The trial of Phineas Finn, MP

Richard West

This is the first of three articles by Richard West on Trollope's political England.

The career of Phineas Finn in Anthony Trollope's Palliser novels is not only exciting but offers some slight points of comparison with English political life a hundred years later. He does not appear in all six novels and may be considered less weighty a character than Plantagenet Palliser, later Duke of Omnium, who appears as well in two of the Barchester novels. Nor is either man quite so likeable to the reader as Lady Glencora Palliser — (people never got used to calling her Duchess). But the Pallisers, with their immense wealth, their gift of parliamentary seats and their titles, are politicians as though by right. They do not have to fight their way to Parliament and to power. as does Phineas Finn, an inexperienced Irish barrister and a Roman Catholic to boot, in an age when membership of the Church of England was preferable for the ambitious MP.

Phineas Finn is still in his early twenties when, almost by accident, he is offered the chance of contesting a seat in the west of Ireland. The sitting member, a Tory Protestant. has given offence to the local patron who therefore approves the campaign of the young Catholic Liberal. Elected to Westminster. Finn is slow to make his mark in the House of Commons but quick to succeed in high political society. thanks to his charm, good manners and way with the ladies. Towards the end of Phineas Finn, its hero is conducting romantic (although platonic) affairs with two aristocratic English ladies, a rich Viennese Jewess, Mme Goesler, as well as his Irish childhood sweetheart — whom he marries at the end of the book. He becomes a friend of the Pallisers, dines often in the company of two dukes, fights a duel with a nobleman, hunts in the reckless Irish fashion, and gets a well paid post in the Department of the Colonies.

In Phineas Finn, as in all the Palliser books, one has the impression that politicians in those days were. if not nicer, at least more discreet than those today. When Finn, for example falls into the power of a money-lender who pesters him at the House of Commons. there is no suggestion of raising the cash by taking a 'public relations' consultancy from a commercial company or becoming 'advisor' to some foreign power. The MPs occasionally 'dine well' in Trollope's euphemism, but are not habitually drunk at the House of Commons. Only a few desert their wives.

Above all senior politicians in the Palliser novels were more careful than our con temporaries in their choice of friends. When Plantagenet Palliser, now Duke of Omnium and Prime Minister, is holding a country house party in the recess, he is appalled to find that his wife has invited two disreputable racing men, one of whom brazenly asks for a political favour. The two rogues are sent packing. Similarly, he is furious when his wife tries to obtain a seat for the crooked financier, Ferdinand Lopez, who ends up by jumping under a train at Watford Station. The wicked Lizzie Eustace and her equally shady friends are gossiped about with great enjoyment by all the highest in the land, but they are not invited twice to the best houses. No scandal attaches to the names on the Duke of Omnium's resignation honours list.

The politicians then, as now, were very limited in their interests. The Duke of Omnium tells Finn that he regretted having abstained from the amusements of English gentlemen, such as fox-hunting and shooting: 'But he had abstained also from their ordinary occupations, — except so far as politics is one of them. He had been a scholar, and after a certain fitful fashion he had maintained his scholarship, but the literature to which he had been really attached had been that of blue books and newspapers.'

Serious, even solemn though he may be, the Duke of Omnium stands by Whig principles, which combine some liberalism with a respect for class distinction. Few have understood better than Trollope the niceties of the manner in which politicians will compromise principles for the sake of obtaining office or putting off a general election. Yet Finn at the end of Phineas Finn has the courage to sacrifice both his job and his seat because his own party has compromised on the question of Irish land reform.

His rebelliousness does no harm to Finn, for after a few years in Ireland as a civil servant, he is brought back into politics and a second lot of adventures, described by Trollope in Phineas Redux. His first wife has died in childbirth, so Finn is free to resume his dallying both with the wealthy Mme Goesler and Lady Laura Standish, now the unhappy wife of Mr Kennedy, a puritanical cabinet minister.

