The King's Speech - Mark Logue [33]
‘What those seven months imposed upon the Duke in toil and effort has never been adequately understood by the nation,’ recalled Logue’s friend, the Sunday Express journalist John Gordon, years later. All that effort at last began to show results: the Duke began to conquer difficult consonants over which he had previously stumbled. Each breakthrough prompted him to throw himself back into his exercises with still more determination.
On one occasion, a snobbish neighbour sent a curt letter to Logue telling him to instruct his visitor not to park his car outside his house. When the Australian replied that he would tell the Duke to put his car somewhere else, the neighbour’s tone changed completely. ‘Oh, no, don’t. I’ll be delighted if the Duke will continue to leave it here.’
A few weeks before he was due to leave on his trip, the Duke faced a test of his speaking abilities. The Pilgrims Society, a dining club with the aim of furthering Anglo-American relations, wanted to hold a farewell dinner for him. Its members, a mix of politicians, bankers, businessmen, diplomats and other influential figures, were used to hearing some of the best speakers in the world. On this occasion Lord Balfour, who had been prime minister more than two decades earlier, was in the chair and some of Britain’s most gifted speakers were on the toast list. In short, it would have been a challenge for the best orator, let alone for someone who still struggled to pronounce the letter ‘k’.
The Duke decided to confront the challenge head on. He prepared and revised the speech himself and, on the day of the banquet, left the hunting field early to have a final rehearsal with Logue. The Duke’s reputation was such that those present hadn’t expected much more than a few hesitant words. Instead, they were addressed by a smiling, confident speaker who, although no great orator, spoke with a surprising confidence and conviction. As Darbyshire put it, ‘Those who were at that dinner will not easily forget the surprise in store for them.’
Although they had largely tiptoed around the sensitive matter of the Duke’s speaking problems, the newspapers also expressed surprise at how well he’d done. ‘The Duke of York is rapidly improving as a speaker,’ reported the Evening News on 27 December. ‘His voice is good – unmistakably the family voice. He still sticks too closely to his notes to have much freedom in his manner; but is none the less princely.’ Another newspaper added, ‘Everybody knows the difficulties under which he speaks. He has practically conquered his impediment of utterance, and as his old private secretary Sir Ronald Waterhouse remarked as the gathering was dispersing,“Wasn’t he wonderful! It was the best delivered speech he has ever made.”’
The Duke revealed later that he had treated the speech as a real test of the progress he had made under Logue’s tutelage and that, by acquitting himself with such success, he had reached a turning point in his career; at last, his handicap seemed to be fading into the past.34
The challenges the Duke would face on the tour were of a wholly different scale, however. He would have liked to have his teacher with him but Logue declined, pointing out that self-reliance was an important part of the cure. Pressure was put on Logue to change his mind, but he stood firm, stating it would be a ‘psychological error’.
The Duke appears not to have held it against him – an apparent acceptance on his part, too, of the importance of self-reliance. The day before he left, he wrote, ‘My dear Logue, I must send you a line to tell you how grateful I am to you for all that