King’s Speech, The Read online

  Nevertheless the main challenge still lay ahead: on 4 May, at 5.45 p.m., Logue met Sir John Reith to check that the microphone was properly installed. It was fitted to a desk to enable the King to broadcast while standing up, as was his preference. He tried it out, speaking some of the words from the text of the planned broadcast speech. He had also been at a rehearsal at the Abbey and had been amused that everyone there seemed to know their job except the bishops.

  After a few moments the two princesses came in, saying ‘Daddy, Daddy, we heard you’. They had been listening in a nearby room where a loudspeaker had been installed to relay the two men’s voices. After staying a few minutes the little girls wished Logue what he described as a ‘bashful good night’ and, after shaking hands with him, went to bed themselves.

  The King continued to practise over the next few days but with mixed results. On the sixth, with the Queen listening, things went badly and he became almost hysterical, although she managed to calm him down. ‘He is a good fellow,’ Logue wrote of the King, ‘and only wants careful handling.’ The next day, with Reith and Wood (the BBC sound engineer) in attendance, they recorded a version of the speech. It was too slow and the King was disgusted with it. They tried again, but halfway through he wanted to cough, so they had to make yet another attempt. ‘He was quite pleased and departed for his lunch in good patter and with his normal happy grin,’ Logue wrote. ‘He always speaks well in front of the Queen.’

  On the seventh, Reith, who was taking a close interest in the speech, was able to write to Logue that all the gramophone records made that morning were in a sealed box that had been left with a Mr Williams at the Palace. He suggested making a composite record of them, ‘which could be more or less perfect as to speech, by taking bits of the first attempt and bits of the third, so that there need be no blemishes anywhere’. This, Reith thought, would not only be handy in case anything went wrong on the twelfth; it could also be used for transmissions of the speech planned for the Empire throughout the night and the next day, and might also be given to HMV as the basis of a gramophone they were planning to sell.

  Writing back, Logue insisted the final decision was up to Hardinge, but added, ‘A good record is essential, just in case of accidents, loss of voice etc, and the third one with the treatment you suggest, should make an excellent record.’

  While the records provided a useful insurance policy of sorts, the King was further encouraged by eulogistic reports in the newspapers the next day of a speech he had made in Westminster Hall. It was, Logue agreed, ‘a good job it was not in front of a microphone. It is partly his dislike of the microphone, it must have been engendered when he returned from SA [South Africa] and made his first speech in Wembley Stadium. It was a terrible failure and the scar has remained ever since.’

  While there would be no dreaded microphone in the Abbey, the King would have to make his speech into one that evening. Logue was not sure whether it would be better to have a dozen people present or for him to be there alone with the King. ‘In an ordinary speech, he is ever nigh perfect, he makes a good speech, and enjoys it but loathes the microphone,’ he wrote in his diary.

  Logue decided the room on the first floor opposite the King’s study was an excellent room for broadcasting, because it looked out onto the main quadrangle and was very quiet. A steward had discovered an old desk in the basement, which had been covered with baize and its sloping lid raised up by two blocks of wood until the top was level. Two gilt microphones and a red light were mounted between them. ‘We have tried sitting down to a small table, but he is better on his feet,’ Logue wrote. ‘He is indeed a gallant fighter, and if a word doesn’t quite go right, he looks at me so pathetically and then gets on with the job. There is very little wrong with him, the only big thing is “fear”.’

  The same day Logue received a call from his friend John Gordon, now already six years into his tenure as editor of the Sunday Express. The coronation, and speculation about how well the King would speak his lines, was inevitably reviving the newspapers’ interest in his speech impediment – and in the assistance Logue had given him in fighting it. Gordon read him an article about the King which, Logue was pleased to note, did not mention him at all by name. Even after all these years, he was still trying to avoid rather than seek out the limelight.

