The Duchess Of Windsor Read Online Free PDF Page B

Edward, and Dame Peggy Ashcroft as Queen Mary. According to Verity Lambert, Maître Blum’s very public objections only created more interest in the series. “We could never have bought such publicity,” he declared. 2
    Blum, however, was not finished. On November 20, 1978—after two episodes of the series had already aired on British TV—she released a press statement which declared that the series was “largely and essentially a fable based on an incorrect or distorted interpretation of the facts.” To Blum, every hour included a “wave of calumnies.” To counter these alleged inaccuracies, she announced that a famous—but unnamed—French historian would soon publish the couples’ private papers and letters. 3
    “People,” Blum declared, “will be amazed to discover how seriously they have been fooled. Mrs. Simpson, the Duchess of Windsor, has been portrayed as a cheap adventuress, determined to get hold of the Duke of Windsor, determined to marry the King and destroy the King. The reverse is true. She was the reluctant partner. What has particularly distressed her—and myself—has been the allegation that she was Edward’s mistress. This was quite untrue. The King did not want a mistress, and if he had, no doubt he would not have abdicated. He wanted a wife and the support of this one woman for the rest of his life.” 4
    The enormous publicity over the Thames TV series was the first time most people heard of Maître Suzanne Blum. As much as the Duchess of Windsor herself, Blum remains a figure of great controversy: Was she a loyal and dedicated servant to the Duchess in her failing years, devoted to preserving both Wallis’s life and her memory; or was she something far more sinister—a malevolent force in the Duchess’s life, separating her from her few remaining friends, instructing that Wallis be kept alive by any means necessary, and presiding over the questionable dispersal of the Windsor estate?
    Suzanne Blumel had been born in 1898, in the tiny provincial French village of Niort. She was an unusual young woman, gifted, headstrong, and determined to overcome any prejudices attached both to her sex and to her Jewish heritage. Exceptionally intelligent, she graduated from the University of Poitiers in 1921; that same year, she married lawyer Paul Weill, who later worked as the Paris representative of the London firm of Allen and Overy, the Duke of Windsor’s solicitors.
    At the outbreak of the Second World War, she had fled occupied Paris and studied law at Columbia University in New York City. In her exile, she spent much of her time and energy trying to win the release of former French premier Léon Blum, a great friend of her brother’s who had been imprisoned for alleged treachery in the fall of the Third Republic. At the end of the war, she and her husband returned to France, where, having legally changed her name to Suzanne Blum, she took on the formal legal title of maître, or master, and began her illustrious career. Her list of famous clients included Rita Hayworth, Charlie Chaplin, Jack Warner, Darryl F. Zanuck, and Walt Disney. When her first husband died, Blum was married to Gen. Georges Spillmann, a distinguished soldier and noted Arabic scholar.
    Blum, according to one reporter, was “a woman of incisive manner and sharp brains. Diminutive, she still dominates by her presence. Her face is unlined, her complexion excellent and her features bear evidence of her once having been a considerable beauty—and she manages to look elegant, even in her lawyer’s robes.” 5
    In 1979, Blum asked Michael Bloch to write several books on the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. His view of the lawyer, whom he considered a dose friend, is entirely favorable: “The Maitre was an extraordinary personality, who throughout her long career had taken the causes of her clients to heart, and she felt strongly that the Windsors had been mistreated and maligned and that it was her duty to protect their