A bold portrait of Doris Duke, the defiant and notorious tobacco heiress who was perhaps the greatest modern woman philanthropist.
In The Silver Swan, Sallie Bingham chronicles one of the great underexplored lives of the twentieth century and the very archetype of the modern woman. “Don’t touch that girl, she’ll burn your fingers,” FBI director J. Edgar Hoover once said about Doris Duke, the inheritor of James Buchanan Duke’s billion-dollar tobacco fortune. During her lifetime, she would be blamed for scorching many, including her mother and various ex-lovers. She established her first foundation when she was twenty-one; cultivated friendships with the likes of Jackie Kennedy, Imelda Marcos, and Michael Jackson; flaunted interracial relationships; and adopted a thirty-two year-old woman she believed to be the reincarnation of her deceased daughter. This is also the story of the great houses she inhabited, including the classically proportioned limestone mansion on Fifth Avenue, the sprawling Duke Farms in New Jersey, the Gilded Age mansion Rough Point in Newport, Shangri La in Honolulu, and Falcon’s Lair overlooking Beverly Hills.
Even though Duke was the subject of constant scrutiny, little beyond the tabloid accounts of her behavior has been publicly known. In 2012, when eight hundred linear feet of her personal papers were made available, Sallie Bingham set out to probe her identity. She found an alluring woman whose life was forged in the Jazz Age, who was not only an early war correspondent but also an environmentalist, a surfer, a collector of Islamic art, a savvy businesswoman who tripled her father’s fortune, and a major philanthropist with wide-ranging passions from dance to historic preservation to human rights.
In The Silver Swan, Bingham is especially interested in dissecting the stereotypes that have defined Duke’s story while also confronting the disturbing questions that cleave to her legacy.
Men who inherit great wealth are respected, but women who do the same are ridiculed. In The Silver Swan, Sallie Bingham rescues Doris Duke from this gendered prison and shows us just how brave, rebellious, and creative this unique woman really was, and how her generosity benefits us to this day.”— Gloria Steinem
In her fascinating book about tobacco heiress Doris Duke, whose net worth had ballooned to $1.2 billion by her death in 1993, Bingham gets at how inherited wealth liberates women but also burdens them.”— The National Book Review, “5 HOT BOOKS”
In this illuminating biography, Bingham (The Blue Box) chronicles the life of philanthropist and tobacco heiress Doris Duke (1912–1993)… Bingham is a generous biographer in this exacting, measured work.”— Publishers Weekly
Bingham adds a trove of new material to the Duke oeuvre, including revealing quotations from letters and details of daily life on Duke’s many estates.”— The New York Times
Posts on The Silver Swan: In Search of Doris Duke:
Margaret in the Wilderness
Posted: April 2nd, 2023Surrounded by disasters of every kind, we are seeing the great strengths of our extraordinary adaptability, valued and valuable as it has never been before.
Doris Farewell
Posted: April 10th, 2022Thursday night I was privileged to present a conversation about my book and Doris Duke in one of the huge gilded rooms at Rough Point...
Doris Redux
Posted: April 6th, 2022I'm about to leave New York City in its grey rain for Newport and Rough Point, the big house on Ocean Avenue Doris inherited from her father and that seems to have been closely associated, for her, with her mother.
Getting to YES
Posted: March 24th, 2022Out of the sour ground of NO spring many hopeful sprigs, especially the generous responses to so many of my posts from you.
Margaret in the Wilderness
Posted: March 17th, 2022Surrounded by disasters of every kind, we are seeing the great strengths of our extraordinary adaptability, valued and valuable as it has never been before.
The Silver Swan Sails Again
Posted: December 15th, 2021Due to the generosity of a store here in Santa Fe called Travel Bug, I was able to give a reading from the biography a few days ago to a large and appreciative crowd.
Two Women: Margaret and Doris
Posted: September 24th, 2021I've come to believe over the years that there is a core similarity that connects the lives of all women. I think it is our ability to adapt.
Doris Duke: A Lifetime Search for Faith
Posted: March 17th, 2021On Tuesday, March 9, 2021 I presented a talk to The Library Committee of The Church of the Holy Faith in Santa Fe, New Mexico entitled "Doris Duke: A Lifetime Search for Faith."
