Stephen Tennant - Livres du Mois
- Lilium
- 2 days ago
- 5 min read
In honour of Stephen Tennant's birthday this month, 21 April, I have compiled a collection of books about his life and works. Stephen James Napier Tennant was a British socialite known for his decadent, eccentric lifestyle. During his peak he was called "the brightest" of the Bright Young People, a nickname given by the tabloid press to a group of Bohemian young aristocrats and socialites in 1920s London. You can learn more about Stephen over on his website :https://www.stephen-tennant.org
Serious Pleasures
The Life of Stephen Tennant
“Stephen Tennant was one of the most extraordinary figures of the 20th century. His home, Wilsford Manor, where he spent his later years in ‘decorative reclusion’, achieved nationwide fame when its contents were auctioned in 1987, a few months after Tennant’s death at the age of eighty. The newspapers of the time were full of tales of his eccentricity and wasted life, lying half-asleep among his bibelots, jewels and polar bear skins.
But there was a great deal more to the brightest of the Bright Young Things than gold-dust in his hair and make-up. Philip Hoare charts the course of Tennant’s life from cosseted childhood and artistic precocity into the full swing of the 1920’s, when his friendship with Rex Whistler and Cecil Beaton provided vital stimulus for their careers. After the charity pagents, parties and frivolity, Tennant became romantically involved with Siegfried Sassoon, an affair that was to prove cataclysmic for them both.
In the 1930s he travelled extensively, cultivated literary friendships with E. M. Forster and Virginia Woolf and visited his heroine, Willa Cather, in America. Wilsford was host in its heyday to the Mitfords, the Sitwells, and the Bloomsbury set, whilst after the war Truman Capote, Greta Garbo and Christopher Isherwood all made the pilgrimage to the bedside of this ever more mysterious figure. Perhaps most fascinating are the latter years, when not even royalty could be assured of admittance to Tennant’s Sleeping Beauty palace.
The Author has had access to the extensive collection of Stephen Tennant’s papers and correspondence, and has been able to draw upon Beaton’s private diaries and other previously unpublished material which sheds new light on the love-affair with Sassoon. He had conducted interviews with Tennant’s surviving friends and had a memorable meeting with the subject himself.”
The Bird’s Fancy Dress Ball
Drawings by
Stephen Tennant
The Bird’s Fancy Dress Ball contains the drawings Stephen produced when he was 13. The publication of the book was financed by his mother Pamela and accompanied Stephen’s first exhibition held at the Dorien Leigh Gallery in South Kensington in 1921, he was just 15.
“The drawings in the book have their foundations in Tennant’s schoolroom doodles and consist of anthropomorphic animals wearing fashionable attire. They are caricatures, satirical in nature, mocking vanities and sensibilities of society.”
"The Swan’s beauty, always spoiled by a cross expression, was more than usually ineffectual here, for she made the mistake of landing, and so showed her unpleasant boots. It is always a mistake for ducks or swans to land, Now, a goose, whether in the water or not, is always graceful."
The Vein in the Marble
by Stephen Tennant
& Pamela Grey
“The Vein in the Marble is a book of verse, tales and illustrations formed through a collaboration between Stephen and his mother Pamela Grey, published in 1925. Pamela provided a series of short poems and morality tales for modern life. Stephen contributed the accompanying illustrations, peopled with a mix of Regency courtiers, nymphs and fairy tale characters. Stephen’s biographer Philip Hoare aptly describes the book as 'pure period whimsy'. The whole has a tendency towards sentimentality but Stephen's drawings and watercolours have a decorative, ethereal quality reminiscent of Beardsley.”
Stephen dedicated the book to his mother - 'To the most perfect of collaborators in great as in little things - my Mother.' On receiving their first copies of the book Pamela and Stephen were filled with joy. "We almost wept with excitement as we each finished our book! The child of our endeavours at last launched upon literature's perilous seas!" (letter from Stephen Tennant to Elizabeth Lowndes, December 1925). The Vein in the Marble is available to read here.
The White Wallet
Decorated by
Stephen Tennant
“An anthology of poems and sayings collected by Pamela Grey, with decorations by Stephen, published in 1928. The Vein in the Marble and the present volume contain similar fanciful motifs, although there is evidence of a maturing style. The title derives from the white file in which the author collected her pieces.”
The back cover reads: “A book full of delightful and interesting things, the choice of which expresses the taste of the compiler; an anthology of extraordinary variety. There is more sequence than is found in most anthologies for passages occur from various pens developing the same thought, and the length of some of the excerpts give a sense of substance and order. This is a book of rare delicacy, distinction and charm."
The Ariel Poems
No. 14, No. 27 and No. 34 of the Ariel Poems series, with poems by Siegfried Sassoon and illustrations by Stephen Tennant. In Sicily, written by Siegfried with drawings by Stephen, was inspired by their travels together in Sicily, 1930.
Because two can never again come back
On time’s one forward track,—
Never again first-happily explore
This valley of rocks and vines and orange-trees,
Half Biblical and half Hesperides,
With dark blue seas calling from a shell-strewn shore:
By the strange power of Spring’s resistless green
Let us be true to what we have shared and seen,
And as our amulet this idyll save.
And since the unreturning day must die,
Let it forever be lit by an evening sky
And the wild myrtle grow upon its grave.
The Red Rose by Siegfried Sassoon and a single illustration of a rose by Stephen Tennant. The rose is a moss rose which Stephen references in a copy of Gerald Manley Hopkins by G.F. Lahey gifted to him by Siegfried which reads 'Given me by Siegfried in the time of moss-roses 1930’.
Letters to Max Beerbohm
& a few answers
“My Brother Aquarius contains 52 poems by Stephen Tennant, published in 1961. The verse looks back in time to past travels, lost romance and pastoral idylls, and has a strong autobiographical element. It was published by a local printer in Bournemouth and Tennant sent the book to friends and fellow writers, including W. H. Auden and Edmund Blunden.
The title is derived from a line by Keats - "Crystalline brother of the belt of Heaven: Aquarius!" (Endymion). The book is dedicated to Barbara Hutton and the preface is written directly to Princess Bibesco.” My Brother Aquarius is available to read here.
Two Stories by Stephen Tennant
“These two stories by Tennant were printed by Elysium Press, which began in 1980 and often prints writings that are out of print or out of fashion, with a focus on the works of gay writers which "have been neglected or overlooked by the commercial trade" (per the Elysium Press website).
Over the course of nearly forty years, Tennant worked on the novel "Lascar", producing copious amounts of unpublished material; the two stories in this volume represent his rich writing style, largely unread and unknown by the public.” Published in 1995, with an introduction by Stephen’s biographer, Philip Hoare.
I hope you have found something of interest amongst this collection of books, but if not, there may be something more to your tastes in the Compendium's Library.
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