The Library
of
Stephen
Tennant
The Contents of Wilsford Manor, a catalogue containing the sale of the contents of Stephen Tennant's home including, contains what I personally consider to be most important portrait of Stephen, his collection of books. However, I found that when one looked at the list of books in the catalogue they didn't really paint a picture of his collection, so I took it upon myself to track down the books listed in the catalogue and recreate Stephen Tennant's library. This has been the most engaging piece of work I have ever put together and after the entire (lengthy) process I feel like I have spent this month looking over Stephen's shoulder in the library as he reads his conchology book, reciting out loud to me the favourite shells he collected on his holiday in Scilly, and I hope that by the time you reach the last book, you will too.
Swainson’s Exotic Conchology
Gifted to Stephen by Siegfried Sassoon on their holiday in Italy. The title page is inscribed:
Stephen,
War has its idiot Shells:
How different are these,
Designed by diligent Nature
For her Devotees…
From SS Oct. 3 1929’
Siegfried gifted many books to Stephen on shells and plants, pictured above is Stephen reading another encyclopaedia, Reeve and Sowerby's Conchologia Iconica, in the Library of Wilsford Manor 1929.
The Happy Hypocrite
by
Max Beerbohm
1897 first edition with an insert photograph of Beerbohm, taken at Villino Chiaro in April 1930, so inscribed by Siegfried Sassoon, and an inserted autograph letter from the author to Stephen thanking him for a card: "Floreat your exquisite draughtsmanship."
Siegfried and Stephen paid a second visit to Rapallo together in April 1930, where they called again many times upon Mr and Mrs Max Beerbohm at their house, the Villino Chiaro. Since they had last met the previous November, Siegfried had been working on the manuscript for his latest book, The Memoirs of an Infantry Officer. Now Beerbohm was able to read the work. A great admirer of the older writer, Siegfried confided to his diary on 30th April "My manuscript is embellished with a few pencillings by him - surely a very pleasant thing to contemplate. I don’t know of anyone whose pencilling could please me more".
John Clare Poems from Edmund Blunden
John Clare Poems from Edmund Blunden, inscribed by Blunden to Stephen with a seven line fragment entitled:
Clare's last Poem Spring: Warm glows the south...
Tis spring warm glows the south
Chaffinches carry the moss in his mouth
To filbert Hedges all day long
And charms the poet with his beautiful song
The wind blows blea oer the sedgey fen
But warm the sunshines by the little wood
Where the old Cow at her leisure chews her cud
For Stephen from his obliged bard, Edmund Blunden, August 27 1929
Willa Cather The Novels and Stories
Stephen initially wrote to Willa Cather when still a teenager in the early 1920s, although they did not meet for another 10 years. At the end of his life, he recalled the morning when the reply to that first letter arrived at Wilsford; he ran through the house long before breakfast rousing all the guests in his excitement. A little time later, on 24 September 1927, he jotted in his journals:
"This evening I have received the first glorious bundle of American literary papers - I could shout for joy!… Saw a new Willa Cather announced. I had heard in a treasured and honoured letter I once had from her that she was writing a long novel… The new Willa Cather it's called 'Death Comes for the Archbishop'… She is my favourite living writer."
In her book, Willa Cather, Living (New York, 1953), Edith Lewis observed "One of the friendships that counted most for (Willa Cather) was that with her English friend Stephen Tennant, youngest son of Lord and Lady Glenconner. He had written to her about A Lost Lady while he was still student at the Slade School in London. They had corresponded ever since. She kept all his letters. His visits to America about this time (mid-1930s) gave her a kind of stimulus and delight entirely new; for he was the only one among the new generation of writers with whom she could talk about writing on an absolutely equal plane, with complete freedom and - though their views were in many different ways so different - with complete sympathy and accord. On one of his visits he told her how warmly Thomas Hardy had spoken to him of A Lost Lady. I think no other tribute gave her so much pleasure, for she admired Hardy as the greatest of living novelists".
E.M. Forster Alexandria A History and A Guide
Stephen was introduced to Forster by Siegfried Sassoon probably during the late 1920s according to Firbank, Stephen "Admired Forster extravagantly, considering him a "meet" and a "sublime malcontent", and noticing - percipiently - Forster's suppressed love of the exotic (they would talk about Persian poetry).
The friendship lasted many years and it was Forster to whom Stephen dedicated his book Leaves from a Missionaries Notebook when it was eventually published in 1937. Like a number of Stephen's close confidants, Forster was generous of his advice in the matter of the projected novel the Lascar.
