As a teen-ager and a young woman, Miss Duke spent much of her time at the 78th Street mansion, to which she sometimes referred jauntily in later years as "the rock pile." She took piano lessons, was tutored in French and Italian, went out to dinner at fashionable restaurants, and frequently went to the theater, although to avoid crowds she did not go to opening nights.
She also acquired a love of travel that was to stay with her through her life. Miss Duke, who was known to some as Dee-Dee, was guarded by private detectives and sometimes traveled under an assumed name. "It saves trouble," she once said, "and keeps people from paying more attention to me than to anyone else."
Nevertheless, she was continually harassed by cranks, and there was some fear that she might be kidnapped.
Her half-brother, Walker Patterson Inman, who often traveled with her, once said: "Everywhere we go, it's the same. She gets to see a few of the sights, goes out to dinner a few times, and then her identity becomes known and we have to rush off somewhere else. We can't take any chances. When word gets out that she's in town, it's like telling gangsters: 'Here's a lot of money. Come and get it.' " But that's not the worst of it," he added. "Mail comes in by the bagful, and every crank in town wants to see her. Every imaginable plea for money comes by mail, to say nothing of threats against her because she's supposed to have so much money."
In hopes of seeing her, reporters gathered outside the 78th Street mansion on the evening of Nov. 21, 1933, but she eluded them and slipped out for a quiet dinner with friends. What made that night newsworthy, it was reported at the time, was that at the stroke of midnight, when she turned 21, she acquired control of one-third of the assets that had been held in trust for her.
Although no precise figures were released, it was estimated that the total value of her inheritance had shrunk by then, because of the financial crash and the Depression, to roughly $30 million. As stipulated in her father's will, Miss Duke acquired control over additional large parts of her inheritance on her 25th and 30th birthdays.
Tobacco Queen As Married Woman
Soon after turning 21, Miss Duke began being seen in the company of a dashing, strong-jawed older man. It was James Cromwell, the son and grandson of prominent yachtsmen and the stepson of a partner in the banking house of J. P. Morgan & Company.
Mr. Cromwell and Miss Duke had first met in 1929 in Bar Harbor, Me., when she was a long-legged teen-ager and he was already 10 years out of the University of Pennsylvania.
Rumors of an engagement blossomed, were denied, blossomed again. And then, with little advance notice, the couple were married in a civil ceremony on Feb. 13, 1935, in the 78th Street house. The bride was 22, the groom 38. They sailed off on a prolonged honeymoon. Visiting Agra, the Indian city that is the site of the Taj Mahal, the bride told a a questioner happily, "I'm a married woman now," and remarked that she did not like it when people called her "the world's richest girl" and "the tobacco queen."
"Tobacco queen -- what a name!" she said.
Back in the United States, the Cromwells set up housekeeping in ducal style at Duke Farms, with its 30-room stone manor house, its private movie theater (she loved movies) and 42 miles of private roads. For a change of scene, they built an elegant vacation house on the coast of the Hawaiian island of Oahu.
As time passed, relations between the Cromwells soured, and after protracted legal wranglings Mrs. Cromwell was granted a divorce in Reno in 1943 on grounds of cruelty. She resumed the use of her maiden name. Later, she testified that Mr. Cromwell had demanded an "endowment" of $7 million in return for the divorce. Learning to Work And Enjoying It
In 1944, Miss Duke went to Egypt to help the United States war effort by working, for $1 a year, for the United Seaman's Service, which operated canteens for American merchant seamen.
"I couldn't live with myself if I didn't do something real to help in this war," she said at the time. "This may sound funny, but I honestly believe I'm happier now than I've ever been in my life. I feel I'm doing something worthwhile, earning the right to be friends with a lot of swell, interesting people that I've somehow missed before. I've discovered, I guess, that it's fun to work." Relishing the overseas life, she went on to Europe, where she wrote dispatches in 1945 and 1946 for International News Service, an American news agency that is now defunct, getting around Rome on a bicycle.
Miss Duke was entertaining an American couple in her Rome apartment one day when a suave and handsome Latin American came to call. He was carrying a guitar, which he was to play while she accompanied him on the piano. It was Porfirio Rubirosa, the high-spirited Dominican society figure.
The harmony beween Mr. Rubirosa and Miss Duke proved so compelling that they were married on Sept. 1, 1947, in a civil ceremony at the Dominican Consulate in Paris, where she had gone to work for Harper's Bazaar magazine. He was 39; she was 34. By some accounts the formalities included the bridegroom's signing a legal document that affirmed the bride's control over her fortune. They spent their honeymoon at Cap d'Antibes, on the French Riviera, where they swam, sunbathed and went motorboating. Not long afterward, he became the Dominican Republic's Ambassador in Buenos Aires.
Despite his charm, the marriage foundered. Miss Duke obtained a Reno divorce from Rubirosa on Oct. 27, 1948, after charging him with extreme mental cruelty. As time went on it became clear that Miss Duke preferred to remain single. The life she fashioned for herself was largely centered on her estates, and it involved some frivolity and some high seriousness, along with much unobtrusive travel.
It included both new and old interests. She served as a trustee of Duke University, which her family had built up with donations of many millions, and in her later years she became fascinated by the search for alternative sources of energy.
Cultivating Gardens And Saving History
At Duke Farms, she laid out a series of interconnected, glassed-in gardens, totaling thousands of square yards, that were opened to the public in 1964 after much labor by her and her workers.
"Sometimes when we're hanging the flowers I spend 16 hours a day," she once told a friend, adding cheerfully, "I work like a stevedore." Next page