Sallie Bingham discusses The Silver Swan: In Search of Doris Duke, available from Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Recorded Fall of 2019 in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
So how did this book start? That’s always the question. Remains something of a mystery as it always does, but really it began many, many years ago with the only time I actually met Doris Duke, although you could hardly call it a meeting because I don’t think she even spoke to me. This is when I was a very young woman in Paris, newly married, and my husband told me we were going to a lunch with some French people. I don’t think I knew who – I don’t even remember where – but it was a very formal and rather dark apartment in Paris.
It was largely men, the conversation was in French, I only spoke a little French. It was very formal. I was pretty thoroughly intimidated but in addition to being intimidated I was just astonished—having grown up in the South, in the usual society that Southern women grew up in—to see that at one end of this long table there was a woman, an august presence, at the end of the table and at the other end there was no husband. There was no master of the house. I had never seen that before. It deeply impressed me, I didn’t know what to make of it. And after we left, when I left my husband who our hostess had been, he said Doris Duke.
It created an indelible impression of a kind of feminine power that I had never seen before. And it would be many, many decades before I saw another example of it.
And then about 15 years ago, I began to have a connection with Duke University—actually more than 15, more like 25—through an archive I established there called the Sallie Bingham Archive for Women’s Papers, a flourishing collection that keeps the papers of women from being forgotten and destroyed over time.
And as I was going back and forth to Duke, with this purpose in mind, I stayed at the Inn on the campus, and coming down in the morning through the lobby I would notice these black busts of the men in the Duke family—Doris’ father, her uncle and so forth. But there was no portrayal of Doris Duke.
As I was learning about her, I knew she was not only the daughter of the founder but a major contributor to Duke University as well as a very interesting and important figure in her own right. So why was she not there? When I asked people that I knew in the university why there was no representation of her, there was a kind of feeling of awkwardness that one gets when one asks unwelcome questions. And that immediately interested me. What is the back story here?
I’ve always been fascinated by stories of women who are erased for various reasons. My step grandmother was the first one that I became aware of. And so I decided to try to find out as much as I could about her to see if I could find the seed for this curious exclusion.
I was very fortunate in having the support of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation which gave me the permission to look at Doris Duke’s big archives which she left to Duke University in 1993 when she died. It’s 800 linear feet… it was put at my disposal with only a very few restrictions and that is really the basis of my biography.
So it’s been a great pleasure to write this book, I’m really looking forward to its publication next spring. Wonderful to have Farrar, Straus and Giroux behind this book, I believe we’re going to have 30 pages of photographs which will give a very clear distinction—indication—of who Doris was. Not only the beautiful fashion photographs by people like Cecil Beaton but the more informal photographs particularly in Hawaii which show her great love of life and her attachment to the people that she depended on there.
And the title is based on the fact that among her many, many possessions Doris Duke cherished a silver swan, a table ornament made by Tiffany which travelled with her when she moved from house to house, and seemed to be a suitable symbol for this mysterious and fascinating woman. The swan is a mythical creature and among many of the roles it is said to have no voice. And since Doris Duke in effect had no voice that she left behind at least, the silver swan seems to be an apt symbol for her.
I’ve been very fortunate to be able to see this biography through to conclusion. I hope that it will find readers who find all kinds of connections as I think are apparent with the life we are living in today in the 21st century where enormously wealthy people are so much watched—even admired—and the questions of what they actually contribute to their society are crucial questions—crucial questions—because they have so much power.
To learn more about Doris Duke’s life, philanthropy, properties and legacy, please watch Doris Duke’s Legacy or visit the Doris Duke page on this site.
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