STEPHEN TENNANT
Simon Blow remembers the
remarkable way of life of an English fantasist
`YOU promise you won't ever forget me when I'm gone,' Stephen Tennant said to me in December. Even then — though Stephen was 80 and had grown frailer — it was impossible to accept that the room I knew so well and the personality in it might one day not be there. For the bedroom, where Stephen had lain resting for the last six years, had achieved a kind of perform- ance against the rude whisperings of an outside world. It was not just the drawn curtains but the bizarre assortments of objects that set Stephen and the room in such clear defiance of the ordinary. The bed strewn with letters, jewels, a powder box, strings of amber beads, col- oured fish-nets, and his own poems; the bedside table cluttered with scent bottles and pieces of white, green, and pink jade; and the room itself crowded with brightly coloured cushions, books, photographs of an ethereal young Stephen by Beaton, a signed picture for Mistinguett, and — propped against chairs — his own vivid watercolours.
With his death ten days ago, the dream that Stephen Tennant had constructed from life must vanish. And it may seem a strange contrast that the testing ground for Stephen's highly imagined fantasies should have been an English manor house set in the depths of the English country- side. But solid though it is in appearance, Wilsford was never intended for conven- tional country life. This gabled house of chequered flint and stone, that idles in Wiltshire's Avon valley, had been designed in 1906 as a pastoral idyll for Stephen's mother. The architect was my grandfather, Detmar Blow, and together he and Pamela Tennant — as she then was — created the ultimate statement of that rustic Simple Life, invariably enjoyed by only the rich. So it was entirely fitting that when she died in 1928, it should have passed to her youngest son Stephen.
But at that time the spirited Stephen had no intention of being hemmed in by the dark Arts and Crafts panelling or his mother's subdued Pre-Raphaelite shades. He at once stripped the house of its panelling — to the bewilderment of present-day historians, since it had been made by that master craftsman, Ernest Gimson — and substituted gold and silver wallpapers, rococo cherubs, clusters of chandeliers, and yard upon yard of pink and cream satin. And he never ceased to add to or alter the interior — calling in at Stephen Tennant's. bedroom, by Cecil Beaton.
moments Syrie Maugham and John Fowler — though always to execute and not inspire his designs.
I must count myself lucky in having had a great-uncle like Stephen Tennant — my maternal grandmother was his sister — for had I not had the enjoyment of his com- pany over 18' years, I know that my own outlook would have remained far more inhibited. I would go regularly to stay with him three or four times a year, and as soon as I arrived at Wilsford I felt the change in the air. There would be Stephen bidding a warm, sonorous welcome from his sofa on the upstairs landing, or from one of the three bedrooms that he had selected to sleep in. 'Simon, dear, you've arrived at last — oh, how I've been longing. Now, move those shells away, and sit on the bed. You look a little tired, dear. I don't think London is a healthy place — but of course loved it once. Is the dear Hotel Russell still there — and the Waldorf? Now I want to discuss a short story by E. M. Forster `The Eternal Moment' — perhaps you know it. It's very powerful. Poor Miss Raby — it's too terrible — but I do love Italy, don't you? I knew Morgan Forster quite well — he stayed here often — think he had genius. But you know he could be a little resentful at times towards people with money. But first of all I want to recite these lines to you by Emily Dickinson.' And Stephen would set off in a wistful, sing-song voice: Till Seraphs swing their snowy Hats —
And Saints — to windows run - To see the little Tippler
Leaning against the — Sun - For the last 30 years Stephen had lived as a virtual recluse at Wilsford. Highly-strung and shy by nature, he found his character could expand more freely in solitude. But the gilded, golden-haired youth who had alarmed London society of the Twenties and Thirties by his exotic flights of fancy, had changed dramatically in appearance. Similar to Lord Alfred Douglas — who was a cousin of his mother's — Stephen's moment of great physical beauty had been of short duration. By the age of 30 he had already grown plump, but fortu- nately he was able to kid himself that nothing had altered at all. He con- tinued to apply make-up, as he had done since he was 18, although by my day it was no more than founda- tion cream and powder. As he grew older, he looked in no mirrors but would feel the contours of his face to re-assure himself that beneath the excess weight the fine bone structure was still there. He couldn't see why men should not discuss their looks together.
It was from his mother that Stephen had almost entirely taken his character. As Pamela Wyndham she was famous in her own right for her beauty. She was the central figure in Sargent's celebrated painting dubbed The Three Graces, and her vanity lasted until her death. She wanted Stephen to be sensitive and artistic and not to relate in any way to what she saw as the Tennants' heavy-handed industrial genes. She cos- seted Stephen as the girl she ought to have had. When he cried she removed him from school and took him home to trim her hats. Given the clinging claustrophobia of his childhood, I am surprised that Stephen survived at all.
Yet for all his shyness, and a hesitation to push himself forward, Stephen craved attention. He was delighted when over the last ten years two exhibitions of his paint- ings were held and fan letters came in. `I think we have to say that I am famous,' he would tell me, and then rest back on his pillows to think about it. But apart from a BBC film which I made with him last year, Stephen would not have his past pumped out of him by the media. I was there when Russell Harty once sent eight tight red roses, hoping to lure Stephen to an inter- view. But Stephen had no idea who this creature Harty was, and he loathed tight roses anyway. He had them plopped in a vase and placed in some far-off room, and no more was said about it.
Still, at least before his end Stephen could be content that something of his rareness had been appreciated. No more need he say, 'Why should Cecil Beaton have all this attention, and not me?' But he knew full exposure would have destroyed the essential privacy of his dream.
Simon Blow's story of the Tennant family will be published by Faber in the Autumn.
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