Phineas Finn is the second book in Anthony Trollope's Palliser series and at 719 pages long is only marginally shorter than last year's read Can You Forgive Her? It is not a sequel in the strictest sense - of the characters from CYFH only the Pallisers reappear and even they are marginalised - but the universe is the same and the themes are definitely carried forward. Our protagonist on this occasion is (rather unsurprisingly) the eponymous Phineas Finn MP, a delightfully charming and politically ambitious Irishman. The son of a gentrified doctor, he has unenthusiastically trained as a lawyer in London, all the while making connections and studying affairs of state at the moderately liberal Reform Club. As the novel opens he is offered the chance he has been waiting for to stand as a candidate for Loughshane, a thoroughly rotten borough in the patronage of his father's friend. Before we hit page 50 he has been returned unopposed and taken his seat in the House of Commons amongst the great and the good of the land. Just one problem: Phineas is rather short on money. His father has very graciously offered him a living allowance of £250 a year; but how is this to stretch to cover the expenses of a rooky MP, who must join exclusive Clubs, attend long drunken dinners, hunt, shoot and maintain himself in line with men with incomes of £1000 and more?
Worse still, Phineas is rather short on class and connections. For one thing he is an Irishman, which is undoubtedly an impediment in itself; for another, he is barely a gentleman by birth. True, his father is a tolerably rich man but only through the careful and successful practise of his profession and wealth is relative. Phineas' father is as poor as a church mouse when compared with men like Robert Kennedy, a fellow MP with a country estate and a deer park to make up for his lack of illustrious ancestors. The only thing in Phineas' favour is his friendship with Lady Laura Standish, the daughter of Earl Brentford, and a political hostess. Her drawing room is the closest thing the young Reformers of the House have to a salon, and they hang on her every word, competing with one another for her attentions and favours. She understand that, in her way, she is as powerful as they are, if not more so as she is the means whereby they can meet, network and claw themselves up the parliamentary ladder. In this sense, her wish is their command. Still she knows her limits, or rather Trollope knows the limits of his audiences' tolerance for female politicos; Laura Standish is not a New Woman by any means and god forbid she should like to vote:
Lady Laura's father was in the Cabinet, to Lady Laura's infinite delight. It was her ambition to be brought as near to political action as was possible for a woman without surrendering any of the privileges of feminine inaction. That women should ever wish to have votes at parliamentary elections was to her abominable, and the cause of the Rights of Women generally was odious to her; but, nevertheless, for herself, she delighted in hoping that she too might be useful, - in thinking that she too was perhaps, in some degree, politically powerful...
Trollope played these same cards in Can You Forgive Her? His female characters are vibrant, clever, zesty and influential in their sphere; they are thinkers and doers, schemers and manipulators of human emotions, but all within the bounds of petticoats.
It is not long before Phineas has conceived a love for Lady Laura; a love which she both encourages and dismisses, while she simultaneously courts the attentions of Robert Kennedy. The two men couldn't be more different. Kennedy is dour, silent and difficult to like, while Phineas is naturally gregarious:
It soon came to be admitted by all who knew Phineas Finn that he had a peculiar power of making himself agreeable which no one knew how to analyse or define. 'I think it is because he listens so well,' said one man. 'But the women would not like him for that,' said another. 'He has studied when to listen and when to talk,' said a third. The truth, however, was, that Phineas Finn had made no study in the matter at all. It was simply his nature to be pleasant.
Can a pleasant man be a successful politician? It remains to be seen in Phineas' case. Certainly he is a startling contrast to Plantagenet Palliser, the cold efficious aristocrat who became Chancellor of the Exchequer at the end of Can You Forgive Her? I assume the two men will play counterpoint throughout the series and, much against appearances, it is an exciting prospect.
Clearly Trollope is not Dickens, or Eliot. His prose style is accomplished and efficient in a Victorian way. That is to say, it is supremely eloquent, but uneven and occasionally blunt. The pace of storytelling is quick-slow, at once languid and then impatient to proceed. But it seems to me that the dialogue is absolutely pitch-perfect. It is Trollope's gift, and the way in which he really tells his stories, the personal, emotional stories of his characters' internal lives. He is constantly at work articulating how others perceive Phineas and Laura and Robert Kennedy, but it is only when they speak that they uncover themselves. Their common everyday words reveal everything - histories, undercurrents - so that the narrator doesn't have to tell anything. I admire this very much. It strikes me as a very difficult way to write a story, because the artifice has to be so subtle and so natural. It is much easier to say what you mean. Of course, it is hyper-natural - everyone is just a little too witty, just a little too quick - but nevertheless it works. Certainly it saves Trollope from accusations of dullness - because without the witty repartee the political machinations would quickly wear thin - and from overwhelming masculinity, because the strength of mind therein revealed in the female characters balances out the dominant maleness of their mileau. More than that though it makes his novels intimate.
More thoughts on Trollope, no doubt, as I read more.
~~Victoria~~