The King's Speech - Mark Logue [34]
The Duke and Duchess sailed from Portsmouth on 6 January 1927. The King and Queen had seen them off at Victoria; there was a particular sadness about their departure – they also had to say farewell to their baby daughter Elizabeth. ‘I felt very much leaving on Thursday, and the baby was so sweet playing with the buttons on Bertie’s uniform that it quite broke me up,’ the Duchess wrote later to the Queen.36 Frequent letters from home reporting on their daughter’s progress went only a little way to comforting them in their absence.
Bertie was also weighed down by the seriousness of the formal responsibilities ahead. Twenty-six years earlier his father, at the time the Duke of Cornwall and York, had inaugurated the federation by opening the first session of the Commonwealth parliament in Melbourne. Now his second son was to follow in his footsteps. ‘This is the first time you have sent me on a mission concerning the Empire & I can assure you that I will do my very best to make it the success we all hope for,’ he wrote to his father.37 Determined to give the best performance he could, Bertie embarked on the exercises that Logue had prepared for him. He applied himself to his schedule with considerable energy, even while many of those around him were resting in the tropical heat.
They sailed westwards, stopping at Las Palmas, Jamaica and Panama. In an effusive letter from Panama on 25 January, the Duke described how he had been practising his reading exercises and had made three short speeches – one in Jamaica and two in Panama – all of which had gone well, despite the troublesome heat. ‘Ever since I have been here,’ the Duke wrote:
I have not been held up for a word in conversation at any time. No matter with whom I have been talking. The reading every day is hard to arrange for any length of time, but I do so at odd moments, especially after exercising when I am out of breath. This has not upset me either.
Your teaching I must say has given me a tremendous amount of confidence and as long as I can keep going and thinking about it all the time for the next few months I am sure you will find that I have not gone back. I don’t think about the breathing anymore; that foundation is solid and even a rough sea doesn’t shake it when speaking. I try to open my mouth and it certainly feels more open than before. You remember my fear of ‘The King’. I give it every evening at dinner on board. This does not worry me anymore.
The letter, as always hand written, was signed ‘Yours very sincerely Albert’.38
Patrick Hodgson, the Duke’s private secretary, was also keen to assure Logue of the progress his pupil was making. ‘Just a line – in very hot weather – to let you know that HRH is in great form and the improvement in his speech well maintained,’ he wrote in mid-February from onboard ship near Fiji. ‘He delivered speeches at Jamaica and Panama very well and though perhaps there is a trifle more hesitancy than when you are near at hand he is full of confidence and altogether much better than I expected he would be in your absence.’39 Hodgson concluded by promising to write again when the Duke had spoken in public a bit more.
Then it was on westwards to New Zealand. At dawn on 22 February, under pouring rain, they passed the narrow straits into the bay of Waitemata and the port of Auckland. The dreaded speeches began immediately in earnest: on the first morning alone, Bertie had to make three of them. ‘The last one in the Town Hall quite a long one, & I can tell you that I was really pleased with the way I made it, as I had perfect confidence in myself & I did not hesitate at all,’ Bertie wrote to his mother five days later from Rotorua. ‘Logue’s teaching is still working well, but of course if I get tired it still worries me.’40 The ensuing