A chilling memoir by Charles Spencer

His book party at Spencer House prompts memories of an encounter a century ago

In a recent Royals Extra, I mentioned the imaginative and generous restoration of Spencer House on St. James’s Place in London by Jacob, the 4^th Baron Rothschild, who died last month at age eighty-seven. Among those who took an interest in his meticulous task was the late Diana, Princess of Wales. Last week I visited Spencer House as a guest of Diana’s fifty-nine-year-old younger brother, Charles, the 9^th Earl Spencer. The occasion was a party to launch his heartbreaking and eye-opening memoir of his childhood, A Very Private School.

Charles Spencer talking about “A Very Private School” last week at Spencer House in London

Charles stood by the chimneypiece in the enormous pale green dining room that was packed wall-to-wall with hundreds of guests. Although no Spencers have lived in the opulent eighteenth-century mansion since 1926, when Charles’s grandfather, the 7th Earl Spencer, moved out, the family still owns the house. Charles in particular had reason to feel at home. The ornately carved marble surrounding the fireplace behind him is a copy made during the restoration. The original is at Althorp House, the ancestral home in Northampton where Charles lives.

He spoke briefly—and emotionally—about Maidwell Hall, the boarding school he attended from age eight to thirteen. As a pre-adolescent boy, he was sexually assaulted, bullied, and beaten by those who were entrusted with his care, from the headmaster on down.  Charles recounted how after years of therapy, “everything kept going back to Maidwell and how awful it was at times.”  He tracked down friends from those days to find out what happened to them. When he learned they had equally painful experiences, he came to terms with his own suffering by writing a book. “The real heroes,” he said, “are the twenty men in this room who told me their tales.”

Charles Spencer signing “A Very Private School” at Spencer House

Unlike Diana, who went public with grievances about her marriage to Prince Charles and revealed details of her bulimia, self-mutilation and other psychological problems, her brother Charles kept the abuse inflicted on him secret for many decades. He didn’t tell his family what he had endured until eighteen months ago, when he was well along in writing his book. He recalled that his older sisters, Sarah and Jane, “were stunned and appalled.”  His hope, he has said, is that by opening up about his traumatic experience, he can help others similarly affected and alert teachers and parents to ensure that today’s students are safe.

Bookselling in the Palm Room at Spencer House

As I walked through the jostling crowd and marveled at the elaborately gilded Palm Room where Charles Spencer sat and signed books, I recalled an encounter at Spencer House a century ago. It came to light when I was reading the correspondence of fifteen-year-old Lady Elizabeth Bowes Lyon, the future Queen Elizabeth, and her close friend, sixteen-year-old Lady Lavinia Spencer, the sister of Charles Spencer’s grandfather, the 7^th Earl.  In her letters Elizabeth described her impressions of a brief meeting she had with her future husband, Prince Albert, during a tea party at Spencer House.