Stephen Tennant: A Turn of the Century Boyhood, Dresses and Curls

Those years before the Great War were 'sweet and carefree', according to Osbert Sitwell, then a young man in his early twenties. 'Never had Europe been so prosperous and gay.' He saw in the flowers that decorated the grand houses a symbol of lustrous epoch, 'a profusion of full-blooded blossoms ... that lent to some houses an air of exoticism'.' Wilsford was one such place. All England seemed like a hot-house, and Stephen was growing up in this perfervid environment, bottle-fed by Pamela on a rarefied diet of culture and beauty.

In London, Diaghilev and Bakst had 'splashed the city' with their colours. New young talent came from people like Osbert and Edith Sitwell, already champions of the avant-garde, establishing their own poetry magazine, Wheels, which published Bim Tenant's verse (and was partly edited by Nancy Cunard, with whom Pamela's eldest was romantically linked). Ronald Firbank was beginning to weave his own exotic mystique and baroque prose, and the 'Corrupt Coterie' of Diana Manners and her friends - the children of the Souls - danced a new social tango. Entertainment's in the London houses of the rich 'grew in number and magnificence ... Champagne bottles stood stacked on the sideboards." In such fecundity Society glittered, basking in the affluence and security of imperial Britain.

It was a heady legacy for Stephen to inherit, but one which was all too soon to be violently curtailed by the events of 1914-18. Within a year of Diaghilev's L'Apr~s-Midi d'un Faune opening in London, Stephen's father Eddy would be standing with Sir Edward Grey, the Foreign Secretary, in his office in Whitehall. 'The lamps are going out all Europe,' Sir Edward told Lord Glenconner 'We shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.'

Stephen grew long-limbed and tall, despite the apparent sickliness that had been present from birth. Early photographs show the change, podgy baby into a straw hatted toddler, playing in the sunny gardens whilst his mother writes inside. The features began to appear that would make him into a handsome young man: strong chin and cheekbones well shaped, longish nose, an elegant almond shaped head - a refinement, in fact, of Eddy's looks, even to the curly blond hair (' that poisonous wave' as he later referred to it). Most striking of all, were his mother's eyes: solemn, sultry, piercing lue-green, looking knowingly out at the world, even at that tender age. They were the eyes a boy ready to see the world's beauty, and to exclude all else. Eyes of intelligence, of selectivity, exhibiting a certain disdain behind charming, disarming smile.

A tale is told of Eddy, Lord Glenconner, lining up his younger sons ask to ask of them what they would become. Each reported the usual boyish aspirations: Christopher to be a businessman, David an engineer. Eddy nodded approvingly. Then came Stephen's turn. What did he want when he grew up? 'I want to be a Great Beauty, Sir,' he apparently replied. How could Eddy ever have influence over such a child? Pamela was aware of the difficulties: 'Don't tell Eddy Steenie plays dolls,' she asked of her niece, Kathleen. Was she culpable? There is a telling piece of childish talk, intended for publication in Sayings and excluded for reasons known only to Pamela: 'Stephen and Malcolm talking together, Glen 1913.
Malcolm: "Don't tell Nannie or anyone but you know I'm a little girl really, all the time!"
Stephen: "How do you know?"
Malcolm: "Don't you know I wear a ribbing in my hair at night."

Anyone could be forgiven for mistaking Steenie for a little girl. With his pretty face and long blond hair, and the fussy dresses in which his mother clothed him up to the age of eight, he looked like the daughter friends said she wished Stephen had been. Sir Steven Runciman recalls remembers seeing Stephen walking in St James's Park in skirts: 'Stephen was a substitute Claire, I think. When William Chappell's journalist mother interviewed Pamela at home in 1914, she came back with a story of the most beautiful child she had ever seen, almost impossibly a boy. With gifts of jewelry from his mother and her friends, such things shaped a young mind.

Stephen had also been in public theatricals. He had already been in the Tabeaux Vivants at the Royal Albert Hall in 1914, dressed in a satin gown and cradled in his mother's arms.

Anyone could be forgiven for mistaking Steenie for a little With his pretty face and long blond hair, and the fussy dresses in which his mother clothed him up to the age of eight, he looked like the daughter friends said she wished Stephen had been. Sir Steven Runciman recalls remembers seeing Stephen walking in St James's Park in skirts: 'Stephen was a substitute Clare, I think. When William Chappell's journalist mother, Kathleen Tennant, later the Duchess of Rutland. Stephen was a pageboy at her wedding to the son of Lord Glenconner's best friend, General Arthur Wolfe Murray, to whom he left a bequest in his will.





Christopher Wagner

histclo@lycosmail.com


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Created: March 28, 1998
Last updated: March 28, 1998