Raine de Chambrun

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Raine de Chambrun, Dowager Countess Spencer (born Raine McCorquodale) (9 September 1929), is the only child of the romantic novelist Dame Barbara Cartland and Dame Barbara's first husband, Alexander McCorquodale, an Army officer who was heir to a printing fortune. Through her three marriages, she has variously held titles of The Honourable Mrs Gerald Legge, Viscountess Lewisham, Countess of Dartmouth, Countess Spencer, and Countess Jean-François de Chambrun. As a divorcée, she is technically Raine de Chambrun, but she is frequently referred to in the press as Raine, Countess Spencer or Raine, Dowager Countess Spencer.

[edit] Biography

Raine McCorquodale's first marriage in 1947 was to the Hon. Gerald Humphry Legge, who succeeded to the courtesy title Viscount Lewisham and later became the 9th Earl of Dartmouth. They had four children, and divorced in 1976. During this time, as Lady Lewisham and then Countess of Dartmouth, she served as a Conservative member of the Greater London Council, representing Richmond-upon-Thames.

Raine, Countess of Dartmouth, married secondly, at Caxton Hall, London, England, on 14 July, 1976, Edward Spencer, 8th Earl Spencer. Deeply unpopular with her stepchildren, who included the late Diana, Princess of Wales, she was ridiculed by them and other family members as "Acid Raine" and her time at Althorp, the Spencer family seat, — a period that saw the ancestral house operatically redecorated and numerous treasures sold — dismissed as the "Raine of Terror". The Earl died in 1992, upon which event Diana and her brother put Raine's clothes into black rubbish bags and kicked them down the stairs, refusing to let her remove any furniture from the ancestral home without providing proof of purchase.^[1] The book also claims that on another occasion Diana herself pushed Raine down the stairs.

Raine, Countess Spencer, married thirdly, in 1993, Count Jean-François Pineton de Chambrun, a descendant of the Marquis de La Fayette and a member of a prominent French family related to the presidential Roosevelts.[1] A younger son of Jean-Pierre Pineton, Marquis de Chambrun (a deaf biochemist-artist) and a great-grandson of Ohio heiress Maria Longworth Storer Nichols (the founder of Rookwood Pottery), he was previously married to Josalee Douglas, an American debutante, who was a first cousin of the late Princess Margaret's intimate friend, Sharman Douglas. Chambrun's courtship of the widowed Lady Spencer lasted 33 days before they married.

Upon the couple's divorce in 1995, Raine de Chambrun sought to revert to her previous title of Raine, Countess Spencer, though as a remarried widow any claim to that title was now lost. Nevertheless that title is frequently used by the Press and those who seek to enjoy her favour.

She is a member of the board of directors of Harrods, the department store owned by the father of Diana, Princess of Wales' friend, Dodi Fayed, who died with her in a Paris car crash in 1997.

Media reports suggested that at the time of her death, Diana, Princess of Wales had reconciled with Raine and become friends^{[citation needed]}, ironically while her relationship with her natural mother had become strained^{[citation needed]}.

[edit] Footnotes