Cursed inheritance of the £20m manservant
FEBRUARY 5 • 2017 The Mail on Sunday S1 Six years after he was left the entire fortune of his eccentric aristocrat master, this illiterate fisherman is STILL living in poverty – and locked in a legal battle as colourful as it is bizarre
Tennant, who planned to keep them as exotic pets. When Kent coaxed the elephant out of its cage with bananas, he was asked to accompany the animal to its new home and work for Tennant there. Some people still refer to Kent as the ‘mari l’elefant’ (elephant husband).
It was to lead to a lifetime together, with Kent travelling all over the world with Tennant’s family. But it came at a price, as his employer was often tetchy and temperamental. ‘I was the peacemaker as he could be volcanic in his rages,’ Kent explains. ‘They were like fires in a sugar-cane field – they flared up and then quickly went out. I was able to calm him.
‘I was so happy working for Mr Tennant. We went to Bali, Africa, Canada, Europe, everywhere. I had no salary but when I needed anything he would buy it,’ he says, sporting an $8,000 gold necklace that his master once bought for him in India. Unusual though their bond may have seemed to the outside world, Kent was one of the few stable ingredients in Tennant’s rickety life, which was marked by so much tragedy.
He was constantly hit by financial problems, eventually squandering much of the family fortune that had its roots in the chemicals industry. He famously turned the once mosquito-ridden swampland of Mustique into an island paradise for the super-rich – gifting his friend Princess Margaret a plot of land there as a wedding present – but ended up being turfed out and owning none of it. Houses there today change hands for up to £30million. Tennant then bought 200 acres of St Lucia but lost control of much of that property, too, during failed attempts to turn it into a successful holiday resort. The land is now home to the Sugar Beach Resort, one of the top hotels in the Caribbean.
But such setbacks did nothing to curb his profligacy.
On one occasion, while back in London, he was told by his wife to economise, so dismissed his chauffeur – a saving soon undermined when he left a brand new set of Hermes suitcases in a Tube carriage, so over-excited was he by his first ever trip on the Underground.
In the Caribbean, his generosity was legendary. He once gave a fancy-dress party in Mustique for 200 guests, who all had their costumes hand-made in India. On that occasion, his manservant wore a maharaja’s coat made of red silk and gold thread.
Today Kent still wears Tennant’s old clothes for weddings, funerals and Sunday church services. He cherishes his memories and tries to be philosophical about his inheritance. What is undiminished is his devotion to his old master.
A large photograph of Princess Margaret and Tennant, clipped from Hello! magazine, is displayed in his house. ‘It brings me happiness and sadness, because I so miss my friend,’ he says.
HE HINTS that he has seen more than anyone else at the height of Tennant’s hedonism, but so far he says discretion has been his watchword. ‘I saw everything but I will never say anything about Princess Margaret except that she was a wonderful lady.
‘I have many stories to tell and in particular one day I may say the real reason why she died,’ he says intriguingly.
It was back in 2011, after Tennant’s death the year before at the age of 83, that Kent was stunned to learn he was the sole heir to one of the most valuable estates in the Caribbean. transpired that the aristocrat had altered his will in his final months, cutting his family out.
It immediately sparked a legal challenge by Cody, Tennant’s grandson by his eldest son.
After protracted negotiations, Kent agreed in principle to split the proceeds of any land sold, but that arrangement has yet to be settled.
He says it has been difficult and upsetting to not be able to move on, and in particular to see Glen House rotting.
‘I want to do what is right and offered to give some land to Mr Tennant’s twins Amy and May. I just want a deal so we can move on.’
Tennant’s lawyer in St Lucia, Peter Foster, admitted that the deal was still dragging on. ‘We are working out the logistics. We are in negotiations to resolve outstanding issues but my client would not be happy if I explained what they were.’
Poised in a financial no-man’s-land between poverty and vast riches, Kent Adonai is not an angry man. He simply looks forward to the day when he can put his worries behind him for ever, just as the master he adored had planned.
‘If I can make his wish come true, I can look after my family for ever. I just want to achieve what he wanted for me.’
One day I may say the REAL reason why Princess Margaret died
IN ST LUCIA
ASINGLE brown cow wanders around the decaying mansion which was once an architectural jewel of the West Indies. The tiles are falling off and the white coral facade, once so dazzling, is rotting – victims of neglect and the salt-wind blowing from the Caribbean sea stretched out below.
