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

by De Margerie, Caroline; Fitzgerald, Frances (INT)

  When she returned to France, Susan Mary rented a villa near Hossegor, north of Biarritz, spending her time with the Bordeaux-Groult family, Pierre and Elise, Timothy and Victoria, and Bobby and Daphné. The weather was bad, and the children were often sick and restless, but Susan Mary’s strength began to return. She went to see her friend Marie-Alice de Beaumarchais, and started to take an interest in the upcoming presidential election in the United States. When she returned to Paris in autumn, she enrolled as an auditor at the École des Sciences Politiques. Very Mildred Jungfleisch of her, was Mitford’s comment, saying that she would have to put it in the next edition of her book.29

  Susan Mary’s studies in political science were only an interlude before she had to face the nagging questions about her future. The writer Louis Auchincloss had congratulated her on the magnificent creation that had been her life with Bill, in spite of his illness. Isaiah Berlin also admired the family edifice she had managed to build. What should she dedicate her energy toward now? Adlai Stevenson believed in her organizational talents, although she felt she had none. She had little confidence in her own courage and did not know what to do with herself and the children. America seemed like the most obvious destination, but was it the best? Did she want to remarry? Gladwyn had returned to England, and in his letters he wrote that he imagined she would settle down with an American senator. She found a letter from Duff, written for her to read in 1960, at a time when he expected both he and Bill would be dead. He said she should marry a British ambassador to China or a secretary of state in a new Russian-Atlantic alliance. It was all quite absurd. There were no senators or secretaries of state lining up outside her door, just three marriage proposals.

  “Two are girlhood admirers who I should think would run a mile if I accepted and they had to face the consequences, which includes divorcing nice if dull wives, the other is unexpected.”30

  VII

  At the Court of King Jack1

  Joe Alsop’s Victory

  In theory, the Kennedys had the game in the bag. The family ship was poised to set sail, riding on the winds of paternal fortune, success in the primary elections, and Bobby Kennedy’s effective war machine. But voters cannot always be controlled, and many of the party delegates who had gathered in the carnival-like atmosphere of the 1960 Democratic Convention at the Los Angeles Sports Arena still clung to their enduring affection for Adlai Stevenson, their losing candidate in the 1952 and 1956 elections. Warmed up in a standing ovation for Eleanor Roosevelt, who had chosen not to support John Kennedy, the delegates fell into a wave of hysteria when Stevenson’s name was proposed for nomination. From the grandstands to the arena floor, the entire stadium swayed, repeating the candidate’s name like a mantra, while the Stevenson majorettes threw caution to the wind and improvised a writhing war dance. Journalists who had already prepared reports on Kennedy’s victory became concerned that their work was not over for the evening. But Bobby’s army tightened ranks and Senator John Fitzgerald Kennedy was chosen by a broad majority. Tanned and handsome like an actor, he was a man of patrician tastes, if not of patrician birth. A veneer of wealth and his time at Harvard and in Great Britain had covered the traces of the Irish immigrant past—only Catholicism remained. He was a veteran of the Pacific war, obsessed with history, thoughtful when at rest, energetic in action, enthusiastic about his causes, tight-lipped about his secrets (womanizing and health problems). Kennedy had begun his campaign without support from liberals, farmers, unions, or black leaders, but his father and family stood behind him. At forty-three, he was much younger than the other Democratic candidates, and only his Republican opponent, the shadowy forty-seven-year-old Richard Nixon, was a little older than him.

  Joe Alsop was pleased with Kennedy’s nomination. His man had won the first stretch of the race to the White House. The next day, he and his friend Phil Graham, the director of the Washington Post, went to Kennedy’s convention headquarters at the Biltmore Hotel to push for the nomination of Lyndon Johnson as the vice presidential candidate. Seated at his desk with his hands behind his head, a relaxed John Kennedy listened to the two journalists explain how Johnson, the Senate majority leader and a formidable politician, could bring in crucial Southern votes. During the discussion, Joe had the impression that Kennedy’s mind was made up and that Johnson had already been chosen to share the ticket.

