The ‘Swans’ of the title are the ultra-rich women of 1950s New
York, who float serenely through their lives of fashion, lunch, and parties-
while paddling like hell below the surface to keep themselves together. These
women- Babe Paley, Slim Keith, Gloria Guiness, and Pamela Harriman- dominated
the covers and pages of Vogue. Professional beauties, they existed to make their
powerful husband’s lives lovely and effortless. These were thoroughbreds who
had married their way to the top.
Truman Capote entered this group when he was a rising star
in the literary sky. His sparkling- and sometimes vicious- wit endeared him to
them. They adopted him, gave him expensive gifts, invited him to everything,
and took him on vacations with them. Their husbands didn’t care how much time
their wives spent with Capote because he was flamboyantly gay; he was their
palace eunuch, their petted and cossetted lapdog. Or so they thought.
Babe Paley and Capote formed a special bond; both the
children of icy, emotionally distant mothers, they never felt they were quite
good enough. Babe strived to be perfect for her husband Bill, the founder of
CBS. She imposed rigid control over her life and her looks. With Capote, she
could relax her control and be herself.
No one expected the betrayal. Capote, having reached the
heights of literary acclaim with ‘In Cold Blood’, couldn’t seem to come up with
another book. Perhaps it was desperation that made him do what he did: he wrote
a short story for Esquire magazine, titled ‘La Cote Basque 1965”. The Swans
found their stories, their words, their confidences, and their affairs, spread
out over the pages for the world to see. As anyone but Capote would expect,
doors were shut against him forever, including that of Babe Paley, who was
dying of lung cancer. The glittering life he worked so hard to achieve was gone
in a day.
The book fascinated me. Benjamin’s descriptions of the
homes, the clothes, the hair, the beauty routines, the lunches, and most of all
the bitchy gossiping, are all wonderfully described. Capote’s slide down to
becoming a drug abuser takes the back seat to the Swans, but is equally
important to the story. I just have to wonder: even with his massive ego, why in
the hell did Capote thing he could get away with writing about the Swans in the
way he did?
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