Esmond Romilly - America

America

They returned to Britain, where Romilly joined the Labour Party and lived in the East End of London, then a poor working-class district. Their first daughter was born there, and died a few months later in a measles epidemic. The grieving couple eventually decided to move to the United States, where Romilly picked up a variety of odd jobs: selling silk stockings door to door, setting up a bar in Miami. They were perpetually short of cash. When Britain declared war on Germany in September 1939 Romilly remained in the USA, before moving in 1940 to Canada to volunteer. He served in the Royal Canadian Air Force and was shot down over the North Sea in 1941 after a bombing raid over Nazi Germany. He was 23.

He had two children with Jessica:

• Julia, who was born seven months after their wedding, on 20 December 1937, and who died in a measles epidemic in May 1938;
• Constancia (better known as 'Dinky' or 'Donk') on 9 February 1941, who was born nine months before her father's death. She had two sons from her relationship with the African-American civil-rights activist James Forman; thus Romilly has two grandsons:
  • James Robert Lumumba Forman (born 1967 and uses the name James Forman Jr. to differentiate himself from his father), an associate professor at Georgetown Law School;
  • Chaka Esmond Fanon Forman (born 1970), an actor.

It was rumoured during his life that Romilly was born of an affair between his mother and Winston Churchill. The news that his plane had gone missing in action was broken to his wife by Churchill personally; Jessica Mitford took many months to accept that he had died.