Signature in sand
Jan Morris
Philby of Arabia Elizabeth Monroe (Faber £4.50)
The son of a colonial philanderer, the father of a communist spy, H. St John Philby spent his life restlessly betwixt and between: between two wives and many mistresses, between authority and anarchy, between duty and impulse, between a pathetic uncertainty and an overbearing pride, between perception and incomprehension, between egotism and paternalism, between Islam and Christianity, between the spell of Arabia and the loyalties of Westminster and Cambridge. In one thing alone was he a man of absolutes: he was the absolute explorer, a traveller and geographer of greatness, whose contribution to mankind's knowledge of the Arabian desert properly won him immortality. " Greatest of Arabian explorers," it says upon his gravestone in Beirut, and the arrogant epitaph is doubly justified, as an expression of his character and a recognition of his genius.
Philby's life was, after a false start in the Indian Civil Service, so inextricably linked with Aral; affairs that only an experienced wanderer through the Middle Eastern labyrinth could qualify as a guide to it. There is not much sense to be made of him anyway, and even less if one cannot integrate his enthusiasms, furies, and shifts of purpose into the tangled background that inspired them. Fortunately, some might think undeservedly,. he has found in Elizabeth Monroe his perfect biographer. She knows the period setting of his story better than anyone, and can write of Sir Percy Cox's Basra, say, or Abdullah's Amman, with a conviction not always persuasive among contemporary historians. Now, in this sad, sensitive, complex portrait of poor Jack Philby, she extends her craft into another dimension, and moves our emotions too.
I say poor Jack, because the impression her book leaves is one of a life lop-sided, and so unfulfilled. Philby was a very clever man, but he was also a fool. He had brains but not wisdom, force but no balance, a power of affection but, one suspects, no reservoir of love. His life was one long squabble, in which he was often victorious but seldom successful — not, as he would say, because he was too outspoken, or too percipient, but because he lacked those gifts of gradualism and subtlety which constitute the art of the possible. He made enemies everywhere, all his life: everyone was out of step except our Jack.
The tragedy was, as Miss Monroe repeatedly demonstrates, that he was so often right, if not tactically, so to speak, then strategically. One may argue that Britain's alliance with the Hashemites served its purpose for the' forty-odd years of the imperial presence in the Middle East: but Philby saw further, in prophesying their humiliation in the end. One may argue that the protracted rearguard action of the British withdrawal sustained western positions for a few vital years: but Philby was right again, in foreseeing that the forces of Arab radicaljsm were the ones to back in the long run. He saw sooner than anyone the effect oil would have upon Arab society; he may yet be vindicated in thinking that a Jewish presence in Palestine would one day prove a blessing to the Arabs; he was years ahead of his time in his acceptance of dual social and ethical standards, Riyadh at one end of his life, Trinity court at the otjler.
But it brought him no serenity, for he was so silly with it. His hero-worship of King Saud was essentially an adolescent crush, never grown out of. His adoption of Islam was a crass hypocrisy. His horridly selfish behaviour to his wife, gamely though she stuck it even into polygamy, doubtless had its effect on his unhappy son Kim. He was in many ways a childish man, and Miss Monroe aptly concludes her book with a childish remark of his. "Why won't you do it?" Philby asks a recalcitrant small daughter, failing to make her do what she is told. " Because I don't want to," the child says, and foolishly the father comments: "Perhaps that's the best reason of all."
It is the worst reason of all, and Philby's acceptance of it as a rule of life is a measure
of his muddled values. He spoke for Arab
democracy, but his idol Saud was an absolute despot. He shouted for liberty, for self-deter
mination, for the underdog, yet he likened Hitler to Christ and Mohammed. He took or> risks for his principles, and made no real
sacrifice for his causes. He was a revolutionary at the king's feet. His face looks back at us, through the pages of this biography, foxy and conceited, and his voice rasps. It is a wonderful book, full of new facts, insights and interpretations, and it is especially wonderful because at the end one is left not exactly hostile to this equivocal adventurer, still less contemptuous, but above all amazed. When all is said, what a life it was! How full of error, but how rich in ini
tiative! How selfish, but how original! HOW immature but magnetic! And When all Philby's vices and inanities are forgotten, still we shall have his marvellous maps of the desert, his meticulous notes and directions, his thousands of specimens, botanical, zoological, archaeological, geological, box upon box in the London collections, his vast boring works of topography and memoir, and always, ass that he was, the hunched heroic figure of him upon his camel in the Empty Quarter, deep with his Arabs in the wilderness, where only his genius counted.
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