THE SWANS OF FIFTH AVENUE by MELANIE BENJAMIN : MISTRESS MANIFESTO BLOGSPOT BOOK REVIEW

An artful fictive recounting of the interactions between author Truman Capote and his "Swans," which in this case includes Pamela Digby Churchill Harriman, as well as Slim Keith who was married to Leland Hayward before Pamela married him, Babe Paley, and other ladies who did lunch in the pre-Beatles 1960's in New York, I was just fascinated with how author Melanie Benjamin reimaged in all.

Known to have betrayed his long friendship with Babe Paley, as well as the other women, by using them as characters in a "fictive" novel that was exposed first as a magazine article, Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood" fame and participation in high society ended with his alcoholism and inability to write any more. In Swans of Fifth Avenue these women's friendships sometimes seem unlikely, as is their tolerance and ultimate understanding of Pamela.  She is dining out with the woman whose husband she went after. In the end, though estranged, both Truman's and Babe's death bed scenes include loving memories of each other.  Meanwhile, after Babe's death we learn that womanizing husband Bill Paley had a long time affair with Babe's best friend Slim.  And hints that Gloria Guinness had been a mistress makes me want to start researching her.

But about Pamela

EXCERPT:

"Babe would never do that," Slim admonished her.  "Babe Paley would never apply lipstrick at the table."

"She never had to," Pam marveled.  "How is that possible?  I've never seen Babe's lipstick ever smear or fade."  Slim, she noticed, had apparently applied her makeup with a trowel, and now it was sliding down her face, like melted frosting. Poor Slim.  She did look like the wreck that she was; the bitter, resentful wreck who sill behaved as if she was Leland's rightful widow.

But Pam was simply not to blame.  Men, the dear boys, did need to be taken care of, and American women were particularly bad at that, so intent on having their own fun.  Babe really was the only American woman of her acquaintance who knew how to keep a husband.  Whereas British women, well, they were born knowing how to take care of men, their own - and everyone else's.

Pamela had grown up possessing the gift of how to soothe and flatter and caress and purr and then ignore, just when the flattering and caressing got to be a bit too much.  She knew how to cast a wide net and keep things friendly, no matter how distastefully they might end, so that she would be able to use one lover to help another, politically or in business.  These men were grateful to her, and had paid her handsomely, set her up very well, and for a long time, after that disaster of a first marriage to Randolph Churchill....   But then one day she realized she was well into her thirties and known only as a courtesan, not a wife.  And in the twentieth century - the prosaic, unromantic twentieth century - wives were more highly prized than mistresses.  So she looked around and saw a husband who wasn't being cared for, and determined to rectify that.  Yes, well, it was rather a shame that the husband happened to belong to a friend of hers.  But that was water under the bridge in her opinion.


Pages 88 and 89 - Reflected Glory by Sally Bedell Smith

Notes: the person who does lipstick at the table is Marella Agnelli.  Of course Pamela has had a long mistresshood with the man who married Marella.  So this scene seems to me to be especially unlikely, even if Pamela liked to stay friends with her exes.  But you never know!

Missy