Photography courtesy of Wikipedia
Rebekah Harkness
This week, Taylor Swift showed the world what she’s been working on during quarantine: a new album, Folklore, which the singer-songwriter released late Thursday evening. The 16-track album, Swift’s eighth, features a song titled “The Last Great American Dynasty,” about the late St. Louis–born socialite Rebekah West Harkness, whom Swift paints as an eccentric. (The music site NME is praising the tune as "a contender for the best Taylor Swift song ever written"; you can watch the official lyric video below.) Upon the album’s release, much of the Internet was thrown into a “Who Is Rebekah West Harkness?” madness. The answer is more complicated than Swift’s song reveals.
First, a brief biography: Born Rebekah Semple West in St. Louis in 1915, Harkness was a divorcée whose second marriage was to Standard Oil heir William Hale Harkness. The two purchased a mansion in Watch Hill, Rhode Island, which they nicknamed Holiday House. The Harknesses were married for a brief period—just seven years. William Hale died of a heart attack in 1954. The Swift connection is that the superstar bought Holiday House for a reported $17 million in 2013.
On the track, Swift sings:
Rebekah rode up on the afternoon train, it was sunny / Her saltbox house on the coast took her mind off St. Louis / Bill was the heir to the Standard Oil name and money / And the town said / “How did a middle-class divorcée do it?” / The wedding was charming, if a little gauche / There’s only so far new money goes / They picked out a home and called it “Holiday House” / Their parties were tasteful, if a little loud / The doctor had told him to settle down / It must have been her fault his heart gave out
And they said / There goes the last great American dynasty / Who knows, if she never showed up, what could’ve been / There goes the maddest woman this town has ever seen / She had a marvelous time ruining everything
Swift later connects herself to Harkness in the final moments of the song:
Holiday House sat quietly on that beach / Free of women with madness, their men and bad habits / And then it was bought by me
Who knows, if I never showed up, what could’ve been / There goes the loudest woman this town has ever seen / I had a marvelous time ruining everything
I had a marvelous time ruining everything / A marvelous time ruining everything / A marvelous time / I had a marvelous time
Also in the song, Swift mentions some of Harkness’ antics. She filled a pool with Champagne. (Harkness reportedly cleaned her pool with Dom Pérignon.) She blew through her fortune “on the boys and the ballet.” (Harkness was an avid patron of the arts and founded her own company, Harkness Ballet. The Harkness Foundation for Dance still exists. She was also a composer. A 1955 article from The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports that one of her works would be premiering at Carnegie Hall in New York City.) She lost card game bets with Salvador Dalí. (No such record could be found, but the famous Surrealist artist did design the $250,000 jewel-studded urn that held her ashes. Harkness died of cancer in 1982 in New York City. She was 67.) She stole a neighbor’s dog and dyed it key lime green. (Allegedly, it was a cat if it matters.)
However, a 1988 biography of Harkness titled Blue Blood, written by former New York Magazine editor and Vanity Fair contributor Craig Unger, reveals a much sadder, tragic story. The book is available for purchase on Amazon for $195, but a May 1988 New York Times review by the late journalist Barbara Grizzuti Harrison clues us into the reported inner world of Harkness as published in the book.
Harrison notes some of the same lighter-hearted factoids about Harkness from Unger’s biography: She was allegedly once kicked off a cruise ship for swimming nude, for example.
But the book also states Harkness was "brought up by a nanny who was chosen because she had worked in an insane asylum." And then there were her three children. Her son, Allen Pierce, was convicted of murder. Her daughter Terry gave birth to a child who died at age 10. Harkness’ other daughter, Edith, died of suicide after many attempts.
Watch the video for "The Last Great American Dynasty":
