Separate sides: The consequential friendship of Truman Capote and Harper Lee
If you grew up in the deep south of America in the early 20th century, life could be increasingly challenging because you could not conform to stringent traditions and social mores. Yet, Truman Capote and Harper Lee, two figures whose characters and intellects were to take them on adventurers far beyond the restrictive confines of their native environment, were to be graced by fortuity in that they would meet when children and form a consequential bond. In part, this convergence helped them become widely influential authors.
Capote and Lee came from families differing in social status. Lee’s father was a lawyer who worked in the Alabama State Legislature and a member of the prominent Lee family, which included mythologised Confederate General Robert E. Lee. On the other side of the coin, Capote’s father was a salesman, and his parents divorced when he was two, a controversial decision at the time that had a definitive impact on his life’s course.
Despite this difference in background, they found a kindred spirit in each other. They were lonely children, with Lee significantly younger than her two older sisters, only having her brother, Edwin, who was still six years older to play with in her formative years. Furthermore, Capote was an only – and lonely – child. In a show of his singularity, he was precocious enough to teach himself to read and write before he entered the first year of school. He even planned to be an author by the age of eight.
Born in New Orleans, Louisiana, due to circumstances, at just four, Capote was sent to Monroeville, Alabama, for nearly five years to be raised by his mother, Lillie Mae Faulk’s relatives. While he formed a bond with a distant relative, Nanny Rumbley, whom he nicknamed ‘Sook’, this period was also momentous on another front, as he was a neighbour of Harper Lee, whom he would befriend.
The pair were such great friends that they would influence each other’s work. The character of Idabel Thompkins in Capote’s 1948 semi-autobiographical debut, Other Voices, Other Rooms, was based on Lee, a peevish tomboy who befriends the 13-year-old protagonist, Joel – a depiction of the young Capote.
During an interview with Lawrence Grobel, the forthright Capote explained: “Mr. and Mrs. Lee, Harper Lee’s mother and father, lived very near. She was my best friend. Did you ever read her book, To Kill a Mockingbird? I’m a character in that book, which takes place in the same small town in Alabama where we lived. Her father was a lawyer, and she and I used to go to trials all the time as children. We went to the trials instead of going to the movies.”
Lee was known to repudiate the autobiographical essence of her 1960 masterpiece, but once more, Capote would offer further insight, particularly in light of his parallels to the character of Dill, the boy who visits every summer and befriends protagonists Scout and Jem.
Touching on the supposedly real inspiration for the mysterious Boo Radley in To Kill a Mockingbird, Capote once said: “In my original version of Other Voices, Other Rooms, I had that same man living in the house that used to leave things in the trees, and then I took that out. He was a real man, and he lived just down the road from us. We used to go and get those things out of the trees. Everything she wrote about it is absolutely true. But you see, I take the same thing and transfer it into some Gothic dream, done in an entirely different way.”
Capote’s chef-d’oeuvre, the pioneering 1966 true crime work In Cold Blood, was brought to life with the help of Lee. Investigating the 1959 Clutter family murders in Holcomb, Kansas, after the author first heard about it in The New York Times, he took Lee with him to gain the trust of the locals while he conducted his research. Together, the pair interviewed residents and law officials working on the case, analysing a mass of information. There have long been rumours that Lee was angered that she didn’t receive enough credit for her kind assistance and hard work on In Cold Blood.
Lee would even follow Capote in relocating to New York. She lived part-time at 433 East 82nd Street in Manhattan for four decades, close to the In Cold Blood author. However, in the 1960s, as they both experienced immense success, their lives diverged. Following Lee winning the Pulitzer Prize in 1961 and Capote immersing himself in the world of the East Coast’s rich and powerful after In Cold Blood arrived, it became clear that they wanted different things from fame.
Lee rarely appeared in public after To Kill a Mockingbird was published until her 2016 death, and Capote became a socialite. His lifestyle reportedly took its toll on his writing career, which stalled after In Cold Blood arrived. Given his sad death at age 59 in 1984 and Lee’s practical reclusiveness, it has never been confirmed whether they fell out or drifted, with it thought that it was somewhere in between. Either way, though, there’s no denying the significance they had to each other.
