Late Bloomer: A Memoir of School Days

HALF A CENTURY ON, Nat Bickford revisits the predatory advances of two boarding school masters, one at Phillips Exeter, the other at Williston Academy, whose provocative behavior—sadistic in one case, tragic in the other—violated the genteel codes of prep school life in the late 1950s. Less cynical than Catcher in the Rye and more disturbing than A Separate Peace, the narrative benefits from the distance.

A distinguished New York lawyer buoyed by the sustaining warmth of a forty-six year marriage, Nat Bickford explores two bewildering relationships that marked his adolescent life. Chilson Leonard—temperamental, demanding and a player of favorites—at Exeter, and G. McCall Maxwell—gentle, refined, encouraging and repressed—at Williston powerfully influenced, and nearly ruined Nat’s late adolescence.

Nat went on to Harvard College and Columbia Law School, a successful career and a rich family life bearing no obvious teenage scars. Yet, the memories remained—unrevealed, unexamined and unresolved until he began sharing them with his wife who encouraged him to explore the separate invasions of Leonard and Maxwell, so at variance with the imagined sanctity of prep school life in the quiet years before the fractious exuberance of the 1960’s. Written with restraint and grace, Late Bloomer reflects a time and place long gone, while exploring a theme that is as resonant as ever: the power of teachers to shape, inspire and, occasionally, disturb impressionable minds.

Nathaniel Bickford has written a riveting book that captures with poignant simplicity the cruelty he faced as a youth at the hands of trusted adults. That the betrayal lay silent and unacknowledged beneath the seemingly privileged, preppy surface makes his story all the more disturbing and his ultimate resilience all the more moving.
—Jane Fonda, actor and activist, author of My Life So Far

Nat Bickford’s memoir about his prep school years back in the 1950’s reads like a good novel. In this true story, you laugh and ache with the late bloomer as he comes of age, and you feel his fear when real monsters—academic sadists—materialize out of the vivid prose. Late Bloomer is a wonderful read, a roller coaster ride. It’s both nostalgic—taking place in a peaceful time and place—and frightening. Fasten your psychic seat belts and have fun.
—Leslie Stahl, correspondent for CBS 60 Minutes, author of Reporting Live

Quite a moving story, well told and absorbing—a special book.
—Gabriella De Ferrari, art historian, museum curator, novelist and author of Gringa Latina

Nathaniel Bickford’s Late Bloomer is a moving personal journey through the historic John Cheever-country of the soul. Mr. Bickford (aka Bumppo) subtly weaves his own reflections and emotions with the values, habits, and manners of his parents’ generation. He deals with the complexities of family relationships, friendships, and adolescent sexuality with elegant candor and literary flair. Add to this Mr. Bickford’s talent for storytelling, and he achieves a modest classic.
—Sidney Offit, curator, the George Polk Awards, president of Authors Guild Foundation and author of The Bookie’s Son