Doris Duke is Born

Doris Duke died in 1993. For anyone who has been dead for decades the publication of the first serious literary biography is a rebirth.

For some of my loyal readers, it must have seemed that my biography would never see the light of day, but here it is, with its beautiful black-and-white cover, so appropriate for the tile: The Silver Swan: In Search of Doris Duke. I must give all credit to my editor at Farrar, Straus & Giroux for both title and subtitle. I had originally called my biography something with a distinctly academic feel which I do not need to repeat here.

Ileene Smith, my editor, had a much better title in mind, and I am glad I had sense enough to accept it with gratitude. So many people, both at Farrar and elsewhere, helped with this book that I will be busy thanking them for a long time.

Some readers will look first at the pages of photographs, many small black and white shots, some informal, some, like her portrait by Cecil Beaton, so contemporary they could have been shot yesterday—a combination of Beaton’s genius, Doris’ classic black velvet gown and the two diamond bracelets she is wearing, in honor of her mother, who loaned or gave them to her. Like all of Nanaline Duke’s jewelry, these had been given to her by James Buchanan Duke, her husband and Doris’ devoted father.

I hope to dismantle or at least question the assumption that Doris and Nanaline were on bad terms. This is too often the assumption about mothers and daughters.

What else do I hope my biography will accomplish?

Nothing less than a complete reconsideration of Doris Duke.

She was one of very few woman to use her vastly increased inherited money to fund a foundation: the Doris Duke Charitable Trust. For reasons that remain obscure, her work as a philanthropist and even the existence of her Trust, which makes substantial grants every year, remain clothed in obscurity.

Ah—women and money. As a friend of mine pointed out, men who are enormously wealthy are admired while women with money are treated with suspicion.

I have a few ideas about that. In former times, the only money women could lay claim to came from divorced husbands or dead fathers; in a patriarchic culture, that fact is suspicious. Does the fortune really belong to the inheriting woman or was it gained through some illegitimate means, seduction, betrayal, manipulation, even murder?

None of this is actually expressed, of course. Prejudice is seldom mentioned in so many words; but the underground effects continue, sometimes for many generations.

Now that women earn our own fortunes, when the opportunities are there for us, this prejudice may disappear—but maybe not. Women possess many forms of power, and that is terrifying to some people. And money of course increases our power. Who or what is going to control it, or us?

I’m hoping that at the various readings I’ll be doing in the next months—Santa Fe, New York, Louisville, Boston and Newport at this point—I’ll be able to raise this question.

I also hope to get at the underlying dismay—again, never expressed—that a woman who crosses what used to the called The Color Line experienced… and experiences still. One of the first people to look at the array of pictures in my biography commented with amazement on a photo of Doris with an African-American member of the choir from the Nutley, New Jersey, Baptist Church. Doris, in a blindingly blond wig, sang with this choir for years,

Her choice of friends and lovers who were not always white continues to evoke surprise, even if the surprise is quickly suppressed.

Can this question be raised, too?

Who knows?

Perhaps most important, because it is such a potent symbol, would be a portrait of Doris somewhere on the Duke University campus.

She deserves that, and so much else.

[The Silver Swan: In Search of Doris Duke Will be published on April 7, by Fattah, Straus & Giroux]

In Writing The Silver Swan Cecil Beaton 20 Favorites of 2020 Doris Duke