Plain speaking
Sir: Perhaps the reason that Patrick Ten- nant (Letters, 25 July) does not understand my 'blather' on the Tennants is that he descends from those Tennants who remain 'plain-spoken'. If there is an argument for my Wyndham great-grandmother's effect on the family, it does not include him. It would, therefore, be difficult to appreciate that her heredity — made up in part of exotic Irish and royal French — could in one generation produce such a turnabout from mercantile dullness. As Pamela Wyn- dham wrote of her plain-spoken father-in- law, Sir Charles Tennant, 'the conversation trails like a winged bird until it gradually settles down among the stocks and shares or the indifferent among the poems of Burns'. Pamela had dreams to take the family elsewhere, and she did. This left the plain-spoken Tennants, of whom Patrick Tennant is one, far behind.
Simon Blow
Great Queen Street, London WC2
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