Phineas Finn quotes

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.

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.

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:—

but this question he had never been able to answer. There were many questions about himself which he usually answered by telling himself that it was his fate to walk over volcanoes.

“Of course, I shall be blown into atoms some fine day,” he would say; “but after all, that is better than being slowly boiled down into pulp.”

The House had met on a Friday, again on the Saturday morning, and the debate on the Address had been adjourned till the Monday. On the Sunday, Phineas determined that he would see Lady Laura.

“Between Mr. Kennedy and a monkey.

The monkey has so much to say for himself, and is so delightfully wicked! I don’t suppose that Mr. Kennedy ever did anything wrong in his life.

”

It may be doubted whether he had ever talked enough to any man to make that man his friend. Laurence Fitzgibbon tried him for one season, and after a month or two asked for a loan of a few hundred pounds.

“I never lend money to anyone under any circumstances,” said Mr. Kennedy, and it was the longest speech which had ever fallen from his mouth in the hearing of Laurence Fitzgibbon.

But though he would not lend money, he gave a great deal—and he would give it for almost every object. “Mr. Robert Kennedy, M.P., Loughlinter, £105,” appeared on almost every charitable list that was advertised.

“I thought you would,” said she.

“Like to like, you know. You have both of you the same aptitude for climbing. But the monkeys never fall, they tell me.”

Phineas, knowing that he could gain nothing by sparring with Miss Fitzgibbon, raised his hat and took his leave. Going out of a narrow gate he found himself again brought into contact with Mr. Kennedy.

“I must say I do,” said the other. “Lord de Terrier took office knowing that he was in a minority. We had a fair majority of nearly thirty when he came in.”

“Then how very soft you must have been to go out,” said Miss Fitzgibbon.

“Not in the least soft,” continued Barrington Erle. “We could not command our men, and were bound to go out.

“Yes; look at Loughshane,” said Miss Fitzgibbon. “The country at any rate has gained something there.”

“It’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good, Mr. Finn,” said the Earl.

“What on earth is to become of poor George?” said Mr. Fitzgibbon. “I wonder whether anyone knows where he is. George wasn’t a bad sort of fellow.”

Foolscap, Margin, and Vellum, who always made much of him as a useful man;—but because some such antagonism would be manly, and the fighting of some battle would be the right thing to do.

“If Labour don’t mean to go to the wall himself,” Bunce would say to his wife, “Labour must look alive, and put somebody else there.”

Mrs. Bunce was a comfortable motherly woman, who loved her husband but hated politics. As he had an aversion to his superiors in the world because they were superiors, so had she a liking for them for the same reason.

“I know nothing whatever about politics,” said Lord Chiltern.

“I wish you did,” said his sister⁠—“with all my heart.”

“I never did—and I never shall, for all your wishing. It’s the meanest trade going I think, and I’m sure it’s the most dishonest. They talk of legs on the turf, and of course there are legs;

We who are conversant with our own methods of politics, see nothing odd in this, because we are used to it; but surely in the eyes of strangers our practice must be very singular. There is nothing like it in any other country—nothing as yet.

Nowhere else is there the same good-humoured, affectionate, prizefighting ferocity in politics.

The leaders of our two great parties are to each other exactly as are the two champions of the ring who knock each other about for the belt and for five hundred pounds a side once in every two years.

I know I should. But you see—I’m not a man, and I must take care of myself. The wrong side of a post for a woman is so very much the wrong side.

I like a fast man, but I know that I must not dare to marry the sort of man that I like.

”

“You never knew a man with a softer heart or with a finer spirit.

I believe as I sit here that if he were married tomorrow, his vices would fall from him like old clothes.

”

After a prolonged investigation he had come forth from that affair without disgrace. He would have done so, at least, if he had not been heretofore disgraced.

But we all know how the man well spoken of may steal a horse, while he who is of evil repute may not look over a hedge.

It was asserted widely by many who were supposed to know all about everything that Lord Chiltern was in a fit of delirium tremens when he killed the ruffian at Newmarket.

“But, nevertheless, substantially necessary,” said Lady Laura.

“Failing our power of reproducing the toffy, I suppose it was,” said Violet.

“You were not Miss Effingham then,” said Lord Chiltern.

Speak to her softly. Tell her of the sort of life which you would live with her. Tell her that all is changed. As she comes to love you, she will believe you when she would believe no one else on that matter.”