A seat has been found for Finn at 'Tankerville, a dirty, prosperous ungainly' mining town in Co. Durham, where 'linen was never white . . . and even ladies who sat in drawing-rooms were accustomed to the feel and taste and appearance of soot in all their daintiest recesses'. This description of Tankerville still fits the town of Chesterle-Street whose main hotel still bears the same name, the Lambton Arms, that Trollope gave it in Phineas Redux. (The Lambtons, Earls of Durham, still live in the constituency). The sitting member for Tankerville, a Mr Browborough, has held the seat for the Tories during the last three parliaments, thanks to the sweeteners he can pay out of his large personal fortune, and when Finn arives at the Lambton Arms he hears that 'Browborough has been at work for the last three days', bribing the miners to get their votes. The election, whose principal issue is the disestablishment of the Church of England, results in a narrow majority for Brow' borough, who later loses the seat on petition, after inquiries show that some of his votes had been gained by 'gross bribery'. He was later found not guilty on criminal charges relating to the election. In 1973, exactly one hundred years after the publication of Phineas Redux, a byelection was held at Chester-le-Street on the death of the Labour MP — for this mining town had become in the present century one of the most reliable socialist seats. Those Conservatives who have fought this constituency, (notably William Rees-Mogg, now the editor of The Times) have thought themselves lucky to keep their deposits, but in 1973 a strong challenge to Labour came from the Liberal Party which just then was enjoying one of its periodic revivals. It became apparent to visitors in the constituency that the Liberal was drawing support from many traditional Labour voters, especially miners, who were angry over the choice of the Labour candidate. This was Mr Giles Radice, an official of the General and Municipal Workers Union (GezMWU), whose regional boss, Alderman Andrew Cunningham, lived in Chester-le-Street, and was wont to entertain friends in the Buonaparte Room of the Lambton Arms. In the North-east of England, Cunningham was as powerful as his friend and business associate, T. Dan Smith. and like Mr Smith was under investigation by the police in connection with the activities of John Poulson, the bankrupt architect.

At Chester-le-Street in 1973, I was told by certain disgruntled Labour supporters that Alderman Cunningham had exerted pressure on G&MWU members and others within the local Labour Party to win the candidature for Mr Radice instead of a local teacher, who was the miners' choice. The publication of these facts lent still further encouragement to the Liberals, whose leader in those days, Mr Jeremy Thorpe, told me he hoped that Chester-le-Street might be won. But Labour held and still holds the seat, although Mr Cunningham , later went to prison. On the day of his release on parole he had tea in Chesterle-Street with his friend and colleague. James Callaghan.

His victory at Tankerville brings only brief pleasure to Phineas Finn who three hundred pages later in Phineas Redux, finds himself arrested and tried for his life on the charge of murdering Mr Bonteen, the President of the Board of Trade. Many critics over the years have felt that this narrative and the account of the trial were too melodramatic for a series of books on political life in England but, nevertheless, Phineas Redux sold more copies and made more money than almost any other of Trollope's novels.

The train of events leading to Finn's arrest starts with that unwise intimacy with Lady Laura Kennedy, who loves him, although without hope of winning him as a husband. Her actual husband, Mr Kennedy, has always been a sombre Calvinist and now develops a bout of persecution mania. Rashly, he confides his suspicions about Finn in a letter to Quintus Slide, the editor of the scurrilous People's Banner. Slide takes a proof of the letter to show to Finn, Who threatens to sue for libel should it be Published.

'Why shouldn't we publish?'

'It's a private quarrel between a man and his wife. What on earth have the public got to do with that?'

'Private quarrels between gentlemen and ladies have been public affairs for a long time past. You must know that very well.'

'When they come into court they are.'

'In court and out of court! The morale of our aristocracy — what you call the Upper Ten — would be at a low ebb indeed if the public press didn't act as their guardians.'

Slide offers a deal with Finn. He will delay publication if Finn uses his influence to persuade Lady Laura to go back to her husband. Finn refuses the bargain.

'"Then it goes in tomorrow," said Mr Quintus Slide, stretching out his hand and taking back the slip.

"What on earth is your object?"

"Morals! Morals! We shall be able to say that we've done our best to promote domestic virtue and secure forgiveness for an erring wife".'

Although Finn succeeds in getting a court injunction to stop Slide publishing his letter, he runs into worse trouble by going to see the aggrieved Mr Kennedy at MacPherson's Hotel. Kennedy, crazed with self-pity and Jealousy, fires a pistol at Finn, narrowly missing his head: an incident that is referred to, in covert language, in one of the next morning's newspapers.

His reputation with women is the immediate cause of Finn's quarrel with Mr Bonteen, who anyway is a rival within the ranks of the Liberal Party. As Finn enters the Universe Club, one evening after dinner, he hears Bonteen's voice from a few feet away, saying: 'Mr Phineas Finn, or some fellow such as that, would be after her at once'. Finn cannot pretend not to have heard and asks: 'What is it, Mr Bonteen, that Phineas Finn will do?'