  That summer, the Kennedy clan gathered at Hyannis Port as usual, with the difference that reporters were running around the property’s beach, lawns, and patios. This did not bother Kennedy, who managed to keep ahead of them, going sailing when he felt like it, but it annoyed his wife, who was having trouble adjusting to the physical demands and constant exposure of her new public life. Joe was very fond of Jackie, and when he was invited to spend a weekend with the Kennedys at the end of July, he reasoned with her about her obligations and assured her that she was capable of meeting them. He had less success when it came to taking part in the athletic family’s favorite pastimes. Holding Bobby’s five-year-old son, David, by the feet, he swung him around until the boy hit his head on a ceiling beam.

  David turned white and bit his lip, but he soon asked, “Can we do it again?”

  “Of course,” said Joe, who had gone even whiter than the child.

  When Joe congratulated Ethel on her son’s courage she simply remarked, “Oh, we don’t allow crying. Do hold in your stomach, Joe.”2

  Observing the entire Kennedy family together was an awe-inspiring experience, “like Sparta,” wrote Joe to Susan Mary.3

  That summer, Joe Alsop’s letters came one after the other, each more patient, gentle, and persuasive than the last. His words aimed for Susan Mary’s heart, but they also found their way into her mind and touched her spirit. They told two stories. One was political. Although Joe had always declared himself a Republican and had voted for Eisenhower in 1952, he had come to think that the president was weak on national defense. So he had shifted his support to the Democrats, and particularly to Senator Kennedy, whose ascent he had watched with an interest that owed as much to Kennedy’s charisma as to the firmness of his position on the development of America’s nuclear arsenal. In turn, Kennedy was aware of Joe’s potential impact as one of the most-read editorial writers in the country, under contract with the New York Herald Tribune, author of articles that appeared in nearly two hundred newspapers with a total readership of twenty-five million. What was more, Joe was cultured, funny, and seemed to know everybody through his Harvard, family, and professional connections. He gave great parties and was liberal with champagne, although Kennedy thought he did not invite enough pretty women. From early 1960 onward, the two men established a mutually beneficial relationship through meetings and conversations that Joe tried to play down to avoid attacks on his professionalism. He had no reason to hide this friendship from Susan Mary. Rather, far more openly and amusingly than in his columns, he wrote her a detailed account of JFK’s unstoppable ascent, a subject that riveted the whole of America.

  The second story in Joe’s letters was rather more intimate and written in a very different, far less brazen tone. As humble as a pastor requesting a small donation to repair the church roof, who wrings his hands in anguish and is reluctant to cross the threshold of his wealthy parishioner’s house for fear of being a bother, he wrote to Susan Mary in June 1960 to ask her to marry him. He explained that he had not dared to do so during his visit to Paris the previous month for fear that she would laugh in his face. For her sake, he would change careers and live wherever she wanted, even in Europe. He did not expect her to be in love with him. She would be free to leave him if she fell in love with somebody else. Better still, if she currently had a lover, which was likely—how else could she have made it through the torment of the past years—she was welcome to continue seeing him. Joe would put up with it. Finally, he told her he was homosexual.

  Susan Mary’s answer was prompt and firm: marriage was out of the question. But it took more than a polite refusal to discourage stubbor
n Joe. With the eloquence and obstinacy he had used to support America’s entry into World War II, General Chennault’s policies in China, the State Department’s loyalty brought into question by McCarthy, and the existence of a missile gap, Joe set to work trying to change Susan Mary’s mind. Although she said she would not marry him, she kept asking for political news, and he used this as an excuse to continue writing, pleading his case while mixing in politics and concocting a future in which Susan Mary, Joe, and Kennedy would rule Washington and, by extension, the world.

  Joe’s homosexuality was not discussed in Washington circles and most of his friends seemed to be unaware of it, apart from his brother Stewart. Although some may have had a suspicion, they kept it to themselves out of propriety, indifference, or embarrassment. To them, Joe was just a bachelor who had no girlfriend but liked beautiful and intelligent women. He adored risqué stories, and on hearing them, his eyes would sparkle behind his round glasses. Joe was also an excellent conversationalist if he managed to stay calm and not drink too much. He was a popular guest in Washington’s best houses, and nobody called him, as Gore Vidal later did in one of his novels, the Baron de Charlus of Georgetown.

