National Affairs: The Pursuit of Happiness

A few years ago, Doris Duke—"Dee-Dee" to her intimates—resurrected an old bronze statue of a bull. It had been in one of Dee-Dee's barns.She had it dragged out and set up among the fauns and iron deer on her Somerville, N.J. estate. It was a sentimental gesture. The bull was the metal incarnation of the animal on the old Bull Durham tobacco label—almost the coat-of-arms of Dee-Dee's father, James Buchanan Duke, founder of the American Tobacco Co., who had died in 1925, leaving Dee-Dee $53 million.

Dee-Dee was twelve then, and suddenly just about...