The Tennants were an upper class English family. The mother, Pamela was born in 1871. Pamela married into Tennants, a very rich Scottish merchant family. The Tennants moved in high circles. The father, Edward-- Lord Glenconne, was familiar with important government ministers. Pamela was from a much more gentil (Whyndham), artistic background than the Tennants. She was members of the "Souls" a group of upper class intellectuals. She and her two sisters are the models for John Singer Sargeant's painting The Three Graces.

The family consisted of five children, four boys (Edward-"Bim", Christophr, David, and Stephen) and an elder daughter. The children grew up in the Edwardian period. The charming period before the two world wars visited the horrors of the modern age on Europe. The children spent much of their time at Wilsford, the Tennant country estate with ample grounds and sunny gardens in which they could play.

Figure 3.--The older Tennant brothers in this 1910 photograph before World War wore knickers while their younger brother wears shorts. After the World War fewer English boys wore knickers and shorts became more commonly worn. The youngest boy, Stephen, still wears a dress and long hair. Note the puppet and teddy held by the younger boys.

The family was photographed in 1910 (figure 1). The elder sister is posed at the back. The pictures illustrates the British penchant for differenting a boys' age by his attire. The two older brother wear knicker suits. Interestingly they do not wear Eton collars. Many mothers at the time would have insisted on Eton collars for a formal family photograph. A younger brother, who was 8 years old at the time, is dressed casually, wearing the increasingly popular short pants (short trousers as the British would say). Pamela Tennant seems to have taken much more interest in dressing her youngest son, Stephen . She addorded the boy and he is pictured here wearing a dress and long flowing curls.

The baby of the family was Stephen who was 4 years old when the photograph was taken. Stephen was the model for the main character in Nancy Mitford novel, Love in a Cold Climate. Stephen biographer reports that as a boy he had long blond hair and was dressed by Pamela in fussy dresses until he was 8 years old. As was the custom at the time, boys in dresses wore dresses and smocks all the time--including outings to the park or special occasions like parties. St. James park was reportedly a favorite.

Friends report that Pamela had dearly wanted her youngest child to be a girl. This no doubt affected her upbringing of Stephen. Apparently the subject of how Stephen was dressed and raised had come up between Pamela and her husband Eddie who appears to have thought she was coddeling the boy to much. By the 1910s it was becoming increasingly unusual to keep a boy in dresses by the time he reached 7 or 8 years old. A journalist interviewed Pamela at home in 1914. Stephen was about 8 and still in dresses. The lady journalist came back with a story of the most beautiful child she had ever seen, almost impossibly a boy. Of course it was Stephen.

Many wealthy mothers of the era had a staff of nannies and governesses, not to mention the household staff, to care for the children. Stephen like his brothers had a nannie, but Pamela appears to have taken a special interest in the boy's care. I'm not sure about the other children were dressed when they were younger. I note the next to youngest boy wears boyish looking shorts when he was 8 years old in the 1910 photograph. Just how long he and his brothers wore dresses and long hair I do not know.

All of the Tennant children were raised by Nanny, Rebecca Trusler. From a maternal standpoint the Tennant children, considered Nanny to be their mother not Pamela. This was similar to the experience of many wealthy European and American children at the time. Nanny Trusler was the one that the children came running to when they were hurt or upset. I think Malcolm's reference is to Stephen's nanny.

Stephen

Mother

Pamela made sure that Stephen, her treasure, was exposed to art and culture. She involved the boy in public theatricals. He was in the Tabeaux Vivants at the Royal Albert Hall in 1914 when he as about 8 years old. The boy was dressed in a satin gown and cradled in his mother's arms. At home he played dolls with his Cousin Kathleen. Stephen was apparently a sickly baby, perhaps one reason Pamela devoted so much attention to him. He grew into a healthy teenager.

Figure 2.--Stephen Tennant is pictured informally here in his early teens at the family's country estate Wilsford about to go fishing in a photograph taken about 1919.

Wearing dresses

I'm not sure what Stephen felt about wearing dresses. As a small child he did not seem to mind, telling his father he wanted to be a great beauty. He apparently discussed it with friends at the time, but only snipets remain of the conversations overheard presumably by Pamela. She mentions a conversation between Malcomn, the son of Lord Glenconner's best friend, General Arthur Wolfe Murray, and a playmate of Stephen. At the time of the conversation, Malcomn was probably about 5 years old and both boys were still wearing dresses. Malcomn seems a bit confused. As he grew older, Stephen difinitely did like his blond hair which was natuarally curly. He referred to it as his "poisonous wave". I have no idea what he thought about his dresses and don't know if he ever wrote about it.
,h3>Hair

Pamela finally had Stephen's hair cut at age 8 and he was dressed in short pants. I'm not sure about the details of his more boyish outfits. I do know he served as a pageboy at the wedding of the Duchess of Rutland and the son of his father's best friend, General Arthur Wolfe Murray in 1916. I'm not sure what Stephen wore as a pageboy, but the wedding was about 2 years after he had begun wearing short pants and had his hair cut.

School

Stephen went to public school for a while but was mostly educated at home. He had 20 private tutors in one year alone. Dancing classes were also held at Queen Annes Gate (London home) that were joined in by his girl friends, Susan and Elizabeth Lowndes. For dancing classes Stephen wore a long smock like shirt, learning his dainty steps along with his friends.

Adult

Stephen as an adult was quite notorious in English society. Most of the Victorians and Edwardians who wore dresses as a boy do not seem to have been particularly affected. Something clearly happened to Stephen, but it is difficult to say just what caused it. Stephen as an adult was great friends with Rex Whistler (painter) who he met while studing drawing at an art institute in London and Cecil Beaton, who became the premier English upperclass photographer. In later life, Beaton was knighted. It is said that the two main characters in Brideshead Revisited were Rex and Stephn. Sommerrset Maugham who knew both Stephen and Rex as young men.

David

I do not know how the other brothers were dressed as young children. I did see a photograph of David at about 3 or 4 years in a dress and a hair bow. This was in a book on the Tennant family, but I don't recall the reference. The author of that book seemed to be embarrassed by Stephen's later behavior and blamed it all on Pamela. I don't think that the other boys wore dresses beyond the normal age of 4 or 5 years. Stephen's wearing of girls' dresses and long hair until 8 probably was pretty unusual, but not unheard of. I recall a photograph from a book on the "Souls". Thre was a group photo reproduced un the book. In the foreground is a child sitting cross legged on the ground with a beribboned straw hat on his curly shoulder length hair and wearing a knee-length dress with puffy sleeves. The caption on the picture says "The girlish looking figure sitting on the ground is in fact Ivo." Ivo was the youngest son who was between 7 and 8 when the photograph was taken. I think the family name was Grenfell.

Bim

Bim was Stephen's oldest brother. He was later killed in World War I in France during 1914 at the age of 21. This is a common theme in many of these essays about Edwardian brothers. The poetry magazine, Wheels, published Bim Tenant's verse (and was partly edited by Nancy Cunard, with whom Pamela's eldest boy was romantically linked).