The King's Speech - Mark Logue [32]
Oct 30: Diaphragm much firmer, a distinct advance.
Nov 16: A good all round improvement much greater control, diaphragm almost under complete control.
Nov 18: As he progresses the click in the throat becomes very noticeable as other faults are cleared up. Diaphragm is now forcing air through throat muscles.
Nov 19: Never made a mistake during the hour, despite fact very tired.
Nov 20: Lower jaw became pliable.
After the initial interview, the Duke had a total of eighty-two appointments between 20 October 1926 and 22 December 1927, according to a bill eventually drawn up by Logue on 31 March 1928. The initial consultation cost him £24 4s; the other lessons a total £172 4s. Logue charged him a further £21 for ‘lessons taken on trip to Australia’, giving a grand total of £197 3s – the equivalent of close to £9,000 today.
This ‘trip to Australia’ was the main reason for the Duke’s visits to Harley Street. The following January, he and the Duchess were to embark on a six-month world tour abroad the battle-cruiser Renown. The highpoint would be 9 May, when the Duke was to open the new Commonwealth Parliament House in Canberra. It was a highly symbolic occasion. The Daily Telegraph claimed the Duke’s speech there would be as historic as Queen Victoria’s proclamation as Empress of India in 1877. With all eyes – and, more crucially, ears – upon him, Bertie could not risk a repetition of the Wembley fiasco.
The origins of the trip went back just over a quarter of a century to the transformation of the then Australian colonies into states, federated together under one Dominion government. This government, and the parliament to which it was responsible, was initially located in Melbourne, in the State of Victoria. This was only a temporary solution, however; while the people of Victoria would have liked their capital to become the federal one, Sydney, the capital of New South Wales, also wanted the honour.
A decade later, a compromise was finally decided upon: the government acquired an area of nine hundred square miles from the state of New South Wales, which was to be designated federal territory and serve as the site of a new Australian capital, Canberra. Although the First World War caused a hiatus, building work finally began in 1923, and 1927 was chosen as the year for transfer of power to Canberra and the convening of the first session of the federal parliament. Stanley Bruce, the prime minister, asked King George V to send one of his sons to perform the opening ceremony.
The Duke’s elder brother, the Prince of Wales, had toured Australia in 1920 to lavish acclaim, and the King felt it was time his younger son carried out an important imperial mission. But he was not entirely convinced that Bertie was up to it – not least because of his stammer. Bruce had his doubts too: he had heard the Duke speak several times during the Imperial Conference of 1926 and had not been impressed. Bertie was equally doubtful about his ability to get through the gruelling programme of speeches that would be required. Embarking on such a long trip would also mean leaving behind his Duchess and their only child, Princess Elizabeth, who had been born the previous April.
Despite such concerns, on 14 July the Governor-General sent a cablegram to the King asking that the Duke and Duchess open parliament; five days later came the official confirmation back from London.
It was against this background that the Duke was to have his first meeting with Logue exactly three months later – and it seems to have provided him with a considerable psychological boost. According to Taylor Darbyshire, an early biographer of the Duke, ‘The one great advantage of that first consultation was that it had given the Duke assurance that he could be cured . . . Disillusioned so often before, the change in the outlook caused by the discovery that his trouble was physical and not as he had always feared mental, re-established his confidence and renewed his determination.’33
It was one thing to identify the problem but quite another to rectify it. In the seven