Rogues and Firebrands

...Esmond remained aloof, having already had his fill of ideological bickering in London...

...Jonathan excuses Unity for sharing the blindness of her foolish parents and failing to see the horrors to which Hitler's anti-Semitism would lead...

...Fair enough...

...22.95...

...Esmond wrote an article about his uncle at my suggestion("England's Next Prime Minister"), played tennis and poker with great gusto, and attended a bartender's school with the idea of setting upabarwith Decca in Miami—which he eventually did, thanks to a loan from Eugene Meyer, the publisher of the Washington Post...

...His plane went down returning from a bombing run over Hamburg...

...Ormore, thathewould have brought to the office as much brilliance as his uncle, Winston Churchill, albeit in the service of a rather different set of ideals...

...Their mother, Nellie (the sister of Clementine Churchill), may have spoiled her two boys, but she raised them to be independent and stood by them when they were in trouble...

...he was a natural dominant, a confident gambler...

...The dramatic way the news reached us is told by Ingram from the pages of my journal...

...The Spanish Communist Party, Ingram writes, "was casuistic, petty and prevaricative...

...What Esmond and Giles really wanted to do was support any organization the Establishment deemed most unspeakable, and the Communists, being dedicated to its overthrow, seemed to qualify...

...Upon his return to London, Esmond wrote another good book, Boadilla, and met JessicaFreeman-Mitford...

...Nellie was quite incapable, however, of understanding her sons' attraction to the Communist Party...

...The House of Mitford opens with an engrossing account of Bertie Mitford and his illegitimate son Thomas Bowles, the eccentric Victorians who founded the family...

...The endless talk of the Marxist intellectuals in London was simply repugnant to this man of action...

...Ingram comments that "Esmond had not dreamed of walking into the reality of Left-wing Bohemia, he had dreamed of walking into its legend...

...I remember Esmond giving a wonderful imitation of Uncle Winston, whom he adored, lying in his bath at Chartwell inveighing against those who refused to aid General Franco...

...Instead, he endeavors to show the family and societal influences that lay behind her feelings...

...He had all the fiercer attributes that young scions of the upper classes were supposed to have to run the Empire...

...Visiting the West when it was truly wild, he became the target of a sermon by Brigham Young, and responded by pronouncing Young's wives unattractive...

...He particularly faults Decca for failing to mention in her autobiographical Daughters and Rebels the conciliatory overtures made by her mother at the time of Decca's marriage: "The omission makes her parents seem malevolent, when they were really just distraught...

...Actually, Guiness attempts to depict the members of his glittering cast of characters as they saw themselves...

...Decca...

...Giles took the additional step of joining the Communist Party...

...Declining to attend a university, Esmond lived for a while in London, but did not find it agreeable...

...Their daughter, Constancia, was about to be born...

...On the contrary, the loyalty Diana showed the British Fascist leader by sharing his wartime imprisonment and exile elicits profound understanding from her son...

...Guiness' characterization of Esmond is acute: "He had a natural gift for straightforward self-expression, together with a firm belief that the end justifies the means...

...He nevertheless got another dose of it from the contentious and out of place party members who took part in the disorganized defense of Madrid...

...It was perverse, it was zany, but in its way it was rather splendid...

...The other sections of Ingram's biography, though, are very good...

...her name was bequeathed by her daughter Sidney to the future wife of Esmond Romilly...

...Guiness adds that "Decca was generous and idealistic and enjoying a marriage that was in reality as marriages are in story books"—a description that must please her...

...What is the source for this...

...Rebel would have benefited from devoting less space to Esmond's life in London after Westminster...

...They arranged a secret assignation in Dieppe, fell in love, continued on to Spain together (amid another storm of publicity), and were "evacuated" on a British destroyer to France, where they got married...

...He was made for Decca and she for him, even sharing her indifference to physical beauty...

...Esmond decided to enlist in the Royal Canadian Air Force, and spent the following months training in Canada...

