Books: Characters in Search of ...

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Fringe Existence. Symbol and hero of all the infantile leftism of that class and generation was Esmond Romilly, who ran away from school (Wellington) to publish Out of Bounds, an anti-prefect, pro-Communist magazine which reached a circulation of 3,000. largely in Britain's most exclusive schools. After he had fought in Spain, Decca just had to have him. Have him she did, for a fringe existence in proletarian Rotherhithe (a tough Thameside district of London), sharing twilight jobs, semi-spivery and endless left-wing talk at bottle parties.

Jessica's autobiography is really a more touching story than its surface goofiness would suggest. Soon after the Romillys' baby died in 1938, they moved to the U.S., where the same pattern continued—they were guests of the "liberal'' rich, pets of the left-wing intelligentsia. Esmond wound up a bartender in Miami. The war ended his story. After a worried interval while he decided whether the imperialists would really fight against Fascism, he volunteered in Canada and was killed in action in 1941 at the age of 23.

His widow leaves the story at that point, but there are a couple of footnotes. Lord Redesdale died in 1958, and Jessica won another headline: Farve had cut her from his $361,000 will. It seems that Jessica, married to Hungarian-born Lawyer Robert Treuhaft of Oakland. Calif., had called their son Tito, but renamed him for Lenin after Yugoslavia was expelled from the Cominform. The Halloween party was over; the witches were real after all. It all seems a little sad now, perhaps to be paraphrased thus:

Look, look, what wonderful larks: Christopher Robin is reading Karl Marx.