PALMER, Hon Lady (Hon Catherine Elizabeth nee TENNANT) (1947-2021)
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Catherine Tennant, the wife of Sir Mark Palmer Bt, died aged 74.
Source: Daily Mail, 8 June 2021
The Hon Catherine Elizabeth Tennant was born in 1947 as daughter of Christopher Grey Tennant, 2nd Baron Glenconner and his second wife Elizabeth Powell.
She married 1976 Sir Mark Palmer, 5th Baronet (of Grinkle Park) and had issue: Iris Henriette (1977) and Arthur Morris (1981).
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Catherine Tennant was invariably to be found installed at the table in her lettuce-green kitchen, cigarette held dramatically aloft. Uninterrupted puffing was facilitated by a series of Bic lighters suspended on strings from the ceiling above the table.
Bull terriers ambled in and out. A horse dealer might look in with a flash of gold teeth, searching for the dashing equestrian Sir Mark; her two children – the future model and artist Iris and the stone carver Arthur – mingled. People came and went without explanation or greeting, giving the impression of a being in a play. Catherine was the star of the show and had all the best lines.
For it was not astrology which brought an endless throng to her table, but her gift for conversation. She had learnt the art at the feet of her eccentric uncle Stephen Tennant, who had been the lover of Siegfried Sassoon. “You weren’t allowed to be boring with Uncle Stephen,” she recalled. “If you didn’t say things which interested him he’d throw you out of the house.”
Her mother’s family were bluestockings: the journalist Polly Toynbee was her first cousin and her older sister was the writer Emma Tennant. Colin Tennant, the friend of Princess Margaret who brought the jet-set to Mustique, was her half-brother. The baby of this voluble family, Catherine learnt to entertain from an early age.
Catherine Elizabeth Tennant was born on November 10 1947 and brought up between Glen, the Glenconner seat in the Scottish borders, and her parents’ London house in Swan Walk, overlooking the Chelsea Physic Garden. She read English Literature at University College London before getting a job at Vogue.
After marriage to Sir Mark Palmer on Midsummer’s day 1976, the couple decamped to Gloucestershire; occasional stints in painted gipsy caravans ensued. Her children were baptised in the River Windrush, travelling down to the sunlit water meadows in a horse and cart.
The Palmers lived first at Sherborne, and lately at Coln St Dennis, overlooking the valley in which, she maintained, the Romans had constructed shrines to Orpheus. She wrote a book, Beauty for Free, about creating face-creams and unguents from hedgerow plants, and became immersed in Jungian psychology, a system she later refuted.
She is survived by her husband and their children.
Catherine Tennant, born November 10 1947, died June 4 2021