Vindication
Posted: February 17th, 2021The Doris Duke Charitable Foundation's grant of 1.6 million dollars to pay for the digitalization of thousands of tape-recorded oral histories of indigenous people has a special meaning for me.
Sallie Bingham Reads
Posted: October 7th, 2020A wise interviewer asked me yesterday what I hoped to achieve through the presentation of my two current books...
And Now, Margaret Sanger
Posted: July 22nd, 2020Yesterday, Planned Parenthood of Greater New York removed the name of Margaret Sanger, "founder of the organization," from its Manhattan clinic because of her "harmful connection to the eugenics movement."
What We Can’t Say Now
Posted: July 8th, 2020We need to define, and vigorously defend, the line between art and politics.
Clearing Out
Posted: May 10th, 2020As I put my files, copies of the originals at Duke, into boxes for the shredder, I glance at a few that came as such pleasant surprises when I first found them eight or nine years ago.
The Delights of Research
Posted: April 12th, 2020There is nothing like opening a file box, with some unknown's penciled label at the top, and diving into an absolutely unpredictable collection of letters, notes, interviews—anything Doris Duke, in my case, decided to save.
“The Swan” Launches!
Posted: April 7th, 2020I am so grateful to all my readers and potential readers and I look forward to being in touch with each and every one of you.
Doris Duke is Born
Posted: March 8th, 2020What do I hope my biography will accomplish? Nothing less than a complete reconsideration of Doris Duke.
What Was Cut
Posted: February 16th, 2020I suppose it’s a stretch—but then what is the point of writing without stretching?—but I think if Doris Duke had known about Julian Abele’s work, she would have admired him and regretted that during his life time, he was never given his due.
The Next Step
Posted: November 4th, 2018How to live on nothing is a question the publishers have not condescended to consider.
Celebrities
Posted: July 22nd, 2018These days if a writer is smitten with the idea of writing a new book—a new analysis—of any supposedly well-known person, the obstacles to her research will be enormous.
Doris Duke: Changing Faces
Posted: June 24th, 2018We are all too complicated and contradictory to be explained.
Death of Ten Thousand Pricks
Posted: February 27th, 2018Scheduled to be published in August, 2018, The Silver Swan is now delayed till sometime in 2019.
I Want It to Be Said
Posted: January 15th, 2018By now we all know that the discrimination that afflicts one group afflicts all of us.
Doris Duke: Love, Sex, Power and Money
Posted: January 9th, 2018Does it matter that she never found her match in terms of money, status and achievement?
I Didn’t Sing for a Year
Posted: December 17th, 2017I remember being amazed when my young granddaughters and their friends listened, apparently unperturbed, to hip hop verses that demonize or degrade women.
Music Hath Charms
Posted: November 12th, 2017I grew up with almost no music at all. Music, after all, is not words and only words counted in that world.
Doris Duke and the Sea
Posted: October 15th, 2017Both Doris and Alleda developed physical strength, courage and confidence battling the waves on the beaches at Newport.
Doris Duke Goes to Press
Posted: October 8th, 2017My relief in learning that “The Silver Swan” will be published next June prompts me to rejoice like old-time newspaper editors when the daily edition was put to bed.
Doris Duke and Rich People’s Secrets
Posted: September 12th, 2017Our culture is unjust because we, its citizens, are satisfied for it to be that way.
Life Is What Leaps
Posted: July 6th, 2017How to keep a spark of hope alive in our so-called democratic process? How not to drop into numbness and apathy?
The Silver Swan: In Search of Doris Duke
Posted: July 4th, 2017Changing the title of my biography of Doris Duke, especially after more than six years of work, is a big deal.
Claiming the Broom
Posted: April 25th, 2017The witch with her broom is also the woman tossed up in a basket—the high flyer, the visionary, terrifying to many... and more necessary now than ever.
Girl vs. Bull
Posted: March 12th, 2017I know Doris Duke would have enjoyed seeing the statue of a little girl confronting the bull of Wall Street.
