My Three Fathers: And the Elegant Deceptions of My Mother, Susan Mary Alsop

by Bill Patten

Bill Patten grew up in the heart of privileged society to American parents—a debutante mother, a diplomatic father—stationed in Europe. Weekends away from his English boarding school were often spent at the regal country estates of important policy makers and historical figures of the mid-twentieth century. When Bill was twelve years old, his father, William Patten, died, and his mother remarried the renowned columnist Joe Alsop. Patten was swept into Washington during the Kennedy years, where he bore witness to his stepfather's legendary power-brokering, and watched a very different father figure at work. In 1996, when he was forty-seven years old, Bill Patten learned that his biological father was not William Patten, but the noted English diplomat, Duff Cooper. In this quest to know his triumvirate of fathers, Bill Patten offers an unforgettable memoir. My Three Fathers is a search for identity—and a luscious chronicle of a fascinating, bygone era of American aristocracy.

Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir, Biography

400 pages, Hardcover

First published July 1, 2008

Reviews

[Stephanie Patterson · Rating 2 out of 5]

Don't get me wrong. I think the author is in many ways an entirely estimable fellow He had personal problems that he worked hard to overcome. He has a degree in theology. He helps prisoners
But after I read this memoir I couldn't help thinking that he had to diminish his family in order to feel better about his own life.
He grew up believing that Bill Patten, who remains something of a dim presence in this volume, was his father.
In the mid 1990s while his mother was being treated for alcoholism, she reveals to him that he is the son of Duff Cooper, a British diplomat. His stepfather is Joe Alsop, a closeted homosexual, who was a major opinion maker in Washington in the 1940s-1960s
All of these folks drank and none were models of marital rectitude Mr Patten congratulates himself on how much finer in these regards he is than those who came before him
What he doesn't dwell much on is the fact that Duff Cooper showed great courage in resigning from Neville Chamberlain's cabinet when Chamberlain came back from his talks with Hitler declaring that he had achieved "peace in our time." Duff Cooper also jollied along Charles DeGaulle following the end of the war and was the first British ambassador to Paris. Mr Patten reduces him to a sad alcoholic and notes that in his diaries Cooper determines to quit drinking and never mentions it again. That's not really true I finished the diaries about 3 weeks before I read this book and Cooper does make more of an effort to quit drinking than Mr Patten gives him credit for.
His stepfather made every effort to provide his stepson with opportunities to learn and get ahead and the story of his career in Washington and the willingness of journalists and official Washington to ignore his sexual orientation harks back to a time when privacy was respected.
Mr Patten's mother, Susan Mary Alsop, was perhaps a wretched parent but she was a noted Washington hostess who derived her power through men which was the way one did it in her time and she did write some very fine books indeed. Her biography of Lady Sackville is riveting and well worth reading.
Did the adults in Mr Patten's life let him down? Yes. But they are being held to a standard of self-awareness that did not exist when they lived.
None of them should be writen off because they were more at ease at embassy parties than AA meetings

[Anne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading about these famous (almost historical) figures is like reading The National Enquirer. I guess that's why I go from one to the other. This inquiring mind wants to know. Duff Cooper told Susan Mary that " I've never known a happy bastard" as a reason to keep this secret. Tragically, Bill, Jr Found this out the hard way while an adult in his late 40's who his blood father was.We forget, that there were real and severe SOCIAL penalties for some behaviors. This would have been one of those. People today, forget or don't know, that those social penalties existed as late as the 1970's for unwed mothers and their children ( families were shamed, there was banishment from families for the women and children). Secrets were kept,but not without great agony, turmoil and even deception. Susan Mary's and Duff's behavior ( mostly for Susan Mary) would have meant scandal for them and for her son. It would not have been forgotten in their social circles. Sylvia's recommendation about Caroline Blackwood's story will be the next book I read. Right now, I am starting with, " Great Granny Webster" written BY Caroline Blackwood. Whew! Great reading...

[Sylvia Tedesco · Rating 4 out of 5]

The kind of book I love and am embarrassed to admit that I scooped it up in two days of reading. I had similarly enjoyed the biography of Marietta Tree ("No Regrets) and since the author's mother (of this book) was best friends with Marietta, I knew many of the protagonists. The author had such a cold relationship with his mother, Susan Mary Jay Patten Alsop, that it was a sad undercurrent. It reminded me of another similar book by Tad Friend, "Cheerful Money."
It's fun to live vicariously in the lives of people with money, who have beaucoup servants, entertain and travel widely but sad to learn the difficulties their children had growing up.
Bill Patten seems to have found his bearings and it is good to know he survived the coldness of trying to hug his anorexic mother who was "like a skeleton".
Another book in this vein is about Lady Caroline Blackwood. Dangerous Muse: The Life Of Lady Caroline Blackwood
by Nancy Schoenberger Fascinating to read about her marriage to Lucien Freud and look at the paintings he did of her.

[Judy · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting book. Bill Patten discovers when he is 47 years old that the man from whom he was named, was not his father. Instead, his mother, Susan Mary Alsop, who was married to Bill Patten and having an affair with Duff Cooper decided to keep the news of her son's paternity from all but a few close friends. Duff Cooper was a member of the British aristocracy, had resigned from Neville Chamberlain's cabinet over the Munich Agreement, was a close friend of Winston Churchill, and served as the British Ambassador to France at the same time that Bill Patten, Sr. was serving in the American Embassy there. After her husband's death, Susan Mary married Joseph Alsop, the famously barbed-tongued, homosexual (closeted, of course) syndicated columnist and made her home with her children in Washington, D.C. where she and her new husband were insiders during the Kennedy years. I found this book to be oddly moving, as the author seeks to find himself in this bizarre background. Sadly, he makes the journey without the support of his mother. A successful author, hostess, and political insider, Susan Mary, is a remote mother who sees her only son as "pathetic" and is as physically removed (he can't remember any time that she touched him unless he tried to hug her) as she is emotionally remote. I would have given this book four stars, but I wasn't wild about the writing in places (repetitive information and phrasing) and the editing needed to be tighened. However, I found myself oddly moved as the story drew to its end. No doubt the themes of the lost child seeking mothering was a little too close to home.

