Classic with a
Name in the Title. This 1873 novel is the fourth of the Palliser series,
after Can
You Forgive Her?, the prequel to this one Phineas
Finn: The Irish Member, and The
Eustace Diamonds. When young ‘uns ask me, “What did you do during the 2020
pandemic,” I’m gonna tell ‘em, “I wore a mask, worked from home, and read the
six Palliser novels.”
Phineas Redux – Anthony Trollope
When the novel opens, Irishman Phineas Finn is lured out
of a sinecure in Dublin by his friend, the Whig politician Barrington Erle.
Erle says of Finn “He's the best Irishman we ever got hold of” to run for a
seat in the working class district of gritty Tankerville, against the long-time
Tory incumbent. During the campaign the English workingmen pay little attention
to the Tory’s stoking prejudice against “Irish Papists.” The tally comes out so
close that Finn demands a recount and wins. Angry at being told to go fly a
kite by Finn, editor of a scandal sheet Quintus Slide fumes to himself:
And yet this wretched Irishman,
who had wriggled himself into Parliament on a petition, getting the better of a
good, downright English John Bull by a quibble, had treated him with scorn,—the
wretched Irishman being for the moment like a cock on his own dunghill.
Our hero’s luck, however, rather fades with this victory. An
influential liberal, Mr. Bonteen, doubts the party discipline of Finn: “I never
liked him from the first, and always knew he would not run straight. No
Irishman ever does.” In one of the best chapters Trollope ever wrote, an
attempt is made on Finn’s life, but the last of his luck runs out in that his
life is preserved but his reputation takes a battering. Finn lands, through
untoward circumstances, in the deepest trouble a person can face.
I’m keeping plot and incident obscure not only because I’m a sloppy writer but also I have a horror of being the bearer of spoilers. And though Trollope despised surprising the reader, he still provided unexpected plot twists, so I enjoyed the dramatic incidents in the last quarter of volume one and whole of volume two. Even the romcom subplot didn’t try my patience, nor did the inevitable fox-hunting scenes. I used to sneer at Harry Potter fans for enduring hundreds of pages of quidditch, but no more for I have tolerated page after page on the amusements of hunting.
In any case, plot is not Trollope’s main concern. Trollope focuses on the mysteries of his characters’ psychologies. For instance, Laura Kennedy's feeling of hopeless love for Finn comes out in a conversation with Violet (born Effingham), now wife of Lord Chiltern.
“...If a woman,—a married
woman,—be oppressed by such a feeling, she should lay it down at the bottom of
her heart, out of sight, never mentioning it, even to herself."
"You talk of the heart as
though we could control it."
"The heart will follow the
thoughts, and they may be controlled. I am not passionate, perhaps, as you are,
and I think I can control my heart...."
For Trollope, thoughts and emotions are interdependent
and we depend on our emotions to find our own preferences and thus become our own people, not the tools of others. We are responsible to use our self-awareness and common sense to control our
emotions and prevent fear, distress, and elation from influencing us to the point
where we make unreasonable judgments and disastrous decisions. Trollope gives
us examples of immoderate characters who have failed to rein in their emotions and
thus allowed them to bolt and carry them into dismal country.
Lord Fawn, former suitor of Lying Lizzie Eustace, gives
the police such an inaccurate description that the wrong man is charged and put
on trial. And on the witness stand Lord Fawn’s testimony is so garbled that the
innocent man is almost convicted. Lord Fawn is shaken over his part in nearly
causing an injustice to occur. Inordinately embarrassed and unreasonably
fearing his reputation is in tatters, he literally hides himself and disappears out of London.
Robert Kennedy feels that wives must be obedient to their husbands’ ways. A control freak due
to insecurity, he is so unreasonably demanding that that he drives his wife
Lady Laura out of the house. In his loneliness and despair, he becomes obsessed
with the falsehood that Finn has purposely broken up his marriage. The
obsession eventually drives him off his dot, as poor Louis Trevelyan’s did in He Knew He
Was Right. Talk about a guy that needed some moderation.
In the comic romcom triangle, country gentleman Mr.
Spooner is refused by Adelaide Palliser who was in the neighborhood visiting
the domestic bliss of the Chilterns. He clings to the irrational idea that is
crazy for her to choose poverty with Gerard Maule, the poor aristo she loves,
over wealth and comfort with Spooner’s prosperity. He is so upended by her
refusal that he predicts to Violet, with whom he’s had a heart-to-heart:
"I'd give half I've got in
all the world," said the wretched man, "just to get it out of my
head. I know what it will come to." Though he paused, Lady Chiltern could
ask no question respecting Mr. Spooner's future prospects. "It'll be two
bottles of champagne at dinner, and two bottles of claret afterwards, every
day. I only hope she'll know that she did it. Good-bye, Lady Chiltern. I
thought that perhaps you'd have helped me."
Wonderful and wise of Trollope, too, with the line “I
only hope she'll know that she did it.” Talk about taking responsibility for
one’s own feelings and actions. If life plays a dirty trick on us and a loving
family life, respect and esteem, wealth and worldly comfort elude our grasp –
especially if the rewards of romantic love are not ours to be had – we had
better not become slaves to despondency but cultivate the courage and wisdom in
us to carry on. Life - like a pandemic - is long. It is thus in our own best interest to have
fortitude, to persist, to resist quitting, to work hard to be self-aware and
live unhindered by nutty feelings.
Trollope also does a great job characterizing clueless
young aristo Gerard Maule and his father Maurice (said Morris, I think, in
England) whom the normally charitable Finn calls “that padded old dandy.” When
Trollope provides examples of the scurrilous editorials of Quintus Slide, it’s
an extremely funny parody of oily odious sanctimony. Trollope uses the comic name to good effect too: “Confucius Putt was the distinguished artist with
whom the Prince had shaken hands on leaving the club.” Confucius Putt! That’s
even funnier than the Irish town he made up in the first Phineas – Paldoodie.
Best of all, Lady Glencora, in all her impulsivity, generosity, jaunty
irreverence and love of capriciousness, rises in the world. Trollope ends the
novel explicitly assuring she will never change, which will warm the hearts of
readers who enjoy her and want to read the novel again primarily because of her
scenes. In uncertain plaguey times like these, we hardcore readers need all
the rocks of Gibraltar we can get. Never change, Cora, never ever change!
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