 The fiction that he was a descendant of the English restoration composer John Blow was started in 1910 by Detmar Blow's wife Winifred, a member of the aristocratic Tollemache family, as a means of obtaining a licence from St Paul's Cathedral for the marriage of herself and Detmar.Blow was one of the last disciples of John Ruskin, whom as a young man he had accompanied on his last journey abroad.Blow was patronised by the Wyndham family, who at their country house Clouds in Wiltshire created a salon frequented by many of the leading intellectual and artistic figures of the day, known as The Souls, who welcomed Blow into their midst whilst admiring his romantic socialist views.