...Bertie played a signal role in the opening of Japan, witnessed the Paris Commune, and was acquainted with Garibaldi...

...Disillusioned with England's weakness at the Godesberg and Munich conferences, the newlyweds shipped out for America where the last episode of their brief life together was to unfold...

...His wife Jessica, whom he dearly loved, died in her fifth pregnancy in 1887...

...Now, as he came face to face with the flaws behind the legend, he grew cynical...

...Thus he does not condemn his mother for abandoning his father and marrying Mosley...

...Known also as "Decca," this young Left-winger was one of the six firebrand daughters of Lord and Lady Redesdale...

...He was, however, in rebellion against the whole setup...

...Reviewed by Selden Rodman Author, "The Road to Panama," "Haiti: The Black Republic" Nobody who ever knew Esmond Romilly—and I knew him well—will be surprised to find that a biography has appeared of the young British hero shot down over the North Sea in 1943 at the age of 23...

...And Esmond, after his sour stint in Spain, would certainly be taken aback at hearing how "he and Decca made up their minds that they would join the Communist Party" after Hitler invaded Russia in 1941...

...They proceeded to coauthor a book using the same title about their stay at Westminster—a good book that was remarkably well received...

...His courage was flawless, of the type of which people say,' He has no nerves...

...Hitler reciprocated the starry-eyed English adolescent's infatuation, but sex never entered into their relationship...

...Esmond probably would have broken with the Communists altogether had he been attached to a higher echelon and seen Andre Marty's machinations, undertaken at Moscow's behest, to destroy the non-Communist Left...

...In search of adventure, Esmond and Giles went off to Spain to enlist in the Communist brigade...

...In place of empire-building he would elevate belief in pacifism, Communism, and the brotherhood of man...

...Bowles, wedded to seamanship, is credited by the author, his great-grandson, with championing the legislation that saved the British Navy (and therefore Great Britain from defeat in World War I...

...After sustaining both physical and psychological wounds in World War I, he withdrew from any responsibility for bringing up Esmond and an older son, Giles...

...worse, it was dictatorial, the very antithesis of the rebel's personal philosophy...

...The brothers had considered the extremist Right-wing party of Sir Oswald Mosley, but rejected it as too close to the Conservatives...

...I, forone, don't believe it...

...Decca, whose brilliant career as a j ournalist lay ahead of her, supported Esmond in all he undertook...

...The House of Mitford: Portrait of a Family By Jonathan Guiness with Catherine Guiness Viking...

...Although Guiness expresses qualified admiration for both Esmond and Decca, he does not shrink from criticizing them...

...The two were visiting me in Martha's Vineyard when England finally declared war on Germany...

...Esmond's father was born to the aristocracy and became an Army officer...

...Once they met, it was inevitable that Esmond and Decca would join forces...

...At the posh (and sadistic) Westminster School, Esmond and Giles fomented a "Marxist" revolt against the faculty, and were soon ejected for publishing a popular underground paper called Out of Bounds...

...On the whole, I think The House of Mitford, written by Decca's nephew Jonathan Guiness, is more interesting...

...Realistic" might be a more accurate word...

...She will not appreciate my judgment here...

...604 pp...

...What is surprising is that we had to wait 42 years forsuchabook...

...All praise goes to Kevin Ingram for essaying the impossible...

...When divided loyalties drove Unity to attempt suicide in Munich at the outbreak of the War, the German dictator responded with tact and even a sem-blanceof compassion...

...Nor is he contemptuous of his aunt Unity for her girlhood crush on Adolf Hitler...

...For it is impossible to bring back to life that short, explosive career, and to explain why so many who knew Esmond were convinced that had he survived, he would have become Prime Minister...

...She is no longer aCommunist, but I know her well enough to be sure she will consider the book's evenhanded treatment of her older sisters Diana (the author's mother) and Unity, who were guilty of equally blinkered faith in the Nazis, as truckling to the enemy...

...But the childhood rebel probably would protest the conclusion that" It was Esmond who hardened Decca's feelings against her family...