Stephen Tennant (21 April 1906 - 28 February 1987) was a British aristocrat known for his decadent lifestyle. It is said, albeit apocryphally, that he spent most of his life in bed. April 21 is the 111th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (112th in leap years). ... 1906 (MCMVI) was a common year starting on Monday (see link for calendar). ... February 28 is the 59th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... 1987 (MCMLXXXVII) is a common year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

The Honourable Stephen James Napier Tennant was born in England, the youngest son of a Scots peer, Lord Glenconner, and the former Pamela Wyndham, one of The Souls. His mother was also a cousin of Lord Alfred Douglas (1870-1945), Oscar Wilde's lover and a sonneteer. On his father's death, Tennant's mother married Lord Grey, a fellow bird-lover. Tennant's eldest brother was Edward - "Bim" - who was killed in the First World War. Edward Priaulx Tennant, 1st Baron Glenconner (31 May 1859 - 21 November 1920) was a Scottish Liberal politician. ... The Wyndham Sisters, by John Singer Sargent, 1897 (Metropolitan Museum) The Souls were a loosely-knit but distinctive social group in England, from about 1880 to 1920. ... Lord Alfred Douglas Lord Alfred Bruce Douglas KBE (October 22, 1870 – March 20, 1945), nicknamed Bosie, was the third son of John Sholto Douglas, 9th Marquess of Queensberry, and the former Sibyl Montgomery. ... Edward Grey, 1st Viscount Grey of Fallodon (April 25, 1862 – September 7, 1933), better known as Sir Edward Grey was a British politician and ornithologist. ... Edward Wyndham Tennant (1897 - 1916) was an English war poet, killed at the Battle of the Somme. ... Clockwise from top: Trenches in frontline, a British Mark I Tank crossing a trench, the Royal Navy battleship HMS Irresistible sinking after striking a mine at the battle of the Dardanelles, a Vickers machine gun crew with gas masks and a Sopwith Camel biplane. ...

During the twenties and thirties, Tennant was an important member - the "Brightest", it is said - of the "Bright Young Things". His friends included Rex Whistler, Cecil Beaton, the Sitwells, Lady Diana Manners and the Mitford girls part of the set that made the Nordstrom Sisters popular at The Ritz in 1939. He is widely considered to be the model for Cedric Hampton in Nancy Mitford's novel, Love in a Cold Climate; and of Lord Sebastian Flyte in Waugh's Brideshead Revisited, and Hon. Miles Malpractice in some of his other novels. Rex Whistler (1905 - 1944) was an artist who came to public attention in 1925 when at the age of twenty he painted the mural in the Tate Gallery restaurant in London. ... Sir Cecil Walter Hardy Beaton (January 14, 1904 – January 18, 1980) was an English fashion and portrait photographer. ... From left: Edith Sitwell (1887 - 1964), Sir George Sitwell, Lady Ida, Sacheverell Sitwell (1897-1988), and Osbert Sitwell (1892-1969). ... Cover of Time Magazine (February 15, 1926) Lady Diana Manners (August 29, 1892 - June 16, 1986), later Lady Diana Cooper and then Diana, Viscountess Norwich, was the youngest daughter of Henry John Brinsley Manners, the 8th Duke of Rutland and his wife, the Duchess of Rutland, but was widely supposed... The Mitfords were an aristocratic British family noted for their accomplishments in writing and their notorious lives, particularly of the daughters of the family, known as the Mitford sisters. ... The Nordstrom Sisters were an American sister act from 1931 – 1976 Billed as society performers, these international cabaret singers were often styled as The Misses Nordstrom or introduced as those Park Avenue darlings, the Nordstrom Sisters. ... The neoclassical Ritz Hotel London is one of Londons most famous landmarks. ... 1939 (MCMXXXIX) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will take you to calendar). ... The Honourable Nancy Mitford, CBE, (November 28, 1904 -June 30, 1973), novelist and biographer, was born in London, the eldest daughter of Baron Redesdale. ... Evelyn Waugh, as photographed in 1940 by Carl Van Vechten Evelyn Arthur St. ...

When he was nineteen, Tennant became the lover of the poet Siegfried Sassoon. Prior to this he had proposed to a dear friend of his, Elizabeth Bowen, but had been rejected. (Hoare relates how Tennant proposed to Bowen to bring his Nanny on their honeymoon.) His relationship with Sassoon, however, was to be his most important: it lasted some 4 years before Tennant off-handedly put an abrupt end to it. Sassoon was reportedly depressed afterwards for 3 months, until he got into a short-lived and unhappy marriage. Siegfried Sassoon, 1916 Siegfried Loraine Sassoon MC (September 8, 1886 – September 1, 1967) was an English poet and author. ... Elizabeth Dorothea Cole Bowen (June 7, 1899 - February 22, 1973) was an Anglo-Irish novelist and short story writer. ...

For most of his life, Tennant tried to start or finish a novel - "Lascar". It is popularly believed that he spent the last 17 years of his life in bed at his family manor at Wilsford, Wiltshire. Though undoubtedly idle, he was not truly lethargic: he made several visits to the United States and Italy, and struck up many new friendships, despite his later reputation as a recluse. This became increasingly true only towards the last years of his life. Yet even then, his life was not uneventful: he became landlord to V. S. Naipaul who immortalised Tennant in his novel, The Enigma of Arrival. When Tennant died in 1987, he had far outlived most of his contemporaries. For the area of Sheffield, in England, see Manor, Sheffield. ... Wilsford is a village in the Vale of Pewsey in the English county of Wiltshire. ... Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul, T.C. (born August 17, 1932, in Chaguanas, Trinidad and Tobago), better known as V. S. Naipaul, is a Trinidadian-born British novelist of Hindu heritage and Indo-Trinidadian ethnicity. ...

Books

• Phillip Hoare - Serious Pleasures: The Life of Stephen Tennant (1992)