Women Writing Women’s Lives
Posted: February 16th, 2017Where, now, are the women writers we could call “outrageous”?
You Come Too
Posted: October 13th, 2016I'm asking you, my able and loyal readers, to “come too” as I head into yet another revision of my biography on Doris Duke. Originally set to be published in 2016, it is now delayed until October, 2018.
An Independent Will
Posted: October 6th, 2016Charlotte Brontë described the alienation that colored my childhood, and the childhood of so many girls, then and now.
Divine Insecurity
Posted: September 18th, 2016Pip and I were on to adventure, on the edge of danger, full of life and energy—the way I want to live.
Commemorating What?
Posted: May 30th, 2016Memorial Day, commenced in 1866 as Decoration Day, was at first specifically meant to honor the Confederate dead; when it became a national holiday in 1921, it was renamed to honor the dead in all our wars, another effort to erase differences and commodify mourning.
Doris Duke Takes Another Step
Posted: October 6th, 2015I wonder what Doris would think if she could sit at the breakfast table with my editor and me and talk about who the book’s readers will be.
Doris Duke Moves into the Limelight
Posted: July 30th, 2015I am now reading, and occasionally wrestling with, what might be call the collision—or the creative cooperation—of two minds, essentially different: the mind of the writer and the mind of the editor.
Coming Soon: The Blue Box, Three Lives in Letters
Posted: May 27th, 2014The long waits publishing entrails always make me wonder why writers sometimes refer to their new books as their children; surely no pregnancy lasts two years or more, and few professional writers wait to see their next book launched before laboring mightily to begin the next one.
Hearing The News
Posted: June 18th, 2012For my “Doris,” a home at the university her father founded...you will understand my delight and appreciation as well as my humility in the face of the many challenges I will encounter as I being to write.
Posts on/about Doris Duke:
The Zombie Law
Posted: June 26th, 2024Michelle Goldberg's column in The New York Times describes the 1935 Federal Comstock Act as a threat that Americans have not taken seriously.
Margaret in the Wilderness
Posted: April 2nd, 2023Surrounded by disasters of every kind, we are seeing the great strengths of our extraordinary adaptability, valued and valuable as it has never been before.
Doris Farewell
Posted: April 10th, 2022Thursday night I was privileged to present a conversation about my book and Doris Duke in one of the huge gilded rooms at Rough Point...
Doris Redux
Posted: April 6th, 2022I'm about to leave New York City in its grey rain for Newport and Rough Point, the big house on Ocean Avenue Doris inherited from her father and that seems to have been closely associated, for her, with her mother.
Margaret in the Wilderness
Posted: March 17th, 2022Surrounded by disasters of every kind, we are seeing the great strengths of our extraordinary adaptability, valued and valuable as it has never been before.
The Silver Swan Sails Again
Posted: December 15th, 2021Due to the generosity of a store here in Santa Fe called Travel Bug, I was able to give a reading from the biography a few days ago to a large and appreciative crowd.
Two Women: Margaret and Doris
Posted: September 24th, 2021I've come to believe over the years that there is a core similarity that connects the lives of all women. I think it is our ability to adapt.
Doris Duke: A Lifetime Search for Faith
Posted: March 17th, 2021On Tuesday, March 9, 2021 I presented a talk to The Library Committee of The Church of the Holy Faith in Santa Fe, New Mexico entitled "Doris Duke: A Lifetime Search for Faith."
Vindication
Posted: February 17th, 2021The Doris Duke Charitable Foundation's grant of 1.6 million dollars to pay for the digitalization of thousands of tape-recorded oral histories of indigenous people has a special meaning for me.
And Now, Margaret Sanger
Posted: July 22nd, 2020Yesterday, Planned Parenthood of Greater New York removed the name of Margaret Sanger, "founder of the organization," from its Manhattan clinic because of her "harmful connection to the eugenics movement."
What We Can’t Say Now
Posted: July 8th, 2020We need to define, and vigorously defend, the line between art and politics.
A Queen Exiled at Home
Posted: May 3rd, 2020If we treat ourselves as the queens we are, the example of Liliʻuokalani may inspire us.
