Near the end of the first episode ofFeud: Capote vs. A copy ofEsquirecontaining La Cote Basque, a short story written by Truman Capote, lies on the table.
One of its key plot points?
Nobody will know it was us, Bill tells Babe.
Jean Murray Vanderbilt, Barbara “Babe” Paley, and Truman Capote in 1957.
It feels terrible right now, but it will go away.
I wonder which is worse, Wattss Babe seethes.
You betraying me for years and years or Trumans betrayal?
Truman Capote leaves a reception at The Four Seasons with Lee Radziwill in 1969. Later, he’d write in Esquire that her and her sister Jackie were “geisha girls”.
Feud: Capote vs. La Cote Basque ran inEsquires November 1975 issue.
Guest, and Slim Keith.
These women arent lonely.
After all, they are married!
Except thatsexactlywho La Cote Basquean excerpt fromAnswered Prayerswas about.
Its main character, Lady Ina Coolbirth (a stand-in for Keith), endlessly gossiped with P.B.
Jones (a Capote-pop in figure) over lunch, and very few were spared her muckraking.
One of the most damning stories was about Paleyor, as Capote renamed her, Cleo Dillon.
His whole paraphernalia had felt sticky and strange, Ina gabs to her companions.
As though it were covered with blood.
So was the bed.
The sheets bloodied with stains the size of Brazil.
Dill frantically triedand failedto clean it all up before Cleo came home.
Gossip columnist Liz Smith chronicled Capotes sensational social ousting in a 1976 issue ofNew Yorkmagazine.
Societys sacred monsters at the top have been in a state of shock, she wrote.
Capote, for one, felt the reaction was unfair.
What do they expect?
he told theChicago Daily Newsa few months later.
A writer writes about what he knows.
I was the only one who could write this book.
And shouldnt he expect to lose friends that way?)
Smith published his admission in the papers.
Well, my God, they turned that into the war of the worlds or something.
I overcame it, he said.
In April 1978, he opened up about the status of his friendships with the Swans toNewsdaymagazine.
When Babe died in 1978 from cancer, Capote was not invited to her funeral.
I dont intend to discuss this; this issue involves social politics, not artistic merit, he wrote.
Condemn but not deny.
When he died in 1984,Answered Prayersremained unfinished.
The partial novel was published posthumously in 1987 and is infamous to this day.
Additional research provided by Deirdre McCabe Nolan.