“Am I to tell her a lie?” said Lord Chiltern, looking his sister full in the face.

Then he turned upon his heel and left her.

“But he would love his wife?”

“Yes, as he does his horses. And he would treat her well⁠—as he does his horses. But he expects every horse he has to do anything that any horse can do; and he would expect the same of his wife.”

Phineas had no idea how deep an injury he might be doing his friend by this description, nor did it once occur to him that his companion was thinking of herself as the possible wife of this Red Indian.

He had been regarded as a pestilent thorn in the sides of all ministers. But now he was a member of the Cabinet, and those whom he had terrified in the old days began to find that he was not so much unlike other men.

There are but few horses which you cannot put into harness, and those of the highest spirit will generally do your work the best.

Phineas, who had his eyes about him, thought that he could perceive that Mr. Palliser did not shoot a deer with Mr. Ratler, and that Mr. Gresham played no chess with Mr. Bonteen.

“I like it. I prefer to have something to do on horseback.

When a man tells me that a horse is an armchair, I always tell him to put the brute into his bedroom.

Mind you come. The house I stay at is called the Willingford Bull, and it’s just four miles from Peterborough.”

Therefore it is that those behind hope that the fox may make this or that cover, while the forward men long to see him turned over in every field.

To ride to hounds is very glorious; but to have ridden to hounds is more glorious still.

They had now crossed another road, and a larger one, and had got into a somewhat closer country. The fields were not so big, and the fences were not so high.

This he said to Barrington Erle, who angered him and increased the warmth of his feeling by declaring that a little close confinement would be good for the Bunces of the day.

“If we don’t keep the mob down, the mob will keep us down,”

said the Whig private secretary. Phineas had no opportunity of answering this, but declared to himself that Barrington Erle was no more a Liberal at heart than was Mr. Daubeny.

“Papa thinks so much about the borough.” The reader will remember that both Lord Brentford and his daughter were thorough reformers! The use of a little borough of his own, however, is a convenience to a great peer.

“Those difficult things have always to be talked of for a long while, and then they become easy,”

said Violet. “I believe if you were to propose to Mr. Kennedy to give all his property to the Church Missionaries and emigrate to New Zealand, he’d begin to consider it seriously after a time.”

“I never made such an accusation against you before, or against anybody else that I can remember. But I do begin to believe that you are in love with Mr. Finn.”

“Why shouldn’t I be in love with him, if I like?”

“I say nothing about that;—only he has not got a penny.”

“Because I look upon it as written in heaven that you are to be Oswald’s wife.”

“Heaven’s writings then are false,” said Violet, getting up and walking away.

In the meantime Phineas was very wretched at home. When he reached his lodgings after leaving the House—after his short conversation with Mr. Monk—he tried to comfort himself with what that gentleman had said to him.

“I think this man was very clumsy,” whispered Mr. Kennedy.

“Perhaps he was a beginner,” said Phineas, “and that may make a difference. If so, I’m afraid we have interfered with his education.”

Then, by degrees, the conversation got away to other things, and Lady Laura asked him after Loughshane. “I’ve made up my mind to give it up,” said he, smiling as he spoke.

“

You cannot make a woman subject to you as a dog is so.

You may have all the outside and as much of the inside as you can master. With a dog you may be sure of both.”

and his one good speech had been regarded by many as no very wonderful effort. But he was a man who was pleasant to other men—not combative, not self-asserting beyond the point at which self-assertion ceases to be a necessity of manliness.

Nature had been very good to him, making him comely inside and out⁠—and with this comeliness he had crept into popularity.

The secret of the duel was, I think, at this time, known to a great many men and women. So Phineas perceived; but it was not, he thought, known either to Lord Brentford or to Violet Effingham. And in this he was right.

“

Mr. Bonteen always knows more than anybody else about everything except his own business.

”

“

Evergreens do bloom, as well as spring plants, Lord Fawn.

You come and see her, Mr. Finn;—only you must bring a little money with you for the Female Protestant Unmarried Women’s Emigration Society. That is my aunt’s present hobby, as Lord Fawn knows to his cost.”

“Oh yes, I know the lady;—that is, as well as other people do. No one, I take it, knows much of her; and it seems to me that the world is becoming tired of her.

A mystery is good for nothing if it remains always a mystery.

”

“After all, we are surely the most awkward people in the world,” she said. “You know Lord Fawn, who was talking to Miss Effingham just now. You should have heard him trying to pay me a compliment before dinner.