The Delights of Research
Posted: April 12th, 2020There is nothing like opening a file box, with some unknown's penciled label at the top, and diving into an absolutely unpredictable collection of letters, notes, interviews—anything Doris Duke, in my case, decided to save.
Doris Duke is Born
Posted: March 8th, 2020What do I hope my biography will accomplish? Nothing less than a complete reconsideration of Doris Duke.
What Was Cut
Posted: February 16th, 2020I suppose it’s a stretch—but then what is the point of writing without stretching?—but I think if Doris Duke had known about Julian Abele’s work, she would have admired him and regretted that during his life time, he was never given his due.
Legacy of Harm
Posted: June 2nd, 2019Doris Duke must at least have wondered if her generosity, in all its forms, could ever compensate for the destructive effects of nicotine addiction.
Caught in the Act
Posted: February 10th, 2019One of the most notable differences between women and men in public life is we seem to know better how to avoid scandal.
Doris Duke: Changing Faces
Posted: June 24th, 2018We are all too complicated and contradictory to be explained.
To Be of Use: The Lisa Unger Baskin Collection
Posted: May 20th, 2018A great collection is always based on a passion. It is not random. It grows from a strong root.
Death of Ten Thousand Pricks
Posted: February 27th, 2018Scheduled to be published in August, 2018, The Silver Swan is now delayed till sometime in 2019.
Doris Duke: Love, Sex, Power and Money
Posted: January 9th, 2018Does it matter that she never found her match in terms of money, status and achievement?
I Didn’t Sing for a Year
Posted: December 17th, 2017I remember being amazed when my young granddaughters and their friends listened, apparently unperturbed, to hip hop verses that demonize or degrade women.
Happy Birthday, Doris
Posted: November 22nd, 2017Sometimes a choice of a name without family connotations means an attempt to break loose from the past.
Ring of Fire
Posted: October 31st, 2017Remarkable women are surrounded by a ring of fire... made up of glowing embers of gossip, innuendo, and misunderstanding.
Doris Duke and the Sea
Posted: October 15th, 2017Both Doris and Alleda developed physical strength, courage and confidence battling the waves on the beaches at Newport.
Doris Duke Goes to Press
Posted: October 8th, 2017My relief in learning that “The Silver Swan” will be published next June prompts me to rejoice like old-time newspaper editors when the daily edition was put to bed.
Life Is What Leaps
Posted: July 6th, 2017How to keep a spark of hope alive in our so-called democratic process? How not to drop into numbness and apathy?
The Silver Swan: In Search of Doris Duke
Posted: July 4th, 2017Changing the title of my biography of Doris Duke, especially after more than six years of work, is a big deal.
Why I Didn’t Get Pregnant
Posted: April 11th, 2017With our silence, we are promoting, however unintentionally, the Trump administration’s war on women.
Girl vs. Bull
Posted: March 12th, 2017I know Doris Duke would have enjoyed seeing the statue of a little girl confronting the bull of Wall Street.
Tony’s Stairs
Posted: October 23rd, 2016In Mabel's case, as in the case of so many women, it’s the myths rather than the facts that are remembered.
You Come Too
Posted: October 13th, 2016I'm asking you, my able and loyal readers, to “come too” as I head into yet another revision of my biography on Doris Duke. Originally set to be published in 2016, it is now delayed until October, 2018.
Girls of Summer
Posted: July 3rd, 2016If she can move like this playing paddle ball, surely she can act with equal skill, grace, and assurance in a board room, a corporate office, or an artist’s studio.
New Year’s Day
Posted: January 3rd, 2016I am wishing all of you, friends, acquaintances and strangers, who are kind enough to read these thoughts, the most beneficial, peaceful and fruitful new year—a cold winter with lots of snow, a spring full of bloom.
Peggy Guggenheim: Life as Art, Art as Life
Posted: December 17th, 2015All those big artist's names, and never a woman’s, although she did have a show in the gallery she owned earlier, first in London and then in New York, of thirty-one women artists.
Doris Duke in Pictures and the Deconstruction of the Past
Posted: November 19th, 2015My chapters about Doris’ war-time service are some of the most revealing, and most controversial, in my upcoming biography.