It is hard to believe that this was once a millionaire aristocrat’s pleasure palace, the backdrop to decadent parties attended by royalty and the jet-setting beau monde, all presided over by the self-styled King of St Lucia.
For it was here – perched between the Pitons, St Lucia’s picture-postcard rocky outcrops – where the late Lord Glenconner built his dream home. And it was within these crumbling walls that his close friend Princess Margaret would sip whisky cocktails as revellers danced long into the night.
Glen House is mouldering because it lies at the centre of an extraordinary dispute that has left the house abandoned and in legal limbo. The problems started six years ago when Glenconner – known to friends and staff alike as Colin Tennant, the name he bore before inheriting his title – shocked his family by bequeathing his entire £20 million estate to his West Indian manservant, deliberately cutting his own children out of his will.
It sparked a legal wrangle between two of the most unlikely litigants: Kent Adonai, an illiterate St Lucian fisherman, against Tennant’s grandson, Cody, 22, the fourth Lord Glenconner.
By any rights, Kent should today be enjoying his riches, after agreeing an outline settlement to split his inheritance with Tennant’s family, accepting half of the prospective £20million sale of the estate where he had served his master for so long.
Instead, he still ekes out a living as a fisherman, rising long before dawn to push out to sea in his old wooden boat, the Slice Of Life, returning with red snapper or mahi-mahi to sell at market in the nearby village of Laborie.
He supplements his income by auctioning a few of the furnishings that were bequeathed to him, and selling the occasional cow from the small herd that grazes his land. He worries constantly about providing for his eight children.
Despite being, in theory, a property multi-millionaire, Kent cannot afford to repair the decaying mansion at the centre of his inheritance. Indeed, he refuses even to enter it.
There are, he explains, ‘too many memories of the good times when Mr Tennant was so magical and fun’.
He says: ‘All I see now is broken glass and things rotting. I want to be able to move on and to sell it so that his dream house can be restored by someone to its former glory.
‘I cried so much when he died – I was beside him. I am so sad that he is not here. I spent so much of my life with him, listening and learning and also trying to keep the peace.
‘He always said, “Never live like me.” He knew better than anyone how to spend! He was one of those very rare, totally honest Englishmen. What he said he did, and he treated everyone the same.’
If Kent’s gilded inheritance has been tarnished by years of bitterness and legal battles, then that may not surprise those familiar with the history of the Tennants, whose family seat is The Glen estate near Innerleithen, Peeblesshire.
For despite their wealth, they have endured so many tragedies over the years that it gave rise to a rumoured Curse of the Tennants.
Colin’s eldest son, Charlie, died of a heroin addiction; his second son, Henry, died of AIDS; and his youngest son, Christopher, was left braindamaged in a motorcycle accident.
As disorganised as he was extravagant, Colin himself lost two Caribbean estates due to his mismanagement.
The final surprise in his life was learning, at the age of 82, that he had a 45-year-old illegitimate son by Henrietta Moraes, the muse of Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud.
Today, more than six years after his death, his will has still not been resolved in a case that has echoes of Charles Dickens’s Jarndyce vs Jarndyce, the legal battle at the heart of Bleak House which lasted a generation and left no money for anyone.
FOR Kent Adonai, Glen House is bleak indeed, and his life no better off than before his extraordinary inheritance. He cannot even afford a new engine for his boat, while the money he has made by selling off some family furniture and pictures from the house has been used to honour a pledge made by Tennant to build a road for a neighbour.
So loyal was he to the elderly aristocrat that Kent even personally footed the bill for Tennant’s burial.
‘He wanted a state funeral but the family opposed that. I did these things because it was what Mr Tennant wanted, and that is all I can do,’ he explains.
As for the ongoing dispute, Kent claims: ‘Mr Tennant would be turning in his grave. I just want to get the money to put into an escrow account so I can get an income. I just wanted to do what he wanted. But I don’t understand why we don’t have a deal agreed. I want money now so that I can look after my family.’
Kent had entered Tennant’s life aged 18 when he accompanied his father, a stevedore, on the docks at Castries, the capital of St Lucia.
A ship had arrived carrying an elephant and a giraffe labelled for
All I see now is broken glass and things rotting