It was like a donkey walking a minuet, and yet they say he is a clever man and can make speeches.

” Could it be possible that Madame Max Goesler’s ears were so sharp that she had heard the things which Lord Fawn had said of her?

And if Mr. Finn asked me to marry him tomorrow, and if I liked him well enough, I would take him—even though he had been dug right out of a bog. Not only because I liked him—mind!

If I were unfortunate enough to like a man who was nothing, I would refuse him in spite of my liking⁠—because he was nothing.

But this young man is not nothing. Mr. Finn is a fine fellow, and if there were no other reason to prevent my marrying him than his being the son of a doctor, and coming out of the bogs, that would not do so.

“

Government! Well; I suppose there must be government. But the less of it the better.

I’m not against government;—nor yet against laws, Mr. Finn; though the less of them, too, the better. But what does these lords do in the Government? Lords indeed! I’ll tell you what they do, Mr. Finn. They wotes; that’s what they do! They wotes hard;

“

It is so odd that you should have thrown your brother over.

”

“

I don’t say that you set it⁠—but you use it.

”

“In such matters you should never talk to anyone, Mr. Finn.

If you cannot fight your own battle, no one can fight it for you.

”

“I fancy he has, after his fashion.

There be cats that eat their mice without playing⁠—and cats that play with their mice, and then eat them; and cats again which only play with their mice, and don’t care to eat them.

Mr. Finn is a cat of the latter kind, and has had his afternoon’s diversion.”

“

People are so prejudiced and so used to humbug that for the most part they do not in the least know their own motives for what they do.

I will go to Saulsby tomorrow—for a reward.”

“

For the only one in the world that could tempt me to do anything.

”

She paused again, and Phineas was at a loss to think what was the subject on which she was about to speak. Could she mean—? No; she could not mean to give him any outward plainspoken sign that she was attached to him.

It was the peculiar merit of this man that he was not vain, though much was done to him to fill him with vanity

; and as the idea crossed his brain, he hated himself because it had been there.

“

I don’t know what you call temptation. Haven’t I the temptation of a bottle of wine under my nose every day of my life?

”

“

Life will not run in harmonies.

”

“

I think I could talk now by the hour, with you for a listener.

”

“We will mention no names. Mr. Appledom, perhaps, more likely. He has been my most constant lover, and then he would be so safe!

Your brother, Laura, is dangerous. He is like the bad ice in the parks where they stick up the poles.

He has had a pole stuck upon him ever since he was a boy.”

He never forgot anything. He remembered at this moment the words of the falsehood, and the look of her face as she told it. He had believed her implicitly, but he would never believe her again.

He was one of those men who, in spite of their experience of the world, of their experience of their own lives, imagine that lips that have once lied can never tell the truth.

Lady Laura’s letter to Phineas was as follows:

He absolutely wrote, automatically, certain words of a note about the harbour, after he had received the information.

A horse will gallop for some scores of yards, after his back has been broken, before he knows of his great ruin;⁠—and so it was with Phineas Finn.

His back was broken, but, nevertheless, he galloped, for a yard or two. “Closed in 1860–61 for thirteen days.”

Upon the whole, he was glad that he had not sent the note of excuse.

A man must live, even though his heart be broken, and living he must dine.

Madame Max Goesler was fond of giving little dinners at this period of the year, before London was crowded, and when her guests might probably not be called away by subsequent social arrangements.

“In my estimation you have done yourself honour. But if I may venture to give you counsel, do not speak of this affair again as though you had been personally concerned in it.

In the world nowadays the only thing disgraceful is to admit a failure.

”

But you have the ball at your feet. I know no one so young who has got the ball at his feet so well. I call it nothing to have the ball at your feet if you are born with it there.

It is so easy to be a lord if your father is one before you⁠—and so easy to marry a pretty girl if you can make her a countess.

But to make yourself a lord, or to be as good as a lord, when nothing has been born to you—that I call very much. And there are women, and pretty women too, Mr.

“

I like a little shade in the picture, aunt.

”

“Your uncle Baldock, miss,” said the outraged aunt, “was a nobleman as different in his manner of life from Lord Chiltern as chalk from cheese.” “

But then comes the question, which is the cheese?

” said Violet. Lady Baldock would not argue the question any further, but stalked out of the room.

“That is all very well, Plantagenet, and true enough in a kind of way.

