Still, daily life was not all hardship. She wrote a few articles for AD and could still read with a magnifying glass. When she grew tired of this, she listened on tape to her favorite English authors: the Brontë sisters, Trollope, Dickens, Hardy, George Eliot, and Wilkie Collins. They were like the handrail on a rocky boat. During summers in Maine, she got together with her friends Nancy Pyne, Nancy Pierrepont, Bob and Sylvia Blake, Muffie Cabot, and Frankie FitzGerald. She walked more slowly, but she still went on the same strolls, stopping when she was overwhelmed by vertigo. In 2000, she managed to visit her niece Maisie Houghton, who lived on an island south of Northeast Harbor. In 2001, she received Béatrice de Durfort, Louise de Rougemont’s granddaughter. Dinners continued, Susan Mary bravely keeping a busy social calendar at the age of eighty. People continued to meet in her house, like columnists Kevin Chaffee and Dominick Dunne (the latter recounted the details of the Monica Lewinsky scandal, which Susan Mary thought utterly silly). When Amanda Downes from the British Embassy or the French curator Sylvain Bellenger came to tea, they found a woman whose hair and makeup were done and who still knew all the latest political gossip. She impressed biographer Sally Bedell Smith with her precise memories of the Kennedys; journalist Sally Quinn was struck by how well informed she was. Each of these encounters was a carefully prepared performance, usually pulled off with success. Keeping the flag flying was a duty, one that helped Susan Mary keep away sadness and loneliness.
Apart from her granddaughters’ visits (Sam was working abroad at the time), one of Susan Mary’s greatest joys during those years was her friendship with Rob Brown and Todd Davis, two interior decorators who, in the spring of 1996, had bought and renovated the house next door. Wary of the welcome that they would receive in a neighborhood that had a reputation for disliking noise and novelty, they presented themselves at Mrs. Alsop’s door with orchids. Someone in a pink dressing gown appeared behind the maid. Susan Mary exclaimed at the beauty of the flowers and invited them to sit on the stoop. They started chatting.
“I’m having a little dinner party for some friends and I’d be so pleased if you could come. But perhaps you’d find it dull.”
Todd and Rob politely accepted the invitation, expecting an old ladies’ party. On the said evening, they found themselves in an immaculate dining room with an experienced hostess who introduced them to Paige Rense and the British ambassador’s wife. Decorating jobs soon came their way and their careers were officially launched, as Susan Mary had hoped. The trio became inseparable. The young men invited Susan Mary to their house or took her to Galileo, a fashionable Italian restaurant. She showed them Maine as she knew it, blithely ignoring the NO TRESPASSING signs—after all, Mount Desert Island was her home—taking them to David Rockefeller’s gardens and Martha Stewart’s house where she had danced as a girl.
In 2001, her “dear boys” left Washington. That same year, Charlie Whitehouse died, followed by Kay Graham. Evangeline Bruce had passed away in 1995. “We’re all so old or dead. There’s almost no one left.”9 Susan Mary was still there, but she was finally starting to look her age.
Her condition began to worsen during the summer of 2002. Her lungs functioned poorly and fatigue could not be resisted. She went to Maine one last time, and, in September, attended the marriage of her beloved granddaughter Eliza. Back in Washington, she stopped the parties and the writing for Architectural Digest. Everything was becoming difficult and she took to her bed. Lying there, she listened to Jim Lehrer’s NewsHour at six every evening. Family and friends, Kay Evans, Pie Friendly, her Zimmermann nephews, Deedy Ogden, and Jan Wentworth, surrounded her with devoted care. Anne came regularly from Utah and took care of everything. People found Susan Mary calm; at times she had a vacant look about her, though when her alertness returned, she always had a kind word for them. They took turns reading to her, especially Bill Blair, her childhood friend from Bar Harbor, the first boy with whom she had gone to the movies. Now a retired ambassador, he came to see her three times a week at two in the afternoon. He would go upstairs and read to her from the New York Times, biographies, and Cecil Beaton’s memoirs, avoiding passages that mentioned Duff. Sometimes the phone would ring and Bill Blair would see her pick it up with sudden energy. Susan Mary was not in pain but she slept a lot. It was as though she were watching her own exit from the world; since the show did not please her, she preferred to keep her eyes shut.
At the beginning of 2004, it became clear that life was leaving her tired little body. In early summer, her family gathered around her for a farewell. Afterward, Susan Mary, who had always avoided emotional display, merely asked if there was any cake left. Bill went to France to join his wife, Sydney, in the Pyrenees, where they had a house in the high Luchon valley. Anne stayed on with Susan Mary for a few peaceful and loving weeks. She had always known how to make her mother smile, and their final days together were sweet. On the afternoon of August 18, she called her brother to tell him that it was all over. Bill went out into the garden. Night had fallen and the stars lit up the sky over France.
