The King's Speech - Mark Logue [24]
It was also time for the boys to start their education. George had not received much formal schooling himself and did not consider it much of a priority for his own children. David and Bertie were not sent to school but were instead tutored by Henry Hansell, a tall, gaunt tweed-clad bachelor with a large moustache who seemed to have spent more of his time at Oxford on the football or cricket fields than in tutorials or lecture halls. A less than inspiring teacher, he thought the boys would be better off at prep school, like others their age; their mother appears to have agreed. George was having none of it, however, blaming their lack of academic progress on their stupidity. Tellingly, though, he was to relent later with two younger sons, both of whom he sent away to school.
Given the amount of time they spent together – and the distant nature of their parents – it was natural that David and Bertie should become close. It was an unequal relationship: as the oldest child, David both looked after his younger siblings and told them what to do. In his own words, written years later in his autobiography, ‘I could always manage Bertie.’ As puberty approached, Bertie, like all younger brothers, appears to have begun to resent such management – as Hansell noticed to his concern. ‘It is extraordinary how the presence of one acts as a sort of “red rag” to the other,’ he reported.19
This was more than just usual sibling rivalry. David was not just older, he was also good looking, charming and fun. Both boys were also aware from an early age that he was destined one day to become king. Bertie had been less blessed by fate: he suffered from poor digestion and had to wear splints on his legs for many hours of the day and while he slept, to cure him of the knock-knees from which his father had suffered. He was also left-handed but, in accordance with the practice of the time, was obliged to write and do other things with his right, which can often cause psychological difficulties.
Adding to Bertie’s problems – and to some extent a result of them – was the stammer that had already begun to manifest itself when he was aged eight. Indeed, the incidence of stammering has been demonstrated to be higher among those born left-handed. The letter ‘k’ – as in ‘king’ and ‘queen’ – was a particular challenge, something that was to prove a particular problem for someone born into a royal family.
Matters were not helped by the attitude of Bertie’s father whose response to his son’s struggles was a simple ‘get it out’. A particular trial was their grandparents’ birthdays, which were marked by a well-established ritual: the children were required to memorize a poem, copy it out on sheets of paper tied together with ribbon, recite the verses in public and then bow and present them to the person whose anniversary was being celebrated. It was bad enough when the poem was in English – later, after they started language lessons, they had to be in French and German, too. Such occasions, to which their grandparents invited guests, were a nightmare for Bertie, according to one of his biographers.
‘The experience of standing in front of the glittering company of grown-ups known and unknown, and struggling with the complexities of Goethe’s Der Erlkönig, painfully conscious of the contrast between his halting delivery