Esmond Romilly

 ( 1918 Births ) 

Just before his ninth birthday, Esmond began at Newlands in the May 1927. It was a small school, with some forty-odd boys; Giles's later account, in which he disguises the school as "Seacliffe" and alters the names of the main personnel, depicts an easygoing and undemanding establishment run by an elderly and by now largely ineffective headmaster. Matters changed when in 1930 the headmaster and others of the old guard finally retired and were replaced by more vigorous and purposeful successors. By his own account, Esmond's academic prowess placed him at the top of the school, although in terms of behaviour he was one of the very worst. Nevertheless, by the time he left Newlands in 1932 he had managed to register a number of personal successes: Head Boy, Patrol Leader of the Otters, captain of cricket and Rugby football, winner of cups for boxing and tennis, and a prize for History.

During the following months Esmond engaged in various acts of somewhat incoherent rebellion. He joined a "peace correspondence" group, until it was clear that his young, female correspondent was more interested in a sexual than a political relationship. His first concrete act against the Wellington establishment came on his 15th birthday, 10 June 1933, when he refused to sign up for the Officers Training Corps, an action which to his disappointment incurred only mild disapproval and which, after consultation with his parents was allowed to stand. He had written a fiery letter to a left-wing student magazine, the Student Vanguard, in which he asserted that "Every boy is compelled to join the Corps at the age of fifteen and must stay there until he leaves", a patently untrue statement for which he was required to provide a written apology.

Towards the end of the 1933 summer term, Esmond took advantage of a school holiday to visit the Parton Street bookshop in West London, where he had arranged to meet one of his communist correspondents. The Parton Street premises, part bookshop, part circulating library, partly a centre for radical intellectuals and poets, was run on a philanthropic basis by David Archer, a Cambridge graduate and former Wellingtonian with whom Esmond struck an immediate rapport. Among the habitués were the poets John Cornford, Stephen Spender and David Gascoyne, the budding actor Alec Guinness, and the soldier-diplomat and writer T. E. Lawrence. The Parton Street Press was Dylan Thomas's first publisher. Whatever the outcome of the arranged meeting, Esmond had, as Ingram remarks, found a new spiritual home in which to revive his flagging spirits. His mood was further improved at the start of the summer vacation when he attended a communist demonstration at Deptford.

Returning to Wellington for the 1933 autumn term, Esmond became the leader of a small group of followers, none of whom he found particularly inspiring. On 15 October, at the Wellington Debating Society, he proposed the motion that "In the opinion of this house the political freedom of women is a sign of a civilized society". Giles led for the opposition, and the motion was defeated by 29 votes to 9. A month later he was involved in perhaps his most direct act of rebellion against the College ethos, when in advance of the Armistice Day commemorations he distributed a consignment of badges from the Anti-War Movement, to be worn in addition to the venerated poppy. From the same organisation he acquired anti-war leaflets which he and a confederate inserted into the hymn-books from which the hymn O Valiant Hearts would be sung at the Armistice service. Esmond was again forced to apologise, this time under direct threat of expulsion, and to provide an undertaking that nothing similar would occur in the future.

Although often at odds with each other, the Romilly brothers were capable of working together. In January 1934, after Esmond had addressed a meeting of the Federation of Student Societies (a university-based Marxist organisation that co-ordinated left-wing student activities), the brothers decided to launch a new magazine, Out of Bounds ("Against Reaction in Public Schools"). A manifesto was prepared and circulated among interested parties: the first issue would be in March 1934, it would appear twice termly (cost one shilling); among the problems the first issue would discuss was "the positive and blatant use of the public schools as a weapon in the cause of reaction". Although these initial steps were carried out without undue publicity, by the end of January the story had broken in the right-wing press, giving rise to headlines such as "Red Menace in Public Schools" and "Officer's Son Sponsors Extremist Journal". The headmaster of Wellington, F. B. Malim, who had first given a provisional consent to the project, now demanded that the brothers abandon their activities. Esmond's solution was simple; rather than give up the project he would run away from the school.

The first issue was published on 25 March 1934. Romilly had been assiduous in developing a distribution network "in every cloister and dormitory he could reach", and had acquired a wide selection of contributions, so that the magazine ran to 35 pages. His own contributions included a fiery editorial, an article on the arms race and a rebuttal of a defence of fascism supplied from Oundle School. There were poems, some literary criticism, a letters page, an article on conditions in girls' schools, and some humorous send-ups of public school life. Despite the relatively moderate overall tone, the Daily Mail denounced the magazine as a "Reds' New Attack" and quoted from the editorial: "We shall infuriate every schoolmaster over 30 (and some under) throughout England".