It rained when Susan Mary’s ashes were scattered over the ocean off the coast of Maine, but the weather was beautiful on September 24, 2004, the day of the funeral service at Christ Church in Georgetown, the church Susan Mary had attended every Sunday. She would have been glad to hear the words that were spoken in her memory, to see the grace and dignity with which her granddaughters took care of those in attendance, and the number of people who filled the church. She would have also liked the articles that appeared in American and British newspapers in homage to her extraordinary life. The chorus of praise called her a legendary hostess, an American aristocrat, and the witness of a bygone era. Some pointed out that this true lady had been known by her given name, a tender and mischievous name, almost childish—Susan Mary. It was what everybody called her.
Acknowledgments
As stated at the beginning of the Sources and Bibliography, most of the sources on Susan Mary Alsop come from her family’s personal archives, kindly put at my disposal by Susan Mary’s son, William S. Patten. I would like to express my profound gratitude for the trust and generosity Mr. Patten has shown since our first meeting in the summer of 2006 in his beautiful house in the French Pyrenees where he and his wife, Sydney, regularly stay. Bill and Sydney were also kind enough to welcome my sister, Aniela Vilgrain, who helped with this project, to their former home in Massachusetts. The project then began to shuttle back and forth between Aniela’s house in Washington, where she lives, and my home in France. All these meetings gave birth to a friendship that is very dear to both Aniela and me.
I would also like to thank Anne Milliken, Susan Mary’s daughter, for her valuable assistance and the warm hospitality she and her husband, John, extended to Aniela, whom they invited to Salt Lake City, where Anne spoke with Aniela at length about her mother. I also had the pleasure of meeting Susan Mary’s grandchildren Sam and Sybil Patten, and having a telephone conversation with Eliza Patten.
David Sulzberger was immediately interested in the project and he proved endlessly helpful, efficient, and generous in Paris, London, and New York. His part in this book is an important one, and I am most grateful to him.
I will never forget the London spring of 2009, during which I worked in Lord Norwich’s library and in the house of his daughter, my friend Artemis Cooper. It was thanks to them, and through the letters they allowed me to read, that I got to know Susan Mary as a young woman in love. I hope that John Julius and Molly Norwich and Artemis and Antony Beevor find in these words the expression of my profound gratitude. I would also like to thank Lord and Lady Thomas, who helped me to understand an important time in Susan Mary’s life.
My friends also took part in this project. Sybil d’Origny went with me to Newport, Rhode Island, and introduced me to many of her American cousins and friends; Charlotte Mosley put her library at my disposal. I owe them both a great deal. It is also a pleasure to thank François Stasse, Denis Bourgeois, Thierry Tuot, Pierre Morel
, and Hélène Vestur for their advice and support.
It was important for me to know the places where Susan Mary once lived. Thanks to Irene Danilovich, I was able to visit the house in Georgetown where Susan Mary lived during her marriage to Joe Alsop. Aniela visited the house in Northeast Harbor during a stay in Maine with Malcolm and Pamela Peabody; the late Mr. and Mrs. David Ridgely Carter showed me their lovely house in Senlis. Thanks to Lady Westmacott, wife of Sir Peter Westmacott, former British ambassador to France and present ambassador to the United States, and to the erudite Ben Newick, I was able to see the British ambassador’s residence in Paris as I had never seen it before. I am very grateful to both of them.
Aniela and I would also like to thank the following friends, family, and relations of Susan Mary Alsop for having spoken with us or provided us with source material:
In the United States: Patricia Alsop, Katharine Jay Bacon, Olivier Bernier, William McCormick Blair Jr. and Deeda Blair, Sylvia Blake, Avis Bohlen, Benjamin Bradlee, Rob Brown, Thomas and Constance Bruce, William Buell, Mabel Brandon Cabot, Marion Oates Charles, Todd Davis, Amanda Downes, Frederick Eberstadt, Kay Evans, Frances FitzGerald, Alfred and Pie Friendly, Guido Goldman, Cynthia Helms, Jane Stanton Hitchcock, James Hoagland, Nancy Hoppin, Maisie Houghton, John Peters Irelan, Yves-André Istel, Rhoda Kraft, Walter Lippincott, James G. Lowenstein, Lucy Moorhead, Timothy Mortimer, John Newhouse, Paige Rense Nolan, Deedy Ogden, Roger Pasquier, Dallas Pell, Nuala Pell, Ann Pincus, Trevor Potter, Dr. Christina Puchalski, Nancy Pyne, Sally Quinn, Rudolph Rauch, Susan Rauch, Alexandra Schlesinger, Caroline Seebohm, Sally Bedell Smith, Elizabeth Stevens, James Wadsworth Symington, Mario d’Urso, Jan Wentworth, Janet Whitehouse, Sheldon Whitehouse, Leon Wieseltier, Elizabeth Winthrop, Frank G. Wisner II and Christine Wisner, and Corinne Zimmermann.