But a child will sacrifice all that it has for the top brick of the chimney, and old men sometimes become children.

You would not like to be told some morning that there was a little Lord Silverbridge in the world.” Now the eldest son of the Duke of Omnium, when the Duke of Omnium had a son, was called the Earl of Silverbridge; and Mr.

“Take that for granted always. Remember, I do not recommend motion at all.

Repose is my idea of life;⁠—repose and grapes.

”

Nothing at any rate could rob her of that satisfaction. Whatever resolution she might form at last, she had by her own resources reached a point of success in remembering which there would always be a keen gratification.

It would be much to be Duchess of Omnium; but it would be something also to have refused to be a Duchess of Omnium.

During that evening, that night, and the next morning, she remained playing with the coronet in her lap. She would not go to church. What good could any sermon do her while that bauble was dangling before her eyes?

“Yes; it is the worst of it. But then I am so much accustomed to be alone. You see me in society, and in society only, and therefore naturally look upon me as one of a gregarious herd; but

I am in truth an animal that feeds alone and lives alone.

Take the hours of the year all through, and I am a solitary during four-fifths of them. And what do you intend to do?”

“

You believe only in motion, Mr. Finn;⁠—and not at all in quiescence. An express train at full speed is grander to you than a mountain with heaps of snow.

I own that to me there is something glorious in the dignity of a man too high to do anything—if only he knows how to carry that dignity with a proper grace. I think that there should be breasts made to carry stars.”

“

Faint heart never won fair lady. But your heart is never faint.

Farewell.”

And I did love him. I shall never have the same confession to make to another man. That he and I are not now—on those loving terms—which once existed, can make no difference in that.

A woman cannot transfer her heart.

There have been things which have made me feel—that I was perhaps mistaken—in saying that I would be—his wife. But I said so, and cannot now give myself to another. Here is Lord Brentford, and we will join him.”

“And what would you expect, Lady Blood?” said Mrs. Stackpoole. “

Men and women in London walk upon two legs, just as they do in Ennis.

” Now Lady Blood herself had been born and bred in Ennis, whereas Mrs.

“

Convictions! There is nothing on earth that I’m so much afraid of in a young member of Parliament as convictions.

There are ever so many rocks against which men get broken. One man can’t keep his temper. Another can’t hold his tongue. A third can’t say a word unless he has been priming himself half a session.

“

Dull! What does dullness amount to when one has come to such a pass as this?

When one is in the ruck of fortune, to be dull is very bad; but when misfortune comes, simple dullness is nothing. It sounds almost like relief.”

Gresham and Lord Cantrip, and not by the sarcasms of the Bonteens and Ratlers of official life.

But men who sojourn amidst savagery fear the mosquito more than they do the lion.

He could not bear to think that he should yield his blood to such a one as Bonteen.

The day before she had resolved to give it to one man, she might, I think, have resolved to give it to another.

Love had not conquered her, but had been taken into her service.

Nevertheless, she could not now rid herself of her servant, when she found that his services would stand her no longer in good stead. She parted from Lord Chiltern with an assent, with an assured brow, and with much dignity in her gait;

“Not quite that, my dear. It has been difficult with me to love. The difficulty with most girls, I fancy, is not to love.

Mr. Finn, when I came to measure him in my mind, was not small, but he was never quite tall enough.

One feels oneself to be a sort of recruiting sergeant, going about with a standard of inches. Mr. Finn was just half an inch too short. He lacks something in individuality. He is a little too much a friend to everybody.”

“Not in the least.

I am no dog in the manger.

I have even gone so far as almost to wish, at certain moments, that you should accept him.”

I am not sure that it is well that a man should have any large number from whom to select a best; as, in such circumstances, he is so very apt to change his judgment from hour to hour.

The qualities which are the most attractive before dinner sometimes become the least so in the evening.

The morning was warm, and he took a cab. It would not do that he should speak even his last farewell to such a one as Madame Goesler with all the heat and dust of a long walk upon him.

And as he looked at her he could perceive that there was a strength about her of which he had not been aware. She was stronger, larger, more robust physically than he had hitherto conceived. “I do deny it,” she said. “

Money is neither god nor devil, that it should make one noble and another vile.

It is an accident, and, if honestly possessed, may pass from you to me, or from me to you, without a stain. You may take my dinner from me if I give it you, my flowers, my friendship, my—my—my everything, but my money!