Doris Duke Takes Another Step
Posted: October 6th, 2015I wonder what Doris would think if she could sit at the breakfast table with my editor and me and talk about who the book’s readers will be.
Doris Duke Moves into the Limelight
Posted: July 30th, 2015I am now reading, and occasionally wrestling with, what might be call the collision—or the creative cooperation—of two minds, essentially different: the mind of the writer and the mind of the editor.
Scandal, Rumor and Innuendo: Doris Duke and Popular Imagination
Posted: May 5th, 2015Almost the only question people asked me about her is, “Did Doris Duke marry her butler?” No, she did not. But does that question really matter, in a long, complex and accomplished life?
A Passion for Houses
Posted: May 3rd, 2015This house has reigned on a leafy corner of a beautiful street, a few blocks from the Santa Fe Plaza, for 150 years, inhabited by a distinguished family.
Doris Duke and Me: Dancing
Posted: April 28th, 2015Doris Duke practiced with Martha Graham’s company in New York and proudly wore their black satin jacket with her name and the company’s name on the back.
Glamour-Puss
Posted: April 14th, 2015I sometimes think that love never touched her, although she knew many lovers. Always she seemed to be asking as she did of one of them, “Are you doing what you’re doing to please ME?”
My Apprenticeships
Posted: April 5th, 2015Apprenticeships of any kind—even that sort involved in learning to sew on a button—depend on a bitter and prolonged deprivation of pleasure, a narrow and deep focus that will never allow for what we call a balanced life.
Loving Dogs
Posted: March 31st, 2015Today I find myself in complete sympathy with Doris Duke’s passion, even with the uncomfortable assumption that dogs are sometimes better companions than complicated, changeable humans.
Doris Duke: Getting Dirty
Posted: March 5th, 2015Getting dirty as a child allowed Doris Duke to develop into the daring woman she became. I wonder how many eight year old girls today would be allowed to wander on the beach in a dirty shift, with mud up to their knees?
Doris Duke, Pop Music, and Me
Posted: February 24th, 2015Doris, high-diving, surfing in Hawaii, battling the waves on a stormy day off Newport as she had ever since childhood, might have resisted pop music’s anthem of female submission.
Doris Duke: First White Woman Surfer In Hawaii
Posted: November 11th, 2014Nothing could prevent Doris from seizing that moment in the surf at Hawaii when she reared high in the air, arms thrown back and chin lifted, exulting in her power to do what she wanted.
The Self-Realization Fellowship and Doris Duke
Posted: July 8th, 2014If there is a chance, and I think there is one, that Doris was touched and perhaps even changed by her connection, whatever it may prove to have been, with the Self-Realization Fellowship, her miseries would have been if not reduced, placed in a realistic context, uniting her with her fellows.
Something Has Gone Wrong
Posted: January 27th, 2014Something has gone wrong with this country, and I don’t know how or exactly when.
I Stand Corrected…
Posted: January 5th, 2014My granddaughter told me last evening that she in fact DID NOT WATCH “Sex in the City” as I had assumed, but “Desperate Housewives.”
Hearing The News
Posted: June 18th, 2012For my “Doris,” a home at the university her father founded...you will understand my delight and appreciation as well as my humility in the face of the many challenges I will encounter as I being to write.
Hats and Pearls…
Posted: March 15th, 2012“Doing good” has always been associated with that look which is why Doris Duke, mysterious, unpredictable, may turn out to be an interesting subject for my next book. Already I gather that she “did good” without caring much about it or dreaming of wearing “do good” clothes.
The Uses of Scandal
Posted: March 2nd, 2012Next week, as I begin to unravel the many strands of Doris Duke’s life, I must work hard to clear away my prejudices.
On To The Next
Posted: December 20th, 2011Now that my newest book, Mending: New and Selected Short Stories is reaching its readers, I find myself in a rather delightful quandary.
I am so excited to read this book, at last, after its release, April 7, one day after my 80th birthday. So glad I’ve lived to see it! Bravo, Sallie; once again, your work has survived your editors! Congratulations.