Sir: It is always easy to be unpleasant about other
people, especially relations whose confidence one enjoys. Is this because it is possible to derive a feeling of superiority from doing so or is it to bolster a sense of inadequacy?
This may explain my distant cousin Simon Blow's bitter and unbalanced article about my family. It certainly cannot excuse the publication of such a personal attack on my brother's family in the very week he buried his son Henry. Blow questions 'the• meaning of family loyalty as exercised by the upper classes' and makes a plea for 'affection, love and understanding'. He does not seem to know what those words mean.
He claims to have been the relation who was closest to my uncle Stephen Tennant, who, he says, 'lay lethargically in bed smothers in make-up'. Is this all that he can find to say of a gifted man who was dearly loved by a vast circle of friends of the calibre of David Cecil, Nancy Mitford, the Sitwells, William Walton. . . ? It makes me wonder how fond he was of his uncle.
His grandmother may have been want- ing in affection for her children, but she
LETTERS
too commanded the love of many friends. And what of the other great-uncle who paid for his education at Stowe, an act of family affection if ever there was one? he is never mentioned.
My great-grandfather, Sir Charles Ten- nant, was a Victorian magnate who had 12 children. One hundred years later his descendants are legion. To give a balanced record of this large and diversely talented family one surely must include people like Baroness Elliot of Harwood, one of the first women life peeresses, and her sister Peggy Wakehurst, both Dames of the British Empire; Sir Ian Tennant, Lord High Commissioner of the Church of Scotland and Knight of the Thistle; Anthony Tennant, currently sorting out the affairs of another well-known family business; and my father, who restored the fortunes of C. Tennant and Sons between 1925 and 1963 and served his country with distinction in two world wars.
As usual the silent majority is not mentioned. Among my cousins there are many hard-working people: businesmen, writers, scientists, farmers, lawyers and musicians, all making their contributions.
Those who indulge in the practice of washing dirty linen in public reveal more about themselves than they mean to. I am astonished that The Spectator should allow itself to be used as a laundry.
Toby Tennant Shaws,
Newcastleton, Roxburghshire
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