American Lady : The Life of Susan Mary Alsop (9781101601167) (6 page)

Instead of keeping a diary or writing articles, Susan Mary recorded her lucid, detailed, and careful analyses in letters to her mother and her friend Marietta FitzGerald. These letters, written almost daily, show astonishing maturity and perspective for such a young woman. She refused to behave like other Americans stationed in Paris who often dealt in stereotypes, saw corruption everywhere, and were convinced that France was falling into anarchy. She thought the naysayers were too quick to believe the figures given in American newspapers about the killing of supposed collaborators by former Resistance fighters. She tried to stay as informed as possible, comparing different sources and passing judgment only as a last resort. She was most interested in
what the French themselves had to say, even if she did not hesitate to express her own opinions.

Although she was more of an Anglophile and never automatically defended the French—she felt there were too many military parades and days off from work—Susan Mary pointed out their courage and hospitality. She admired the calm with which they greeted tragic events like the loss of a relative in the camps, and noted their general lack of resentment toward the Allies for the damage caused by bombings. The unfavorable comparisons that many American soldiers stationed in Germany made between the French and the Germans angered her. She disliked the triumphalism of the victors, and thought it unfair to despise the French or expect cowed gratitude from them. Rather, she felt it was both an intellectual and a moral obligation to side with the wounded French nation. When the military governor of Paris decried the barbarian behavior of American troops, she was not far from agreeing with him. This sympathy for France’s difficulties was so strong that it often left her feeling discouraged. A few weeks after settling in Paris, she admitted her sadness. “There have been blue moments. The euphoria of arrival wore off. It then struck me that Paris was the most beautiful city I had ever been in but that it was like looking at a Canova death mask. I am sure I am wrong and that the vitality of this magnificent, exasperating, heroic people will return.”
⁵

French Friendships

Susan Mary’s attitude can be explained, at least in part, by the immediate bonds she made with several families that introduced
her into Parisian society. Grateful to her friends and responsive to their kindness, she broadly generalized her positive feelings about the French and attributed to all the virtues she had noticed in a few.

Her first letter of introduction took her to the house of a family of well-fed and whiny collaborators to which she did not return. The results of the second letter were another story altogether. She went to the house of Henri and Marie de Noailles, at 52, avenue d’Iéna, with the package of needles, thread, safety pins, chocolate, and instant coffee that their son had entrusted her with in Washington. They invited Susan Mary and Bill to dinner, and the four of them ate in the concierge’s apartment, where there was a stove to keep them warm. After dinner, they went into a small, elegant salon, which also had a stove, and talked quietly about the events of the war.

The Pattens and the Noailles saw each other often. The Noailles liked the young, well-educated couple who seemed to be curious about everything French. Susan Mary had read Balzac and knew this was the upper crust, a noble family faithful to the past, but without any dusty, paralyzing nostalgia. Henri de Noailles took Susan Mary under his wing and saw to her artistic and social education, leading her to the few rooms that were open in the Louvre, to auctions, and to antique dealers, all the while explaining the ins and outs of French society.

“You must understand,” he told her on one of their walks, “the only reason you’ve been welcomed here is because everybody was so dreadfully bored for four years. In reality, everything is still very closed off.”

“But what can I do?” she asked.

“There’s nothing you can do. Well, perhaps there are a few simple rules. A well-prepared
côtelette
will lure anybody. And of course, one attracts a lot of Parisians by giving balls, because they are so stingy with their parties. But you can’t hope for anything in exchange.”
⁶

Susan Mary wondered whether what Henri de Noailles was telling her applied to their relationship, and if she was tolerated only as an exotic distraction. She hoped the friendship was mutual, although, even if it was not, she would have been grateful for his company. In truth, Henri de Noailles found Susan Mary utterly beguiling.

