David Pax Tennant (22 May 1902 – 8 April 1968) was a British aristocrat socialite, and the founder of the Gargoyle Club in London's Soho.
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Early life
Tennant was the third son of Edward Tennant, who became Lord Glenconner in 1911, and the writer Pamela Wyndham, later wife of Edward Grey, 1st Viscount Grey of Fallodon.
He was the younger brother of the war poet Edward Tennant and the older brother of socialite Stephen Tennant. Margot Asquith, author and second wife of the prime minister H. H. Asquith, was his paternal aunt.
Career
Tennant founded the Gargoyle as a private members' club on the upper floors of 69 Dean Street, Soho, London in 1925. He created an arena where Bohemians could mingle comfortably with the upper crust, according to the writer Michael Luke. There were lavish interiors, paintings by Henri Matisse, and regular patrons included Virginia Woolf, Duncan Grant, Nancy Cunard, Fred Astaire and later Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud. In 1952, Tennant sold the Gargoyle as a going concern for £5,000 to caterer John Negus and it remained popular for several years.
He was one of the original members of the Bright Young Things in London in the 1920s. One of the parties he organized for the group was in the Burlington Galleries and had a Mozart theme and required the guests to dress in eighteenth-century costume. Another was his “pajamas-and-bottle-party” where the guests came in nightwear and brought their own alcohol.