American Lady : The Life of Susan Mary Alsop (9781101601167) by Frances (INT) Caroline; Fitzgerald De Margerie

languages before leaving to dine with the Coopers, the British ambassador and his wife. She was becoming a Cooper household regular.

IV
Affairs of the Heart
    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 thefine 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