Thanks to the Noailles, the Pattens discovered the aristocratic side of France and the grand country houses. They visited the Noailles’ château de Mouchy, where the Germans had poked out the eyes in several family portraits before retreating; the château de Grosbois of the La Tour d’Auvergne family; and the château de l’Orfrasière in the Loire Valley, which belonged to the La Panouse family. Their friends took them to visit country neighbors. Every time they walked into an old château, the cold pounced upon them. One child even asked if it was true that people could take off their coats in American sitting rooms. Nevertheless, the Pattens politely admired everything that was shown to them. There was not a garden, it seemed, that had not been designed by Le Nôtre. In turn, the French admired the Pattens’ old Chevrolet, which had just been shipped across the Atlantic.

Susan Mary missed the ladies’ luncheons that were an essential ingredient of American social life, but eventually she made friends her own age, like Louise de Rougemont, Marie de Maud’huy, and the ravishing Odette Pol-Roger and her sister,
Jacqueline Vernes. Apart from Alix de Rothschild, nobody had new clothes and the women casually wore the things they had worn for the past five years, envying Susan Mary’s American stockings and gloves. Susan Mary liked the formality and good manners of the women she met, their old-fashioned grace, politeness toward the elderly, and sense of family. To her thinking, it was the women who were the country’s backbone: young girls who took advantage of the newly relaxed rules to go out dancing in nightclubs, stiff old ladies who dressed in black and devoted themselves to attending receptions and funerals, hearty shopkeepers and talkative concierges. Susan Mary was duly impressed and would have liked to award each of them a prize for endurance and energy.

In December 1945, the windows of the Parisian department stores were filled with animated toys for the first time in five years and children pressed against the glass in wonder. On Christmas Day, the house decorated with holly branches, Susan Mary gave a party in two languages before leaving to dine with the Coopers, the British ambassador and his wife. She was becoming a Cooper household regular.

The Ambassador and the Madonna

When Winston Churchill named his friend Duff Cooper ambassador to France in the autumn of 1944, he was giving him a coveted gift, fully knowing how disobedient Duff was likely to be. Duff was convinced that Western Europe had to unite to resist the American and Soviet giants, and he felt that the cornerstone of this union should be a Franco-British alliance. He took it upon himself to start forging this bond, even though his government had told him otherwise. In Churchill’s opinion, becoming closer to France meant currying the favor of General de Gaulle, an idea that put him on the verge of an apoplectic fit. Foreign secretary Anthony Eden was in favor of strong Franco-British relations, but feared it might anger the Soviets. This lack of support did not worry Duff. It would not be the first time he had held out for what he believed to be right, and if he did not get his way, he would always have Paris, his favorite city, to console him, with the Travellers Club, the bookstores, and the
fine restaurants he went to in the company of his many lady friends.

Duff was a man of contradictions. Firmly rooted in a traditional, conservative background, he loved work and study and was faithfully attached to his wife, all of which never stopped him from speaking his mind or seeking pleasure in all forms. His entire life, he always did what he felt was right and what he found enjoyable, even if other people thought or lived differently.

Born in 1890, Duff was the son of a respectable surgeon, Sir Alfred Cooper, and of Lady Agnes Duff, the daughter of one of King William IV’s ten legitimized children with the Irish actress Dorothea Jordan. Lady Agnes and Alfred Cooper were married, but polite society found it difficult to overlook the fact that she had been married twice before, even if she managed to settle down after the third marriage. She adored her only son, and had named him Alfred Duff—Alfred after his father and Duff after her maiden name.

Duff (he never used the name Alfred) was educated at Eton and Oxford before beginning his career as a diplomat in 1913, a position he abandoned for a few months during the war. He served bravely in the third battalion of the Grenadier Guards and returned with the Distinguished Service Order and a renewed appetite for life. A talented diplomat, Duff was certain that he would soon become a cabinet member. He possessed the joyful confidence that promises and facilitates success. He had a Regency air about him, and particularly admired two figures from that fascinating period: Charles James Fox, the renowned Whig Party politician, and Talleyrand, whose biography he would later write.