`Mr Bonteen had been — dining.' His normal arrogance is increased by wine and he accuses Finn of eavesdropping. Finn knows as well, that the woman referred to is Lady Eustace, who once again is a cause of scandal as wife, or bigamous wife, of the Rev. Joseph Emilius, a Czech Jew of sinister reputation. Finn holds his temper, confining himself to a curt rebuke to Bonteen, but later, upon the steps of the club he says to a friend: 'That man's insolence angers me to such an extent that I cannot refrain from speaking out. He hasn't spirit enough to go out with me, or I would shoot him'. And when Bonteen passes them on the way to his home, Finn says again "By George, I do dislike that man." Then, with a laugh he took a life-preserver out of his pocket, and made an action with it as though he were striking some enemy over the head. In those days there had been much garotting in the streets, and writers in the Press had advised those who walked about at nights to go around with sticks.' That same night, on his way home from the Universe Club, Mr Bonteen, the President of the Board of Trade, is clubbed to death in a dark street.

Not surprisingly, in view of the circumstances, Finn is arrested and brought for a series of questionings by the Bow Street magistrates, who decided after a week that he must stand trial on a charge of murder. At first Finn is cheered by the loyalty of his friends, especially his women friends like the Duchess of Onemium, Lady Laura Kennedy and the beautiful Madame Goesler. But when the magistrates fully commit him, Finn begins to feel that the world is turning against him and that men who had been his friends in Parliament now join in thinking him guilty. 'It was the condemnation of those who had known him that was so terrible to him; the feeling that they with whom he had aspired to work and live, the leading men and women of his day, Ministers of the Government and their wives, statesmen and their daughters, peers and members of the House in which he himself had sat; that these should think, after all, he had been a base adventurer unworthy of their society!'

After seven weeks of incarceration, Finn is brought to the Old Bailey. It is already June, and Trollope complains of the court's horrible heat and intolerable stenches. In the tedium of a long trial, he says, 'you begin to feel that though the Prime Minister who is in should murder the Prime Minister who is out . . . you would not attend . . .

Among the onlookers is Quintus Slide who has come to enjoy the ordeal of his old enemy Phineas Finn; and for three days it does look bad for the defence in spite of the skill of the wily defence counsel, Mr Chaffanbrass, in disconcerting the prosecution witnesses. But the most effective defence of Finn has been done outside the court by friends determined to track down the actual murderer.

They discover that bad blood has existed between ponteen and the unspeakable Mr Emilius, whose alibi on the night of the murder they seek to disprove. Mme Goesler takes a train to Prague and discovers that Emilius had there had been a duplicate key to the front door of the north London lodging house in which he claims to have ' spent the night of the murder. When telegrams to announce this news are received in court, public opinion turns in favour of Finn but he still cannot be fully acquitted and cleared until the chance discovery by a child of the actual life-preserver or cosh that had been thrown into some shrubbery by the scene of the murder.

Although now revealed as entirely innocent, Finn yet feels resentful against those politicians and friends who, he believes, had once thought him guilty. 'I will give up my seat' he tells Mr Monk, the Liberal statesman. 'There may be and probably are men down at Tankerville who still think that I am guilty.' A new writ is moved for the borough. of Tankerville and within a fortnight of his release from prison. Finn ceases to be an MP. According to Trollope, every voter of Tankerville had indeed believed Finn guilty as soon as they heard of his commitment to trial. He was unpopular in the constituency because he would not distribute bribes.

When Finn is proved innocent, the people of Tankerville beg him not to resign as their member. When he persists, in his injured pride, in refusing to go north to visit Tankerville, they elect him in spite of himself, at no expense and without opposition. But at the end of Phineas Redux, the hero is still too sore at heart to accept political office, consoling himself instead with marriage to Mme Goesler.

In the next and fifth of the Palliser novels The Prime Minister, Phineas Finn has forgotten his grievance and turned into an elder statesman, with none of his former Irish recklessness. He and his adoring wife are still firm friends of the Pallisers, now Duke and Duchess of Omnium. When the Omniums are talking about the appointments to the new Liberal government, the Duke says: 'I have done as you asked about a friend of yours' . . .

'What friend?'

'Mr Finn is to go to Ireland'.

'You don't mean as Chief Secretary?' 'Yes, I do. He certainly couldn't go as Lord Lieutenant.'

The Duchess's pleasure at Phineas Finn's success is marred by a sudden anxiety: 'Poor Phineas! I hope they won't murder him, or anything of that kind. They do murder people. you know, sometimes'. The Irish do not succeed in murdering Finn; but that was a hundred years ago. when they lacked our modern technology.