BOOKS OF THE DAY
An Unrebellious Rebel
The Desire to Please. By Harold Nicolson. (Constable. 15s.)
THIS is a book to be recommended. For one thing it is easily and charmingly written.. It is not a biography in the ordinary sense of the term. It has indeed some of the qualities of a dream, and of a dream of Mr. Nicolson's own childhood. Hamilton Rowan, for a time one of the United Irishmen, is a figure of the historical past, but he is also alive today in his descendants. Throughout his book Mr. Nicolson is aware of this continuity in diversity, of the associa- tions of place, of the strange, unexplored and underground streams which flow from the past into the present and fill the deep lake of human personality. The associations of place are especially vivid in the book. To most English readers the places will be new. Owing to the odd belief of Englishmen that the beauty of Ireland is in the south and west, County Down (outside the golf links at Newcastle) is rarely troubled by tourists. Carlingford Lough, the most exquisite of landlocked arms of the sea on either side of St. George's Channel, Is unknown to painters. The Mourne mountains are as lonely as the mountains of Cumberland a hundred years ago. Yet so varied are the landscapes of this small county that Mr. Nicolson has no need to mention Rostrever or Kilkeel. In return he remembers from childhood the long arm of the Ards peninsula, the tang of Iodine and the crackle of dead seaweed below the tidal limit on Strangford Lough.
Archibald Hamilton Rowan, who inherited Killyleagh Castle just above these low lands, was a reformer who became mixed up with revolution. He was vague about the detailed reforms which he wanted and muddle-headed about the function of revolution as a means of enforcing change. Mr. Nicolson is charitable towards muddle- headedness, but does not like it. Consequently, he describes his great-great-grandfather's life as a foolish failure. I think this judge- ment a little severe. Hamilton Rowan's general ideas of reform were sensible enough. Most of these ideas had been carried into effect before his death in 1834. He liked popularity, and, as with Pius IX, a " desire to please " was one of the motives driving him towards a road upon which he had no wish to travel. The " desire to displease " his own mother may have been a stronger motive (for which he had every excuse). Furthermore, it was difficult to see how political reform could be brought about in Ireland in the last decade of the eighteenth century without revolution. The trouble was that Hamilton Rowan failed to understand the bearing of the French revolutionary war upon European politics. He did not see that an Irish rebellion based upon French help might mean the defeat of England in this war, and that, whatever the English responsibility for the evils of Ireland, the defeat of England would not contribute in the long run to Irish liberty. Other people, with less justification, have made a similar mistake.
In these circumstances the English Government •did not tre4t Hamilton Rowan too harshly. As soon as they realised that he was harmlesi, they gave him a free pardon. He owed his pardon in some measure to his social position and still more to the generosity and good sense of his great neighbour Lord Castlereagh. It was, however, clear that he had changed his opinions, and that he did not change them merely in order to regain his possessions. If he ceased to be a revolutionary, he was still a reformer. He had given up revolution not merely because he had recognised its horror and futility in Ireland. He had also learned lessons in France and America. His experiences in France in 1794 and his dislike of the American attitude towards slavery and the killing of Indians taught him not to build too much upon declarations of the rights of man. He may have gone too far in recantation. In such case he shares his error with Wordsworth. The truth is that, as Mr. Nicolson suggests, this gentle, gigantic, hot-tempered, feckless man ought not to have taken to politics at all. Mrs. Hamilton Rowan put the matter in a sentence which might be addressed by Any Wife to Any Husband: " And now, for mercy's sake, give up the idea of reforming the State in any way, however peaceable it
may be." E. L. WoODWARD.
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