“How very considerate!” said the doctor.) And in
that case I shall endeavour to support myself by my pen.
I have already done a little for the magazines.
Give my best love to my mother and sisters. If you will
receive me during the time of the election, I shall see
them soon. Perhaps it will be best for me to say that I
have positively decided on making the attempt; that is to
say, if the Club Committee is as good as its promise. I
have weighed the matter all round, and I regard the prize
as being so great, that I am prepared to run any risk to
obtain it. Indeed, to me, with my views about politics,
the running of such a risk is no more than a duty. I
cannot keep my hand from the work now that the work has
come in the way of my hand. I shall be most anxious to get
a line from you in answer to this.
Your most affectionate son,
PHINEAS FINN.
I question whether Dr. Finn, when he read this letter, did not feel
more of pride than of anger,--whether he was not rather gratified
than displeased, in spite of all that his common-sense told him on
the subject. His wife and daughters, when they heard the news, were
clearly on the side of the young man. Mrs. Finn immediately expressed
an opinion that Parliament would be the making of her son, and that
everybody would be sure to employ so distinguished a barrister. The
girls declared that Phineas ought, at any rate, to have his chance,
and almost asserted that it would be brutal in their father to stand
in their brother’s way. It was in vain that the doctor tried to
explain that going into Parliament could not help a young barrister,
whatever it might do for one thoroughly established in his
profession; that Phineas, if successful at Loughshane, would at once
abandon all idea of earning any income,--that the proposition, coming
from so poor a man, was a monstrosity,--that such an opposition
to the Morris family, coming from a son of his, would be gross
ingratitude to Lord Tulla. Mrs. Finn and the girls talked him down,
and the doctor himself was almost carried away by something like
vanity in regard to his son’s future position.
Nevertheless he wrote a letter strongly advising Phineas to abandon
the project. But he himself was aware that the letter which he wrote
was not one from which any success could be expected. He advised
his son, but did not command him. He made no threats as to stopping
his income. He did not tell Phineas, in so many words, that he was
proposing to make an ass of himself. He argued very prudently against
the plan, and Phineas, when he received his father’s letter, of
course felt that it was tantamount to a paternal permission to
proceed with the matter. On the next day he got a letter from his
mother full of affection, full of pride,--not exactly telling him to
stand for Loughshane by all means, for Mrs. Finn was not the woman to
run openly counter to her husband in any advice given by her to their
son,--but giving him every encouragement which motherly affection and
motherly pride could bestow. “Of course you will come to us,” she
said, “if you do make up your mind to be member for Loughshane. We
shall all of us be so delighted to have you!” Phineas, who had fallen
into a sea of doubt after writing to his father, and who had demanded
a week from Barrington Erle to consider the matter, was elated to
positive certainty by the joint effect of the two letters from home.
He understood it all. His mother and sisters were altogether in
favour of his audacity, and even his father was not disposed to
quarrel with him on the subject.
“I shall take you at your word,” he said to Barrington Erle at the
club that evening.
“What word?” said Erle, who had too many irons in the fire to be
thinking always of Loughshane and Phineas Finn,--or who at any rate
did not choose to let his anxiety on the subject be seen.
“About Loughshane.”
“All right, old fellow; we shall be sure to carry you through. The
Irish writs will be out on the third of March, and the sooner you’re
there the better.”