In Great Britain: Lady Berlin, Lady Camrose, the Dowager Duchess of Devonshire, Sir Frank and the late Lady Katherine Giles, Mrs. H. J. Heinz, the late Sir Nicholas Henderson, Sir Michael Pakenham, and Lord Weidenfeld.
In France: Ambassador Benoît d’Aboville, Mrs. Jacques Andréani, Mrs. Jacques de Beaumarchais, Jean-Pierre de Beaumarchais, Sylvain Bellenger, Georges Berthoin, Celestine Bohlen, Bobby Bordeaux-Groult, the late Comtesse Diane de Castellane, Charles de Croisset, Béatrice de Durfort, Anne-Marie de Ganay, the Marquise de Ganay, Pierre Hassner, the Duc de Lorge, Jean-Claude Meyer, Bernard Minoret, the late Duc de Mouchy, Nelly Munthe, Ivan Nabokov, Victoria de Navacelle, Yvan de Navacelle, the Duc and Duchesse de Noailles, William Pfaff, Anne de Rougemont, Nicole Salinger, and Bertrand du Vignaud.
In Italy: Gemma Pozza.
My sister and I would also like to thank all those who offered us advice or lent us books during our research: Marie-Françoise Audouard, Charles Bremner, Malcolm Byrne, Irène Chardon, Florence Coupry, James Davison, Janice Frey, Peter Halban, Professor Gregg Herken, Basil Katz, Marc Lambron, Sarah de Lencquesaing, Charles McGettigan, Michael Mallon, the late Helen Marx, Claire de Montesquiou, Beverly Montgomery, Candice Nancel, Elena Prentice, Elaine Sciolino, Alex Tancredi, Charles Trueheart, Hubert Védrine, and, of course, Stanislas, Jean-Rodolphe, Donatella, and Alexandra Vilgrain.
My mother was an eagle-eyed reader and translated Argentine newspaper articles for me. I would like to thank her warmly as well as my mother-in-law, who shared her Washington memories of Susan Mary with Aniela and with me.
Thank you, Gilles, for listening to me tell a story evening after evening for an entire year, a story that he now knows as well as I do.
I am also very grateful to Mr. Jean-Marc Sauvé, the vice president of the French Conseil d’État, and to presidents Bernard Stirn, Pierre-François Racine, and Edmond Honorat, as well as to Mr. Christophe Devys for making it possible to bring this project to fruition.
This book would not have been done without my sister, Aniela. Her understanding of the United States and her intimate knowledge of Susan Mary were essential to me. I thank her from the bottom of my heart.
Finally, I would like to thank my editors at Robert Laffont, Malcy Ozannat and Dorothée Cunéo, who gave me the idea to write this book in the first place; Benita Edzard and Gregory Messina, who launched it on its transatlantic journey; Kathryn Court, who decided to publish it; Christopher Murray, who translated it; and Tara Singh, who watched over it at Viking.
Notes
III. PARIS
1. Susan Mary Alsop, To Marietta from Paris, 1945–1960 (New York: Doubleday, 1975), 9. (Hereafter, Marietta.)
2. Adapted from Marietta, 23.
3. Marietta, 31.
4. Marietta, 61.
5. Marietta, 33.
6. Adapted from Marietta, 34–35.
IV. AFFAIRS OF THE HEART
1. Jean Cocteau, Journal, 1942–1945, ed. Jean Touzot (Paris: Gallimard, 1989), 597.
2. As cited in Diana Cooper, Autobiography (Salisbury, United Kingdom: Michael Russel, 1979), 730.
3. Marietta, 64.
4. Marietta, 83.
5. Duff Cooper, The Duff Cooper Diaries, ed. and introduced by John Julius Norwich (London: Phoenix, 2006), 436.
6. Letter from Susan Mary to Duff Cooper, April 23, 1947. All letters from Susan Mary to Duff Cooper come from the Cooper family archives. All other letters come from the Patten family archives, except when noted otherwise.