[Jill Meyer · Rating 5 out of 5]

read the same book I did. I thought Bill Patten did a wonderful job in bringing his interesting family to life by concentrating on his three "fathers". His "real" father, Duff Cooper, his "assumed" father, Bill Patten, and his "step" father, Joe Alsop. All three men were members of the WASP aristocracy, either in the US or in England, and all played important roles in both the US government or the British government in the first fifty or so years of the 20th Century.

But between all these men was one woman, Susan Mary, herself a product of the same background as the men, who married two of them and bore a child - Bill the author - to the third. Susan Mary, a seemingly cold woman, certainly nicer to her friends than her children, a rather calculating woman, more at home in London and Paris society than with her children. Maybe the coldness came from having lost a beloved older sister when she was a child. Whatever caused it, the reticence and distance she imposed on her older child was partially to blame for what seems like a life-time "search" for identity by her son.

Patten writes well and the reader can tell that he certainly seems to have gotten his life together. Maybe it took his mother's death in 2004 to put the pieces together.

[Linda · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had hoped this would be an interesting look at pre and post war life in the upper classes. What a disappointment! There was little about that but there was LOTS of whining, self-serving pity about how the author wasn't loved enough as a child and how swell he is because he works as a counselor to abusive men. It was awful.

[Ann · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reading WASP memoirs full of privilege, glamour, adultery and alcoholism, is one of my guilty pleasures. The author describes a bygone era through the lives of his official father (William Patten, asthma-plagued minor diplomat), his biological father (Duff Cooper, behind-the-scenes player during the dramatic lead-up to WWII, later British ambassador to Paris) and his stepfather, Joe Alsop (journalist, opinion-maker, member of JFK's Camelot). The connecting thread is his mother, Susan Mary Alsop, charming anorexic, consummate hostess and houseguest, and groupie of powerful politicians. There are houses, servants, trips, parties, boarding schools, exclusive clubs... all the accoutrements of WASP life.

Of course, there would be no story if there was no conflict. The author and his sister seem to have been a little lost in this adult world, shipped off to school and left to the care of nannies and the like. The author did eventually find his own way, first as a real estate developer, then as the publisher of a couple of newspapers in Maine, then eventually as a minister. Good for him to have overcome what he experienced as an emotionally deprived childhood, with an undemonstrative mother and an overbearing if well-meaning stepfather.

At the same time.... I think that some of this reflects the changing perceptions of what it means to be a "good" mother or father. Yes, the author didn't find out until he was 47 who his biological father was - but in the days he was born, it was considered best for everyone, including the child, that such scandals were kept under wraps. Yes, Joe Alsop was overly directive and meddlesome in terms of helping the young Bill get into the schools and clubs of his choice, getting him internships and jobs. But could this not have stemmed from a sincere, if clumsy, desire, to help out a youngster in the way that the old-boys-club of Boston Brahmins tended to do? Some of the book seems to be about wanting something impossible : namely to force a reserved, well-mannered society woman who has kept her own counsel all her life, in a different era, to open her innermost thoughts to her child. I almost felt as sorry for Susan Mary Alsop as for her son.

[David Tavernier]

Revealing the real Susan Mary Alsop. Her son, Bill, was kind in his biography of her life, transgressions, and social interests. She was a good match for her bi-sexual, second husband, Joseph Alsop, and one would think that her marriage to him was based upon what societal/senior government official relationships he could broker. Her father, Augustus Jay, was a senior diplomat who came to Aiken with the family. Her paternal grandmother was Emily Astor.

[Carol Bundy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lots of interesting gossip in this book. Not sure how much of it is true but a fair amount likely is. Certainly the plight of Bill Patten is the stuff of novels. But I couldn't help feeling that although a lot of therapy may make for a happier person, it can deaden one's prose and steal the thunder of a memoir. Another way of putting this is that Patten became the hero of this story but I'm not sure he successfully made me care enough about him. I can't help feeling his would have been a better story if the focus had stayed more firmly on his compelling and terrifying mother.

[Gaye · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book even though I had no idea who Bill Patten and Susan Mary Alsop were before I began reading the book. Well written and interesting. This book was part of a rotating book club that I belong to.

[Melissa · Rating 2 out of 5]

Lots of history of people about whom I'm not sure I care about, so at times it was tedious. There were a few intriguing tidbits, but overall not a "must-read."

[Ann Costello · Rating 4 out of 5]

Weirdly fascinating. And totally out of my range of experiences (which may be why it is weirdly fascinating).

[Julia]

Sounds like this would be an excellent follow-up to House of Mirth

[Jane · Rating 2 out of 5]

I tried, I really did. I couldn't find it in me to care about so many of these people who led empty, self-absorbed lives.

[Herb · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a great read. I knew nothing about these people, but the author wrote a great story. Well-written and interesting, the way every book SHOULD be. Recommended.

[Kimberly · Rating 3 out of 5]

Especially enjoyed learning about the local connections.