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.