American Lady

July 16, 2012
A descendant of founding father John Jay and magnate John Jacob Astor, Susan Mary Jay (1918–2004) grew up a privileged member of the moneyed and connected Eastern Establishment, where her unloving mother and only sister’s teenage death cast a long shadow. When her marriage to diplomat Bill Patten brought her to Paris in 1945, she blossomed into a beguiling, inquisitive hostess, hobnobbing with the likes of Evelyn Waugh, Winston Churchill, and the duke and duchess of Windsor. She also fell madly in love with Duff Cooper, the womanizing British ambassador, continuing their long affair even after giving birth to a son that Cooper refused to acknowledge. After Patten’s death, Susan Mary married his Harvard chum, the famous political journalist Joe Alsop, aware that Alsop was a closeted homosexual. At this point one of Washington’s most sought-after hostesses, she split amicably from Alsop in 1974, launching a successful new career as an author. In 1995, under alcoholism treatment forced upon her by her family, she spitefully revealed to her son his father’s true identity. Despite French biographer de Margerie’s use of some 500 love letters to Cooper, Susan Mary, with her “unrelenting self-control,” remains mostly inscrutable, though this manages to be an engrossing, perceptive, and nuanced portrait of a celebrated socialite who once knew everyone worth knowing.

October 1, 2012
An engagingly restrained portrait of an aristocratic woman whose marriages propelled her post-World War II political reach and literary accomplishments. Descendant of the early American diplomat John Jay, Susan Mary (1918-2004), as she was always known, employed all the trappings of her privileged upbringing to create a purposeful, useful career. Raised largely abroad, as her father served as a diplomat around the world, Susan Mary demonstrated serious inquisitiveness at an early age and chose the men in her life with an eye to their power and influence. Her first husband, William Patten, served as economic analyst at the U.S. Embassy in Paris from 1945 to 1960, thus allowing Susan Mary a rare entree into the difficult, exciting postwar remaking of Europe. There, she met Duff Cooper, British ambassador to Paris, who became her lover and fathered her first child. After Patten's death, she married Joe Alsop, the influential editorial writer for the New York Herald Tribune, intimate of JFK and homosexual (Alsop told her outright), with whom she set up her formidable salon in Georgetown. Thin, fashionable, well informed, yet a little wicked, Susan Mary had what it took to be talked about, and the Alsops' gatherings were the talk of Georgetown's "glory years." Eventually, Alsop's rabid defense of the Vietnam War estranged many, including his wife, and they separated. In her mature years, Susan Mary achieved literary success with her published letters to longtime friend Marietta Tree. Paris-based author de Margerie paints in bold, bright outlines the compelling story of this Jamesian heroine. Entertaining story of a dynamic literary woman who sparked a fascinating life from the changing currents of the age.

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June 1, 2012

A descendant of Founding Father John Jay, Susan Mary hit Paris in 1945 with first husband Bill Patten and met everyone. After Patten's death, she married renowned columnist Joseph Alsop and with him became a legendary powerbroker, dominating Georgetown society for four decades. Interestingly, the author is a member of the Conseil d'Etat, the highest administrative court in France.

Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.