  Yet the FBI and CIA knew that Joe had interests beyond collecting Bronze Age and Asian art. There had been two incidents of note. The most troubling one happened in Moscow in February 1957 when Joe fell into a trap laid by the KGB. After showing him photos of himself with a young man in a hotel room, the Russian agents proposed he collaborate with them, an offer Joe refused before being quickly shuttled out of the country by the American Embassy. Back in the States, Joe went straight to the FBI and told them what had happened. The affair ended there, but the KGB kept the photos, and J. Edgar Hoover kindly leaked Joe’s FBI file to Eisenhower’s staff. Some of them were tempted to use the information when Joe’s articles became too negative, but this never happened. Still, the risk was always there.4

  Joe’s revelation came as a complete surprise to Susan Mary. She was both intrigued and touched by his openness. She asked Elise Bordeaux-Groult if she thought a marriage under such terms was possible. Without really understanding the significance of what Joe had told her, she interpreted his confession as a hint at a possible change in his nature. From the little he said about himself, she re-created him completely in her own imagination. Before his confession, she had known only his noisy triumphs, his clamoring affection, and the admiration he laid out before her like a luxurious sable coat. A new person seemed to appear beneath Joe’s tough exterior, someone timid, lonely, vulnerable, in need of tenderness. At the age of fifty, it seemed he finally wanted to be like everybody else. Perhaps, she felt, it was her duty to rescue him, to take the hand he was holding out. Little by little, she overcame her misgivings and hesitation, and began to believe in the version of Joe suggested by his letters. At the end of the year, he came to see her in Paris, and it seemed her instinct was correct. In December she wrote to Marietta, explaining: “As the correspondence continued I began to know a new Joe that I didn’t know existed and I began to think, oh, well, it would be a good idea for the children etc. and being a hopeless romantic couldn’t make up my mind.”5 In the same letter, she announced that she had fallen in love with Joe and was getting married to him.

  It is tempting to reduce Susan Mary’s final consent after seven months of letter writing to a reasonable transaction between two people from the same social circle with the same tastes, memories, and ambitions. Many did. Indeed, both Joe and Susan Mary were far too realistic not to realize how beneficial the marriage would be. Joe would be provided with a family, one that he had always known. It was a social advantage and a personal comfort that improved his standing and respectability. Susan Mary would have a new home, enter a political clan, and become one of Washington’s most sought-after hostesses—such was Joe’s prestige and position in the community. She also knew that Joe loved her children and would make an excellent stepfather to Billy and Anne. As to the rest—oh well. She could do without it. She had already done without it for quite some time. Or maybe Joe would change.

  Still, cold-blooded calculation alone does not account for Susan Mary’s gamble in choosing to marry Joe. Neither of them could have imagined such an arrangement if they had not already been linked by an old and affectionate friendship. In a way, marriage seemed the next logical step. Bill Patten’s memory also had an influence: Joe felt responsible toward the widow and children of his dead friend, and Susan Mary felt she could trust a man who had always been loyal to her husband. Finally, Joe’s and Susan Mary’s fantasies seem to have weighed on their decision. Joe, who knew women only in formal, social terms, had fallen in love with a vision more than with an actual person. He expected Susan Mary to conform to an impossible ideal of grace and intelligence. On her side, Susan Mary had given in to the charms of Joe’s tender pleading, a tone she wrongly thought he would always use, and which was soon replaced by verbal sparring. Civilized camaraderie might have been an achievable goal for their partnership, but Susan Mary and Joe, although highly sophisticated, were both in their own ways romantic at heart.

