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Archive Dive: Truman Capote in the City
Welcome to Archive Dive—my new excuse to obsess over the absolute treasures hiding in House Beautiful’s 130-year-old archives. Every month, we’ll dig up a favorite story from the past (epic room makeovers, wildly bold design swings, and style moments that were way ahead of their time) and talk about why they still resonate today. It’s part history lesson, part design deep-dive, and 100 percent a love letter to the iconic taste that’s defined HB for over a century.
—Jo Saltz, House Beautiful Editor in Chief
Nothing in the April 1969 issue of House Beautiful reveals just how the editors that year secured an original essay by the enigmatic young writer Truman Capote describing his favorite and least favorite type of room, as well as the stories behind several objects in two of his four homes. Fortunately, they did, and HB readers were lucky enough to get a glimpse into the famous author’s New York City apartment, lacquered red “like sinking into a hot raspberry tart,” as well as his Long Island house where an actual lion pelt was used as a rug.
Capote’s words, always carefully chosen, are as unapologetic here as his personal style: “I'm an animal lover, and I like them alive or as objets virtu,” he explains.
By Truman Capote
I can remember in immaculate detail rooms unseen since I was five years old. I have always been aware of rooms, their atmosphere, the emotions they induce. I can be content only in two kinds: the totally anonymous room (a reasonably clean motel room wouldn't bother me in the least) and the completely subjective—virtually every object under my various roofs is by nature a souvenir. (The Victorian cat I found in Florence on my first trip to Italy.)
I dislike impersonal rooms—and some of the handsomest and most admired rooms are precisely that: "taste" is there, but all evidence of the tenant's own style, his humanity, is absent. Mostly I arrange my own rooms and always have. I don't think I could create a room for another person—anyway, my fantasies are too impractical for most people. Rotating with the seasons, I live in four places: in the city (New York), by the sea (Long Island), in the mountains (Verbier, Switzerland), and in the desert (Palm Springs).
Truman Capote in the City (New York, NY)
A corner of my library-dining room, a mostly red affair that is rather like sinking into a hot raspberry tart—a sensation you may not relish, but I quite enjoy. The lamp is Tiffany's "The Wisteria Tree"; others of his admirers may quarrel, but I consider it the gentleman's masterpiece. This New York apartment, for which my friend, the gifted Mrs. George Backer, deserves the principal credit, looks out on the United Nations.
My own peaceable kingdom. I'm an animal lover, and I like them alive or as objets virtu. The flower-burdened owl is really an Austrian beer stein; I found him on Second Avenue, where I am a constant browser and sometimes buyer.
Muguet is my favorite flower, especially when one finds bouquets of it scattered in a January room. Anemones are a close second with me. I am very partial to red lacquer and finally took the great plunge of acquiring this Chinese Chippendale desk from Accorsi, the incomparable antiquaire in Turin.
Truman Capote at the Sea (Long Island, NY)
My favorite room is this one, in the house by the sea. Actually, the whole house is one large studio room built on different levels. The dominant colors are chosen from the sea itself: blue and green—a very dark blue and a very dark green. The blue-painted floors are lacquered to a mirror finish; most of the furniture is painted the same blue, so that it blends into a sort of floating, optical illusion. The spiral stair leads to an open balcony that serves as a sitting room. The small blue chaise in front of the fireplace belongs to my dog, Charlie. A friend, Winston Guest, shot the lion. At night, with a fire burning and the room lighted with blue and green lamps, the whole place seems to me dreamily adrift, a sea-grotto that moves but is stationary. Whatever—it is a room that works for me and one in which I am able to work.
This window looks out on a grass-thicket sanctuary that stops at the edge of the sea. A friendly community of pheasants and rabbits, wild geese and owls, all live there. Frequently I gaze out to find a fox staring me in the eye.
The lamp, another by Tiffany, is composed of blue and green glass hunks; it started me on the color pattern that dominates the room. As for the photographs: the face in the forefront is my mother, the one beyond is my father.
This is the table at which I work. It is wicker, but extraordinarily heavy; nothing trembles except my nervous self. The wall before it rises two floors, is entirely mirrored, and reflects the whole room, doubling its size and making it, at moments, look like the shimmering inside of a Russian Easter egg.
Some folks, in the way of a trophy or personal emblem, display the heads of savage beasts, but I prefer a butterfly made of pearl shells and Georgian silver—it seems a more suitable signature. The hats are part of a sizable collection. I love hanging them hither and there, for it makes me think: Well, somebody lives here-in fact, I live here.
