Cornelia Guest, Truman Capote's last swan: “He was desperate to write and did not consider the consequences”

“At the age of 13 I started wearing devices.

I felt horrible, like an ugly duckling.

One day, Truman took me to lunch at Le Cirque on the Upper East Side to cheer me up.

We had such a good time,” recalls Cornelia Cochrane Churchill Guest (New York, 1963) in a telephone conversation with EL PAÍS.

The multifaceted

socialite

- Actress, Amazon, activist, designer and writer - is already 60 years old, but she does not forget the day when Truman Capote transformed her into a swan, as she called her friends.

The anecdote summarizes the immense power that the writer exercised over the women of New York high society, over the husbands of these ladies and over their daughters.

Cornelia Guest is the only daughter of CZ Guest, one of the closest friends of the author of

In Cold Blood

and

Breakfast at Tiffany's

.

She grew up surrounded by celebrities: Andy Warhol helped her color, the designer Halston taught her to walk in heels, Rudolf Nuréyev took her dancing and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, her godfathers, visited her at Templeton, her family's mansion in Long Island.

“I've met a lot of people, but they always ask me about Truman.

For me he was a good friend of my family, a wonderful friend,” she says from her home in Dallas (Texas).

The Guest surname is back in fashion thanks to

Feud: Capote vs.

The Swans

, Ryan Murphy's new series that chronicles Capote's fall from grace.

Directed by Gus Van Sant, the fiction focuses on 1975, the year in which the writer published

La Côte Basque 1965

, one of the chapters of

Prayers Attended

, a “novel in code” with Proustian aspirations.

The novelist thought that if Marcel Proust had written

In Search of Lost Time

inspired by the French aristocracy, he could base his

roman à clef

on his upper-class American friends

.

La Côte Basque

, named after the elegant restaurant where the author used to have lunch with his swans, collected some of the most scandalous secrets of his richest and most famous confidants: Babe Paley, Slim Keith, Lee Radziwill, Gloria Guinness, Gloria Vanderbilt, Ann Woodward...

More information

“I don't know how I got here”: this was Capote's spiral of self-destruction after betraying the jet set

Cornelia Guest and her mother, CZ Guest, at a party in New York in 1985.Images Press (Getty Images)

“I haven't seen the series yet,” admits Cornelia Guest, considered one of the first

It girls

or

celebutantes

.

She has been very busy with her own brand of cruelty-free bags, the launch of a capsule collection for Adrienne Landau and the filming of

Oh, Canada

, a Paul Schrader film in which she shares the bill with Richard Gere, Jacob Elordi and Uma Thurman.

“They told me that in the series there is a girl who plays me.

I'll have to see it."

Actress Chloë Sevigny plays her mother, one of the few swans who was saved from Capote's indiscretions.

“Truman didn't reveal anything about my mother in

Answered Prayers

for a simple reason: she didn't tell him anything,” she notes.

“I think he respected my mother a lot precisely for that reason, because she never talked to him about her private life.”

“Truman didn't reveal anything about my mother in Answered Prayers for one simple reason: she didn't tell him anything,” explains Cornelia Guest.

Stewart Shining

Cornelia Guest was only 13 years old when the first chapters of Answered Prayers

came to light

.

The title of Capote's novel was a tribute to Saint Teresa of Ávila—“More tears are shed for answered prayers than for unanswered ones”—and the author's connection with Spain—his stepfather, José García Capote, was a Canarian— .

“I was very little and I didn't find out about the scandal.

But, when I was older, my mother told me.

She told me: 'It was the fault of those ladies, who spoke to a journalist.

Never discuss your private life with a journalist.'

Truman was a great friend to my mother, but she always knew that sooner or later he would publish something.

She told me: 'They are all the time telling him about his private life and he is a writer.

There’s no way he’s not going to use that in his books.”

For decades, Capote felt like the king of the

jet set

on the shoulders of his rich friends: he sailed on their yachts, flew on their private planes, slept in their mansions and listened to and took notes on all their secrets.

The dream of writing the great American novel took the crown from him.

His muses did not forgive the betrayal and condemned him to ostracism.

It was social suicide.

“He never imagined it would end like this.

He was desperate to write and did not consider the consequences.

He was convinced that his friends wouldn't realize that the fictional characters were based on them.

It went wrong,” explains Guest.

“But it wasn't his fault.

She was one of those women who put themselves in that position.

If I tell you my darkest secrets, then I shouldn't be surprised if I see them published in a newspaper.

Truman Capote and CZ Guest, in the summer of 1976. The writer had just published the first chapters of 'Plegarias Attended', the controversial novel that meant his social suicide.

WWD (Penske Media via Getty Images)

In the series

Feud: Capote vs.

The Swans

, the author is portrayed as a cold and calculating man, at times cruel to his friends.

Guest does not remember him like this: “He was always kind, generous and sweet with me.

He always came to talk to me and give me advice about boys.

“So I just wanted to go out to lunch with him and talk about boyfriends and gossip.”

In the summer they ate at Bobby Van's in Bridgehampton, and in the winter at Le Cirque in Manhattan.

“His favorite dish was pasta Primavera,” he details.

Babe Paley and the other swans withdrew the writer's word.

CZ Guest, who in her youth had performed on Broadway with the Ziegfeld Follies and had posed nude for Diego Rivera, stood by him.

“Those women were not my mother's friends, they didn't even like each other.

My mother was a country woman: she enjoyed gardening, riding horses and going to horse shows in Virginia.

He didn't spend his days having lunch in New York.

She was not that kind of woman,” her daughter clarifies.

In February 1976, in the midst of the scandal unleashed by

Answered Prayers ,

New York

magazine

published an extensive report titled

Capote bites the hands that feed him

.

The upper class skinned him alive.

CZ was one of the few who didn't attack him.

“Everyone knows that the man is a professional and they told him those things anyway.

He is a dear friend of mine, but I wouldn't talk about very intimate matters with him,” she said.

The expulsion from high society pushed Capote into alcoholism and drugs, a spiral of addictions that did not allow him to finish

Answered Prayers

.

CZ Guest and her husband, heir and polo player Winston Frederick Churchill Guest, a distant cousin of Winston Churchill, took him to Hazelden, a famous rehabilitation center in Minnesota.

“My father adored him for his intelligence and wit and took personal care of him.

He admired him because Truman didn't miss anything,” says Guest.

When the novelist left the center, the Guests were waiting for him at the Studio 54 nightclub to dance and celebrate his recovery.

Cornelia Guest walking for the Dennis Basso brand, during New York Fashion Week, on September 11, 2023.Gilbert Flores (WWD via Getty Images)

In 1982, just two years before the writer's death, CZ Guest invited Capote to his daughter's debut at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel.

“He had a great time.

He loved being with young people.

He was a

voyeur

of life, like almost all writers,” recalls Cornelia Guest, then baptized by

The New York Times

as “the debutante of the decade.”

“Truman was happy when he was surrounded by youth and beauty.

One day he came to see me at an equestrian competition.

I found him helping the riders polish their boots.

My mother told me: 'He's here to see those handsome boys.'

He was so funny and I was so innocent.”

He doesn't remember the last time he saw Capote or the last conversation they had.

“I was very young,” she laments.

But she does not forget the words of her mother: “Never discuss your private life with a journalist.”