Women, literature, and politics were the three interests that occupied Duff’s time in equal proportions. His technique for wooing was to compose sonnets and seal the deal. This heady mix of assertive sensuality and intellectual romanticism worked well, and women were attracted in spite of his unremarkable physique, medium height, and round face. He married Lady Diana Manners, one of the stars of her generation, the youngest daughter of the lovely and artistic Duchess of Rutland. Diana was a beauty herself, blond and pale with the doe-eyed, startled expression of silent-movie actresses. Amusing and determined to have a good time, she surrounded herself with a group of friends who were her bulwark and her battle flag. Her looks, high birth, and wild reputation called for the scandalized admiration of her peers and tabloid readers alike, giving her a visibility she grew accustomed to with no trouble at all. She forced her disapproving parents to agree to her marriage to Duff on June 2, 1919, a union that caught the public’s imagination as a fairy-tale match between a princess and a commoner. In fact, the two were drawn together by a bond of mutual understanding. Diana’s brilliant exterior hid an intellectual inferiority complex and a tendency toward clinical depression; Duff brought calm and balance to her life and appeased her anxious narcissism more surely than drugs. In return, she was a great help to her husband, providing him with full access to Britain’s highest social and political circles. Diana’s sense of fun, eccentricity, and social position ensured that Duff would never be bored, and allowed him to escape the provincial respectability and petit bourgeois attitude typical of many politicians and civil servants. Diana always provided an irresistible spectacle, be it her shapely profile beneath enormous straw hats
worn at even the most inappropriate occasions or the proud, splendidly theatrical towers of Belvoir Castle. Not least, she proved to be smilingly tolerant of Duff’s extramarital adventures, delights that he no more intended to give up than fine port, backgammon, and collecting first editions. She asked only to be kept informed, a request that was not always fulfilled. Thanks to his wife (although at what cost to her own peace, one has to wonder), Duff had the satisfaction of being both a loving husband and a dedicated womanizer.

The only thing missing from their tender, if not sensual, relationship was money. Duff wanted to leave the stifling, shadowy hallways of bureaucracy for the bracing atmosphere of the House of Commons, but getting elected was expensive. Diana took it upon herself to transform her childhood love of costumes and playacting into a career. Her heart-shaped face took light well and her name was already famous. She acted in two silent movies before starring as the Madonna in Max Reinhardt’s play
The Miracle
; hands clasped, looking up to heaven, she toured the United States during four long winters. She made enough money to allow her husband to run as a Conservative Party candidate. Duff’s career took off after his election in 1924 and he held a number of ministerial posts. Some said his future was as promising as Anthony Eden’s, while others wrote him off as a dilettante too easily distracted by women, gambling, and drink. In 1935, the prime minister, Stanley Baldwin, named Duff war secretary. Two years later, he was promoted to First Lord of the Admiralty under Neville Chamberlain, a post Winston Churchill had held before World War I and which came with a yacht and a beautiful residence in London.

It was a welcome nomination, in spite of the serious disagreements over foreign policy and defense that had long divided Cooper and Chamberlain. Duff was convinced that Germany’s bellicose attitude required a closer alliance with France, and had tried, in all the posts he had occupied, to accelerate British rearmament and create an expeditionary force for eventual intervention on the Continent. But such an alliance was unpopular among those in Conservative circles who felt France was too weak and vindictive and saw Germany as a shield against the Bolshevik threat. Backed by his cabinet and the political class at large, Chamberlain made economic recovery a priority, believing it would guarantee future social harmony. When evidence of Hitler’s ambitions became clearer, Chamberlain thought war could be avoided by coming to an understanding with Europe’s dictators. While Duff continued to argue in vain for the reinforcement of Britain’s naval capacities, Chamberlain took his policy of appeasement to its limits, signing the Munich Agreement with Hitler and sacrificing Czechoslovakia.

This was too much for Duff, who believed that the agreement was both morally unacceptable and politically dangerous. He could not stand behind a calculation that bought peace at the price of a sovereign state. Out of respect for international law and for Great Britain’s honor, he resigned from the government the day after Chamberlain’s triumphant return from Munich on October 1, 1938. Although some of his colleagues agreed with him, he was the only one who had the courage to leave his post.