  Dumbarton Avenue

  2720 Dumbarton Avenue was a plain yellow concrete cube, barely hidden by a curtain of ivy and clematis, a blemish on Georgetown’s streets, which were lined with charming redbrick houses fallen out of a Victorian picture album. Deeming amateur architecture a gentlemanly pursuit, Joe had drafted the plans for the house when he bought the plot of land in 1949, and had immensely enjoyed the shock it gave his neighbors (they soon took measures to change local laws and make sure that a similar outrage would not repeat itself). Susan Mary could not help sighing at the sight of the building—“ugly as sin,”6 in her opinion—but the spacious interior was more to her liking. The house’s two wings surrounded a garden created by Bunny Mellon that contained eight different sorts of boxwood ennobling the little patch of green with their geometric forms. Inside the house, which also served as his office, Joe kept his collections of family portraits, porcelain, Oriental carpets, French furniture, silk screens, and books on art and architecture. The result was warm, polished, comfortable. Joe tolerated nothing less than perfection, and a Philippine couple took care of the housekeeping under his watchful supervision. Every morning, dressed in a kimono, he eagerly discussed the day’s menus with the cook before changing into one of his English suits and going into the study to review the day’s schedule with his secretary, Miss Puffenberger, whom he called Puff.

  In a letter of congratulations written on learning of the upcoming marriage, Marietta’s twenty-year-old daughter, Frankie FitzGerald, shrewdly wondered what place Susan Mary, her godmother, would assume in Joe’s clockwork existence. She even dared to slip in a prescient warning: “One thing disturbs me—and that is it may not be a practical arrangement. Can you cook? Your chefs will be so enraged when they hear about each other that they will either resign or feed you nothing but soufflés in violent, jealous competition.”7 Joe’s younger brother Stewart also recommended that his future sister-in-law not let herself be dominated. He knew what he was talking about, for the two brothers had cosigned their editorials until 1958, when Stewart, wanting to be free, went his own way.

  At the beginning, Joe was thrilled and determined to please. As admirable Miss Puff put it, “Mr. Alsop thinks—in fact he knows—that he invented marriage.”8 He did more than make room to accommodate the Patten family’s arrival. The whole house was rearranged and expanded with a new garage (Joe did not drive, but Susan Mary did), a swimming pool, and a large bedroom for the bride. Her dresses were hung on two levels in a separate room, with a special hook to reach the top row, as at the dry cleaner’s.

  The marriage of Susan Mary Patten—widow of a man she had stopped loving long before he died—and Joseph Alsop—a bachelor with a double life—was celebrated at All Saints Episcopalian Church in Chevy Chase, Maryland, on February 16, 1961. Susan Mary would have preferred a small ceremony with the children in Paris, but her mother, who did not like Joe, had r
efused to make the trip. Joe returned to France with his wife before leaving for Laos to check on whether his domino effect theory of Communist expansion might begin in the small kingdom where a dangerous guerrilla army was running wild.

  Susan Mary prepared to leave Paris, its gray walls, zinc roofs, and ever-changing skies. The city, about to be abandoned, wooed her with its prettiest accordion tunes. In autumn, a new life began. The children had to learn to speak with an American accent. Billy was at Groton and Anne went to the Potomac School. In her lovely bedroom hung with Persian blue and white wallpaper, Susan Mary tried not to dwell in a past haunted by memories. After all, as everybody was continuously and affectionately telling her, she had finally come home. Yet for years afterward, she would avoid visiting certain rooms at the National Gallery, because Impressionist paintings of the French countryside made her heart throb with sadness.

  The Kennedy Years

  You gave me the Kennedy years.9

  —Susan Mary to Joe Alsop, November 3, 1976

  In America, hope returns every four years. On January 20, 1961, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, standing bareheaded in the freezing cold, swore to defend the Constitution and champion freedom. “Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans.” The drowsy Eisenhower years were suddenly over. Nobody knew what exactly the “New Frontier” stood for—victory over Communism, the end of poverty, the conquest of outer space? Whatever it was, the new president embodied it perfectly. The resonant tone of his address thrilled Susan Mary in Paris. The next day, Joe called to tell her that Inauguration Day, begun at the Capitol, had ended at his house. After making the round of the inaugural balls, the president had turned up on Joe’s doorstep in white tie and tails, smiling, his thick, tousled hair dusted with snow. It was long past midnight and a party was still under way. The guests rose to their feet to greet him. Before the day was over, Kennedy wanted to relive it among friends. He drank a glass of champagne.