  An hour later, Gordon called him to say that a Mr Miller, who claimed to be a reporter on the Daily Telegraph, had sent in an article to the Sunday Express about the King that began: ‘A black eyed grey haired man, aged 60, an Australian, is in constant attendance on the King and is his greatest friend. They ring each other up every day, etc. etc.’

  It was, Logue considered, ‘all wrong. Very scurrilous and would do a tremendous lot of harm. John asked if he had my authority to act. I said of course, that it was a damn shame that such a thing should be written. John sent for him and said that the article was quite wrong and could cause a lot of harm. He put the fear of hell into Mr Miller and said that if he sent it to anyone, he would never have another article published. Mr Miller left the article with John and said that it would not happen again. John rang me up and told me the good news. Thank Heavens.’

  On the morning of Monday the tenth, with two days to go before the coronation, Logue went to the Palace. The tension was clearly getting to the King, whose eyes looked very tired. ‘He said he was not sleeping well and his people didn’t even know what was the matter,’ recorded Logue. ‘Think he is very nervy.’

  That evening, at eight o’clock, there was another twist. Logue received a telephone call saying he was being recognized in the Coronation Honours List for his services to the King. He didn’t believe it at first and rang Gordon, who confirmed its veracity. Later he and his family went over to Gordon’s house, drank champagne and celebrated. Clearly thrilled, Logue ended his diary that day, ‘Everything Splendid. “M.V.O.” – Member of the Victorian Order.’

  When Logue saw the King the following afternoon, he thanked him for the great honour. The King grinned and said, ‘Not at all. You have helped me. I am going to reward those who help me.’ He then took the order out of his drawer, showed it to Logue and said ‘wear this tomorrow’. The Queen laughed and congratulated Logue.

  While he was there, Logue and the King listened through the recording they had made of his speech. It was good enough to broadcast, but Logue hoped it wouldn’t be necessary to use it. ‘H.M. improves every day, getting good control of his nerves and his voice is getting some wonderful tones into it,’ he noted in his diary. ‘Hope he does not get too emotional tomorrow. H.M. offered up a prayer tonight. He is such a good chap – and I do want him to be a marvellous King.’

  CHAPTER TEN

  After the Coronation

  George VI and Queen Elizabeth on their way to the state opening of Parliament, 12 October 1937

  Both the coronation itself and the speech to the Empire that evening had been a triumph for the King – as next morning’s newspapers noted. ‘Slow, deliberate and clear, his voice betrayed no sign of fatigue,’ commented the Daily Telegraph. A clergyman wrote to the Daily Mail from Manchester to express delight at ‘the sound of the King’s voice and the purity of his diction’. He continued: ‘With all the depth of his father’s voice, there is an additional softness which makes it even more impressive for the listener. I think it was the nearest approach to perfect “standard English” I have ever heard. There was no trace of anything which could be called accent.’

  Those listening abroad were also pleasantly surprised by the fluency of the supposedly tongue-tied monarch. The compiler of the Detroit Free Press’s radio notes was baffled by what he had heard coming loud and clear over the ether from London. ‘Now that the coronation is over, listeners are wondering what became of the speech impediment that King George VI was supposed to have,’ he wrote. ‘It wasn’t apparent throughout the entire ceremony, and after hearing the new King deliver his address, many persons are classifying him with President Roosevelt as possessing a perfect radio vo
ice.’

  With the coronation behind him, the King was able to relax. He was still not completely cured of his speech impediment but, with Logue’s assistance, he was gradually getting the better of it. Logue, meanwhile, suffering from what Time described as nervous exhaustion, was reported to have left London for a long rest. On his return, he helped the King prepare for the various speeches that were now becoming routine.

  Although such speeches passed off fairly successfully, the King’s staff were concerned about the effect his continuing speaking problems were having on him – and were forever on the lookout for ways of treating them. On 22 May Sir Alan ‘Tommy’ Lascelles, the King’s assistant private secretary, wrote to Logue referring to a letter he had received from an A. J. Wilmott relating to correspondence in The Times about how forcing left-handed children to act as if they were right-handed could cause problems – among them speech impediments such as stammering.