7. Letter from Susan Mary to Duff Cooper, April 29, 1947.
8. Ibid.
9. Cooper, Duff Cooper Diaries, 417. Copain (pal) is in French in the original.
10. Cocteau, Journal, 1942–1945, 620.
11. Letter from Susan Mary to Duff Cooper, May 20, 1947.
12. Cooper, Duff Cooper Diaries, 438.
13. Duff Cooper’s unpublished diary, July 6, 1947.
14. Letter from Susan Mary to Duff Cooper, September 24, 1947.
15. Letter from Susan Mary to Duff Cooper, June 30, 1947.
16. The quote means “Tonight I love you too much to talk to you of love.” (This quote is from a poem by Paul Géraldy.)
17. Letter from Susan Mary to Duff Cooper, July 4, 1947.
18. Letter from Susan Mary to Duff Cooper, May 15, 1947.
19. Cooper, Duff Cooper Diaries, 449–50.
20. Letter from Susan Mary to Duff Cooper, October 8, 1947.
21. Duff Cooper’s unpublished diary, October 15, 1947.
22. Letter from Susan Mary to Duff Cooper, May 26, 1947. Frondeurs are “troublemakers.”
V. THE AGE OF SERENITY
1. Duff Cooper’s unpublished diary.
2. Cooper, Duff Cooper Diaries, 460.
3. Nancy Mitford, The Letters of Nancy Mitford and Evelyn Waugh, ed. Charlotte Mosley (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1996), 92.
4. Letter from Susan Mary to Duff Cooper, July 5, 1948. Georges Bidault and Jules Moch were the minister of foreign affairs and the minister of the interior, respectively, in Robert Schuman’s cabinet from November 1947 to July 1948.
5. Duff Cooper’s unpublished diary, July 7, 1948.
6. Duff Cooper’s unpublished diary, July 13, 1948.
7. Letter from Susan Mary to Duff Cooper, October 26, 1948.
8. Letter from Susan Mary to Duff Cooper, August 15, 1948.
9. Nancy Mitford, Letters of Nancy Mitford and Evelyn Waugh, 114–15.
10. Letter from Susan Mary to Duff Cooper, August 25, 1948.
11. Marietta, 140.
12. Letter from Susan Mary to Duff Cooper, March 2, 1949.
13. Marietta, 136.
14. Letter from Bill Patten to Susan Mary, March 4, 1949.
15. Nancy Mitford, The Blessing, in The Nancy Mitford Omnibus (London: Penguin, 2001), 388.
16. Letter from Susan Mary to Duff Cooper, March 3, 1949.
17. Duff Cooper’s unpublished diary, March 2, 1950.
18. Letter from Susan Mary to Duff Cooper, March 3, 1950.
19. Duff Cooper, Duff Cooper Diaries, 473.
20. Letter from Susan Mary to Duff Cooper, March 9, 1949.
21. Letter from Susan Mary to Duff Cooper, March 2
0, 1950.
22. Lord Granville, an English diplomat, had a long affair, mostly but not exclusively epistolary, with Lady Bessborough at the beginning of the nineteenth century.
23. Selina Hastings, Nancy Mitford (London: Papermac, 1986), 161.
24. Mitford, The Blessing, 388.
25. Nancy Mitford, Don’t Tell Alfred, in The Nancy Mitford Omnibus, 517.
26. Mitford, Don’t Tell Alfred, 519.
27. Mitford, Don’t Tell Alfred, 520.
28. Mitford, Don’t Tell Alfred, 575.
29. Mitford, Don’t Tell Alfred, 576.
30. Letter from Susan Mary to Duff Cooper, July 11, 1947.
31. Letter from Susan Mary to Gladwyn Jebb, August 24, 1960.
32. Marietta, 176.
33. Letter from Susan Mary to Duff Cooper, April 10, 1951.
34. Letter from Susan Mary to Duff Cooper, July 16, 1950.
35. Letter from Susan Mary to Duff Cooper, July 11, 1950.
36. Letter from Susan Mary to Louise de Rougemont, August 30, 1950, Rougemont family archives. (In French in the original.)
37. Marietta, 179.
38. Marietta, 183.
39. Paul Morand, Venises (Paris: Gallimard, 1971), 160.
40. Jean Cocteau, Le Passé défini, vol. I, 1951–1952 (Paris: Gallimard, 1983), 35.
41. Edmond was her butler.
42. Letter from Susan Mary to Duff Cooper, December 26, 1951.
VI. WHEN SHADOWS FALL
1. Letter from Susan Mary to Duff Cooper, July 8, 1953. (In French in the original.)
2. Letter from Susan Mary to Duff Cooper, August 10, 1952.
3. Letter from Susan Mary to Duff Cooper, November 25, 1950.
American Lady : The Life of Susan Mary Alsop (9781101601167) Page 18
