Raine’s rift with Spencer family taken to the grave
WHEN the 8th Earl Spencer died, his widow, Raine, was unceremoniously turfed out of the family’s ancestral home, Althorp, with bin bags full of her clothes allegedly kicked down the stairs by her stepchildren.
Sadly, time does not seem to have been a healer for the current Earl Spencer and his two surviving sisters, Lady Sarah McCorquodale and Lady Jane Fellowes, when it comes to their former stepmother.
I hear that the funeral of Raine, Countess Spencer was held quietly last week, with her former stepchildren conspicuous by their absence.
‘ There was a private service in London for her family only,’ confirms a spokesman for Raine’s son, the Earl of Dartmouth, a Ukip MEP.
Raine, who was the only child of romantic novelist Dame Barbara Cartland and printing heir Alexander McCorquodale, died on October 21 at the age of 87.
According to one of Raine’s friends, she always wanted her ashes to be interred next to those of her beloved second husband, ‘Johnnie’, the 8th Earl Spencer, at the Spencer family chapel at St Mary’s Church in Great Brington, Northamptonshire.
The earl’s son and heir, Charles Spencer, could not be reached for comment on whether he would allow this, although it seems most unlikely.
He and his sisters had wasted no time in booting Raine out of Althorp after their father’s death in 1992 at the age of 68. As well as reportedly filling bin bags with Lady Spencer’s clothes, Charles and his sister, the future Princess Diana, had nicknamed her ‘Acid Raine’. They are said to have hated the way she had redecorated their home.
Charles remarked in 2009: ‘The south drawing room, for generations a model of handsome English reserve, became a cacophony of clashing pinks — pink silk walls, pink silk curtains, pink French rug, pink sofas, plump pink cushions; it was as if the room had been ablush at the sickliness of it all.’
He also claimed that works of art had been smuggled out in laundry baskets to meet the interior decorators’ bills. The children were appalled when a portrait of their stepmother appeared in pride of place, even if it was at her husband’s behest.