  In his reply, four days later, Logue notes how such practice can lead to a disorder – which may disappear if the patient is changed back to his natural hand. He stressed that it was too late for the King, however. ‘After 10 years of age it becomes increasingly difficult to change the patient back again, and I have rarely heard of a case in which it has proved satisfactory in middle life.’ Bizarrely, he suggested it might be possible to obtain ‘temporary relief ’ from such a problem (often mistaken for a cure) by ‘assuming an American or cockney accent’, presumably since, as H. St John Rumsey, his fellow speech therapist, had argued, this would lead to a greater concentration on vowels rather than the dreaded consonants. It was clearly not an option for the King, though, even if some people had claimed to have heard something of a transatlantic twang in his elder brother’s speech when he was monarch.

  Logue’s conclusion was that ‘unfortunately in the matter of Speech Defects, when so much depends on the temperament and individuality, a case can always be produced that can prove you are wrong. That is why I won’t write a book.’

  During a meeting on 20 July, Hardinge said the King was talking well but was overtired. Logue agreed, saying it was a shame he did not get more time to himself as he was overloaded. This impression was confirmed when he saw the King later that day: he seemed very drained and they had a long talk about his weak stomach and how it affected his speech.

  ‘They certainly don’t understand the King,’ Logue wrote in his diary that same day. ‘I, who know him so well, know just how much work he can stand up to and talk splendidly – give him too much work and make him too tired and it impacts on his weakest part – his speech. They are very foolish to overwork him. He will crash and they will only have themselves to blame.’73

  The fear of such a crash was timely: the State Opening of Parliament was only a few months away and, although not nearly so much of an ordeal as the coronation, it would still pose a considerable challenge. There was also the question of Christmas and whether or not the King should follow the tradition established by his father of making a radio address to the people of the Empire.

  The State Opening, at which the King would read out the programme of Neville Chamberlain’s government (Chamberlain had become prime minister that May), was, of course, an unavoidable part of his duties as monarch. This did not prevent him worrying about it. He was preoccupied with how well George V had spoken to parliament in the past and was concerned he would fall short – as Logue noted after a meeting on 15 October when they had a run-through of the text. ‘He is still worrying over the fact that his Father did this sort of thing so well,’ Logue wrote in his diary. ‘As I explained, it took his Father many years before he got in the excellent state he did.’

  The King was actually making good progress with the text itself, which ran to 980 words and took him ten to twelve minutes to get through. But there was the further challenge of having to do so while wearing a heavy crown. When Logue arrived for a practice on the eve of the ceremony, he was surprised to see the King sitting on his chair running through the speech, with the crown perched on his head.

  ‘He put it on so that he could find out how far he could bend to the left or right without it falling,’ Logue wrote in his diary on 25 October. ‘The crown fits so perfectly that there is no need to worry in the slightest.’ After two successful run-throughs, the King put the crown away.

  Both men were encouraged by his performance, even if the memory of his father continued to loom large. ‘I have never heard him speak so well and have never known him so happy, or seen him look so well,’ Logue wrote. ‘If the King does well tomorrow, it will do him a tremendous amount of good. There is not the slightest need for him to do anything but well. It is only the inferiority complex about his Father, very nervous that is worrying him. His voice was beautiful tonight.’

  The speech to parliament passed off successfully, with that weekend’s edition of the Sunday Express describing it as a triumph. ‘He spoke slowly but there was no hesitation or stammer,’ it said. ‘Indeed, the words took on a dignity and actual beauty from the tempo that he had wisely imposed on himself.’ The newspaper also noted how the King’s confidence grew as the speech progressed, with him raising his eyes and glancing around the chamber. ‘One does not need to be clairvoyant to understand what was passing through the Queen’s mind,’ it concluded. ‘When the King had finished she could not keep from her eyes the pride of a woman in her husband.’

