Reading voices of the young between the two World Wars
A brief episode in the lives of a generation of public school pupils but the process of producing was a defining moment for its contributors and readers, writes Kimberley Reynolds.
sive schools.
Although aided by friends and peers, it was the Romilly brothers who brought the magazine into being. Esmond’s i nvolvement with Out of Bounds eventually led him to run away from school and install himself in the back rooms of the Parton Bookshop in Parton Street, London, which was well known as both a centre for modernist writers and left- wing activists. Its owner David Archer published writers including Dylan Thomas and George Barker through the Parton Press. While selfconsciously living “down and out” in Parton Street (George Orwell’s Down and Out in Paris and London had been published the year before), Esmond met and learned from some of the leading literary figures of the day. In addition to George Barker and Dylan Thomas, these included James Joyce, Virginia Woolf and TS Eliot.
Inspired by the circular announcing Out of Bounds, 16-year-old Philip Toynbee, then a pupil at Rugby School, ran away to join the Romillys and their team. When he tracked Esmond down to Parton Street he found “a short, square, dirty figure with a square white face and sweaty hair” who was “dramatically on his guard, conspiratorial, prepared for violent aggression or ingenious deceit”.
This is the Esmond Romilly who on 7 June 1934, with Toynbee, joined the antifascist protest against Oswald Mosely’s mass rally at Olympia where they were battered by Mosely’s Black Shirts. Esmond cuts a very different figure in the photograph of the brothers taken to mark the publication of their joint memoir, Out of Bounds: The Education of Giles and Esmond Romilly (1935). The photograph, which now hangs in the National Portrait Gallery in London, shows two clean-cut teenagers, immaculately dressed and looking for all the world like upstanding members of the Tory family into which they were born.
In his half of the brothers’ memoir, written while he was spending time in a remand home, Esmond describes how he and Giles used reading to educate themselves away from the teachings of home and school. Giles’s opposition to war and the militarism of school was fuelled by Norman Angell’s argument inThe Unseen Assassins (1932) that military power was obsolete in an age of free-market capitalism and that economic separatism would inevitably lead to another war. Esmond’s reading en- compassed studies of communism and Marxism and a wide range of socialist and communist newspapers and magazines. He augmented his reading by joining a peace correspondence group, attending meetings and rallies, seeking out “real live Communists”, and spending time in left-wing haunts such as David Archer’s bookshop.
All of the activities and books associated with them find their way into the pages of Out of Bounds. Three pages are given over to encouraging readers to attend the national Youth Congress Against War and Fascism that was being held in Sheffield. There is a lengthy critique of imperial- ism headed “Gangsters or Patriots: How Britain Rules her Empire”; and a three-page letter from a boy at Eton who attended Mosley’s infamous meeting of Blackshirts in Olympia: “About ten Blackshirts seized me and hit me again and again on the shoulders. I ran as hard as I could for the exit, but was soon surrounded and pushed on the ground where I was kicked and hit in the face.”
The writer concludes by asking, “do you wonder then, that I sign myself, ‘ Yours faithfully, Anti-Fascist’?”
Although Out of Bounds was for and about public schools, not all the contributors were public school pupils. Esmond involved two of his new London acquaintances, a pair of teenage working class communists, in writing for and distributing the magazine. Unfortunately, the Stanley brothers were something of a disappointment, as both turned out to be involved in criminal activities. The third issue of Out of Bounds carries the emphatic disclaimer: “We wish it to be known that neither S Stanley, our Distributing Manager, nor R Stanley, are any longer in any way connected with us”.
Priced at a shilling an issue, Out of Bounds was expensive even for well- todo pupils. Nevertheless, by the second issue it had an impressive print-run of 3,000 copies, and even carried some advertisements. Reflecting the centrality of reviews and reading to the magazine, most of the advertisements are for left-wing books and periodicals and radical bookshops, and the editors offer to supply “political books or pamphlets of any kind” that readers found it difficult to obtain.
At a time when print was the principal medium through which young people could engage with topical issues and prepare themselves for the re- sponsibilities of adulthood, it is not surprising that the reviews cover a wide range of politically orientated topics and include books written for older readers. A young reviewer from Westminster School describes Memoirs of the Unemployed (1934) as “one of the most terrible indictments of the present form of society that it is possible to make”, concluding, “members of the public schools can only make certain that they will not suffer the conditions depicted in this book if they join with the working classes to achieve a better society”.
Other reviews endorse John Strachey’s The Menace of Fascism, and two works specifically for young readers: the Young Communist League pamphlet Ten Points Against Fascism(“everyone interested in the fight against fascism should not only buy this pamphlet, but learn the contents by heart”) and Geoffrey Trease’s Bows Against the Barons (1934). Trease’s book — which I touched on last week — found favour with the soon-to-be discredited R Stanley, who “wholeheartedly” recommended it as an enthralling study of England in the Middle Ages, that shows “that every uprising has an economic cause”. But not all publications were so enthusiastically received. Predictably, The Greater Britain by Sir Oswald Mosley (1932) is derided for its “fallacious jargon”, “untruthful economics” and “idiocy”.
Reviews and advertisements sit alongside reports on such events as the 1933 Youth Congress in Paris — which was designed to help the current generation of young people avoid being drawn into a war that would not be of their making and that would benefit institutions, interest groups and individuals of whom they disapproved. THE INDEPENDENT
Inspired by the circular announcing Out of Bounds, 16-year-old Philip Toynbee, then a pupil at Rugby School, ran away to join the Romillys and their team.