On 14 April the organisation of Out of Bounds was formalised when a meeting of some 16 delegates from a range of schools appointed a permanent editorial board under Romilly's chairmanship. Next day this board marched to Hyde Park, as part of a demonstration against the National Government's budget policy, under a banner denouncing the "National Government of Hunger, Fascism and War". This was duly reported in the press, ever eager to record the doings of Mr Churchill's nephew. On 7 June, in the company of his new acolyte Philip Toynbee from Rugby School, Romilly attended a large Blackshirts rally at London's Olympia, from which they were roughly ejected, Toynbee sustaining mild injuries. By this time, Romilly was becoming disenchanted with the Parton Street ambience, and was seeking a rapprochement with his family from whom he had been estranged since his flight from Wellington. In this mood he agreed to return to school, not to Wellington but to the progressive, coeducational school Bedales School. He continued his work with Out of Bounds, the second edition of which appeared on 2 July. Romilly began at Bedales on 9 June and spent the remainder of the summer term there. In his letters home he professed to like the school, but the feeling was not reciprocated towards him. "This is a boy who can contribute nothing to this school and to whom this school can contribute nothing", was the headmaster's bleak assessment when Romilly departed from the school at the end of July.

Romilly spent the summer and autumn months quietly, in London, subsisting on a small allowance from his father. He had largely lost interest in the magazine, although he continued to contribute; the third issue appeared in November without creating a stir, much of it consisting of what Ingram calls tame repetition. He began a new project, with his brother Giles, in the form of a book in which the pair recounted and analysed their experiences of school. Much of the 1934–35 winter was spent by Romilly in writing his part of the combined work, which Hamish Hamilton agreed to publish. This period of responsible endeavour was interrupted in late December 1934 by a drunken incident which resulted in Romilly's arrest and detention in a remand home for several weeks, from which he was eventually released on a year's probation.

The book Out of Bounds: The Education of Giles Romilly and Esmond Romilly was published in June 1935, to a generally favourable reception, and sold well enough to run to a second edition. Raymond Mortimer in the New Statesman found the book "candid and surprisingly fair"; even the Daily Mail conceded that the young authors had literary ability. The Observers books critic remarked that the book might tell the true story, rather than the exaggerated accounts evident from the magazine – which the brothers opportunistically brought out in a fourth and final edition to coincide with the book's publication. The centrepiece of this last issue was a frank article on masturbation, supposedly contributed by a doctor.

From Valencia, Romilly and other volunteers were entrained to Albacete, the gathering point where the International Brigades were being organised. For his first few days at the base, Romilly was aligned with a group of Russian emigrés, but within a few days, further shipments from the Maro Caspio had brought a number of English volunteers to the camp. Romilly became part of the group under the leadership of Lorrimer Birch, a Cambridge-educated scientist who, in Romilly's later assessment showed true qualities of leadership and organisation: "a communist first of all, but determined that his communism shouldn't interfere with his fairness of judgement". On 6 November, news reached Albacete that the rebel Nationalist forces had begun their assault on Madrid. Some accounts implied that the capital was on the verge of falling to the rebels. The English group were attached to the Thaelmann Battalion of the XII Brigade, which on 10 November moved to Chinchón, about 50 kilometres south-east of the capital. Two days later Romilly's unit was sent to defend the Madrid-Valencia highway near Vaciamadrid, close to the outskirts of the city. During the next few days Romilly had his first experience under fire in an abortive attack on a supposed rebel-held fortress at Cerro de los Angeles. The action was inconclusive, and on 15 November, the unit returned to Chinchón.

After a brief rest, the XII Brigade was ordered to the University City of Madrid, the city's university campus, which had fallen into rebel hands. For most of the next few weeks, Romilly and the English group were involved in heavy fighting on the edges of the campus, much of it concentrated around a farm complex known as the White House. The buildings passed several times between Republican and Nationalist forces. During a brief rest period in Chinchón, the group was visited by English journalists, who reported Romilly's presence, his family's first news of his whereabouts since his departure in October.

In mid-December, Romilly's unit was sent to Boadilla del Monte, where a strong rebel offensive was under way. In the ensuing battle, nearly all of Romilly's British companions, including Birch, were killed. Romilly survived the fighting, but contracted dysentery and was invalided back to England early in January 1937.

By then, their families had discovered the subterfuge and were aware of the fugitive couple's whereabouts and of their intention to marry. The families, bitterly opposed to the union, hoped to avoid press attention, but Romilly opportunistically exploited press interest by selling his story through an intermediary. Headlines appeared in the Daily Express on 1 March 1937 announcing, "Peer's Daughter Elopes to Spain". At the same time, the Redesdale family used all their connections to try to bring Jessica home, including the connivance of the British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden and the use of a naval warship to dispatch the eldest Mitford sister, Nancy Mitford, to Bayonne. The couple were initially intransigent, but threatened with the loss of their Spanish visas, they agreed to return to Bayonne, where they were met by Nancy. The elder sister's remonstrances were unavailing, as was a later visit by Lady Redesdale. The couple were married in a civil ceremony in Bayonne on 18 May 1937. The press reported it as "the wedding that even a destroyer could not stop". Meanwhile, there had been a degree of rapprochement with both families and so both Lady Redesdale and Nellie Romilly attended the ceremony.