  This still left the not inconsiderable matter of what to do about Christmas. On 25 December 1932 George V had begun what was to turn into a national tradition of the annual radio broadcast to the nation. Seated at a desk under the stairs in Sandringham, he had read out words written for him by Rudyard Kipling, the great imperial poet and author of The Jungle Book: ‘I speak now from my home and from my heart to you all, to all my peoples throughout the Empire to men and women so cut off by the snows, the desert or the sea that only voices of the air can reach them, men and women of every race and colour who look to the Crown as the symbol of their union,’ he declared.

  George V made a further broadcast in 1935, in which he reflected not just on his Silver Jubilee but also on two other major royal events of the year: the marriage of his son Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester, and the death of his sister Princess Victoria. The broadcasts, which were mildly, but not overly, religious in tone, were intended to cast the monarch in the role of head of a great family spanning not just the United Kingdom but also the Empire – something his granddaughter, Queen Elizabeth II, was to strive to do during her more than half a century on the throne. Her Christmas messages, initially on radio and later on television, were to become an important part of the Christmas ritual for tens of millions of her subjects.

  Neither George VI nor those around him saw it like that though. For him, the Christmas message was not a national tradition, merely something that his father had chosen to do, and the King had no desire to emulate him. The previous Christmas, with his elder brother’s abdication only two weeks old, there had certainly been no expectation that he should speak. By December 1937, though, the situation was different and there was a clamour from the Empire in particular for the new King to make a broadcast. Thousands of letters began to arrive at Buckingham Palace urging him to speak.

  The King was nevertheless still reluctant; part of this was the usual trepidation he continued to feel about any public speaking engagement, especially one that would require him to speak alone into a microphone to tens –maybe hundreds – of millions of people. He also seemed to feel that in making such a speech he would somehow be encroaching on his father’s memory.

  One solution, proposed by Hardinge at a meeting on 15 October, at which Logue was present, was that the King should instead read the lesson in church on Christmas morning. However, the idea was dropped because of concerns it might offend other denominations. The Palace was coming round to the idea that the King should read a short message to the Empire, and after a meeting on 4 November when Logue worked with the King on a couple more routine speeches, Hardinge
showed him a rough draft which he proclaimed quite good.

  Logue, meanwhile, had another concern. There were erroneous but persistent rumours that Princess Margaret, now aged seven, suffered from the same speech impediment as her father. Logue suggested to Hardinge that the next time she was in a news film, she should make a point of saying a few words – something like ‘Come on, Mummy’ or ‘Where is Georgie?’ or simply call the dog – ‘anything at all to prove that she can talk and lay for ever the rumour that she has a speech defect’.

  November passed: a speech in honour of Léopold III, the King of the Belgians, went well. The King had also been apparently unfazed by an incident during the Remembrance Day ceremony at the Cenotaph when an ex-serviceman who had escaped from a mental asylum interrupted the two-minute silence with a shout of ‘All this hypocrisy’.

  When Logue met the King on 23 November, they had a long discussion about Christmas during which the King revealed he still hadn’t quite made up his mind. One thing was clear, though: even if he did end up making a speech, it should not be seen as the reinstatement of an annual tradition. Logue didn’t blame him and it was decided to make a final decision on the matter the following week. ‘He is going down to Sandringham and then to the Duchy of Cornwall and will give it mature thought on the way,’ Logue wrote. ‘I should think it would be a good thing to do a small broadcast this Xmas but certainly not every year.’

  Despite the pressure of the decision weighing on him, the King was in a light-hearted mood, joking about official protocol at dinner as well as the problems of sitting ambassadors from hostile countries next to each other. He also laughed as he read Logue a rhyme about his brother and Wallis Simpson, chuckling when he got to the line, ‘looked after State in day time and Mrs Wally at night’.