Patten, according to Gay, is so called from Patty, the pretty daughter of a Lincolnshire farmer, with whom the village blacksmith fell in love. To save her from wet feet when she went to milk the cows, he mounted her clogs on an iron eke.
The patten now supports each frugal dame,
Which from the blue-eyed Patty takes its name.
Gay, Trivia, i. (1712).
(Of course, the word is the French patin, “a skate or high-heeled shoe,” from the Greek, patein, “to walk.”)
Pattieson (Mr. Peter), in the introduction of The Heart of Midlothian, by Sir W. Scott, and again in the introduction of The Bride of Lammermoor. He is a hypothetical assistant teacher at Gandercleuch, and the feigned author of The Tales of My Landlord, which Sir Walter Scott pretends were published by Jedediah Cleishbotham, after the death of Pattieson.
Patton (Mrs.). Tailoress and talker, otherwise known as “the Widow Jim,” who has all genealogy and relationship at her tongue’s end. “She chatters all day as the swallows chatter, and you do not tire of her.”—Sarah Orne Jewett, Deephaven (1877).
Patterson (Elizabeth). One of the most remarkable women of this century. The beautiful daughter of a Baltimore merchant prince, she captivated Jerome Bonaparte, (then a minor, and dependent on his brother), who was visiting America. In the face of parental opposition, she married him Dec. 24, 1803. Napoleon (First Consul) promptly repudiated the marriage, ordered his brother home, and forbade all French vessels to receive as a passenger, “the young person with whom Citizen Joseph has connected himself.” In October, 1804, the young couple sailed for France in the ship Philadelphia, but were blown ashore at Lewes, Del. In March, 1805, they embarked again, reaching Lisbon, April 2. Napoleon (now emperor) refused to allow them to enter France, but sent to know “what he could do for Miss Patterson.” She replied that “Madame Bonaparte demanded her rights as one of the imperial family.” The contest was unequal. She was sent back to America, and the marriage declared null and void. Her son, Jerome, was born in England, July 7, 1805. She was never allowed to see her husband again, yet her ambitious projects for “Bo,” as she called her son, were unremitting until the downfall of the Bonarparte family. After this, she aimed to ally him with the English nobility, a design thwarted by his love-match with a lovely Baltimorean. She was an able financier, and became one of the richest women in Baltimore. Retaining her mind and many traces of her extraordinary beauty to the last, she died, April 3, 1879, at the age of ninety-four.
“By the laws of justice and of the Church she was a queen, although she was never allowed to reign.... There was about her the brilliancy of courts and palaces, the enchantment of a love-story, the suffering of a victim of despotic power.”—Eugene Dìdier, Life and Letters of Madame Bonaparte (1879).
Patty, “the maid of the mill,” daughter of Fairfield, the miller. She was brought up by the mother of Lord Aimworth, and was promised by her father in marriage to Farmer Giles; but she refused to marry him, and became the bride of Lord Aimworth. Patty was very clever, very pretty, very ingenuous, and loved his lordship to adoration.—Bickerstaff, The Maid of the Mill (1765).
Pattypan (Mrs.), a widow who keeps lodgings, and makes love to Tim Tartlet, to whom she is ultimately engaged.
By all accounts, she is just as loving now as she was thirty years ago.—James Cobb, The First Floor, i. 2 (1756-1818).