Stephen James Napier Tennant (21 April 1906 – 28 February 1987) was a British socialite known for his decadent, eccentric lifestyle.
Early life
Tennant was born into British nobility, the youngest son of a
Scottish people peerage, Edward Tennant, 1st Baron Glenconner, and the former
Pamela Wyndham, one of the Wyndham sisters and of
The Souls clique. His mother was also a cousin of Lord Alfred Douglas (1870–1945),
Oscar Wilde's lover and a
. On his father's death, Tennant's mother married Edward Grey, 1st Viscount Grey of Fallodon, a fellow bird-lover. Tennant's eldest brother Edward – "Bim" – was killed in the First World War. His elder brother David Tennant founded the
Gargoyle Club in Soho.
Social set
During the 1920s and 1930s, Tennant was an important member – the "Brightest", it is said – of the "Bright Young Things". His friends included
Rex Whistler,
Cecil Beaton,
the Sitwells, Lady Diana Manners and
Mitford family. He is widely considered to be the model for Cedric Hampton in
Nancy Mitford's novel
Love in a Cold Climate, one of the inspirations for Lord
Sebastian Flyte in
Evelyn Waugh's
Brideshead Revisited, and a model for the Hon. Miles Malpractice in some of Waugh's other novels.
Writing
For most of his life, Tennant tried to start or finish a novel –
Lascar: A Story You Must Forget.
It is popularly believed that he spent the last 17 years of his life in bed at the house he inherited from his parents, Wilsford House
at Wilsford cum Lake, Wiltshire, which he had redecorated by
Syrie Maugham.
Though undoubtedly idle, he was not truly lethargic: he made several visits to the United States and Italy, and developed many new friendships. His later reputation as a recluse became increasingly true only towards the last years of his life. Yet even then, his life was not uneventful: he became landlord to V. S. Naipaul, who immortalised Tennant in his novel The Enigma of Arrival.
Personal life
During the 1920s and 1930s Tennant had a long time sexual affair with the poet Siegfried Sassoon.
Prior to this he had proposed to a friend, Elizabeth Lowndes, but had been rejected (
Philip Hoare relates how Tennant discussed plans with Lowndes about bringing his
nanny with them on their honeymoon).
His relationship with Sassoon (twenty years his senior), however, was to be his most important: it lasted some six years before Tennant off-handedly put an abrupt end to it and Sassoon was reportedly devastated.
When Tennant died in 1987, he had outlived most of his contemporaries. A large archive of his letters, scrapbooks, personal ephemera and artworks is held in The Viktor Wynd Museum of Curiosities, Fine Art & Natural History in Hackney, London.
In popular culture
The character of Cedric Hampton in the novel
Love in a Cold Climate is based on Tennant.
The character of Miles Malpractice in the novel Vile Bodies is based on Tennant.
Lord Sebastian Flyte, a character in the novel Brideshead Revisited, is partly based on Tennant.
The narrator of Shola von Reinhold's novel LOTE (2020) is obsessed ("transfixed") with Tennant, and mentions him throughout the book.[1]
He was played as a younger man by Calam Lynch and as an older man by Anton Lesser in the 2021 Terence Davies film Benediction.
Further reading
-
Philip Hoare. Serious Pleasures: The Life of Stephen Tennant (Hamish Hamilton, 1990)
External links
-
. James Marshall and Marie-Louise Osborn Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.
