The King's Speech - Mark Logue [35]
The Duke’s first thought was to abandon the latter part of his tour of South Island and go back to Wellington with her. Intensely shy by nature, he had come to depend heavily on his wife’s support. Such was the enthusiasm with which the Duchess was greeted by the crowds – a foretaste of the welcome that Princess Diana was to receive more than a half century later when she and Prince Charles toured Australia and New Zealand – that Bertie was convinced she was the one the crowds really wanted to see.
The Duke persisted, however, and was pleasantly surprised by the response. Impressed by his self-sacrifice, the crowds gave him an especially warm welcome as he continued his tour alone. When he was reunited with the Duchess on board the Renown on 22 March, he could look back with a degree of satisfaction on what he had achieved, even without her by his side.
But the real challenge lay ahead with the Australian leg of their tour, which began four days later when they came ashore in brilliant sunshine in Sydney Harbour. Bertie was apparently undaunted by what awaited him. ‘I have ever so much more confidence in myself and don’t brood over a speech as in the old days,’ he wrote. ‘I know what to do now and the knowledge has helped me over and over again.’41
The following two months, during which the royal couple travelled from state to state, were every bit as packed with engagements – including, of course, speeches. One of the most emotional the Duke had to make was in Melbourne on 25 April to commemorate Anzac Day, marking the twelfth anniversary of the Gallipoli landings. He carried it off with success.
Then on 9 May came the main event of the trip: the opening of parliament. The Duke had slept badly the night before because of nerves, and he had added to his burden by proposing an extra speech. So many people were expected to attend that he decided to make a brief address to the crowds outside as he opened the great doors of the new Parliament House with a golden key. Dame Nellie Melba sang the national anthem; troops paraded and aeroplanes droned overhead – one of them crashed from four hundred feet about a mile from the reviewing stand, killing the pilot. Although some twenty thousand people were present (and an estimated two million listened at home on the radio) the Duke won the battle with his nerves. It was, wrote General Lord Cavan, his chief of staff, to the King, ‘ a tremendous success & entirely H.R.H’s own idea’.42
As he stepped into the small Senate Chamber to make his formal address to members of both houses of parliament, the Duke was hit immediately by the heat, which intensified as the lights were switched on for the photographers and cameramen whose footage was to be distributed by Pathé news to viewers back in Britain. ‘So terrific was the light that it raised the temperature of the Senate from 65 to 80 degrees in twenty minutes, in spite of the fact that by special request, one third of it was turned off,’ noted Cavan.43 Yet the Duke pressed on, putting in what all concerned considered an impressive performance.
At the official luncheon the 500 guests joined the Duke in toasting his father in orangeade and lemonade – Canberra was by law completely dry. Such enforced abstinence did little to dampen the Duke’s feeling of pride and relief in what he had done; this was reflected in a letter he wrote back to his father in which he paid tribute to the assistance he had received from Logue. ‘I was not very nervous when I made the Speech, because the one I made outside went off without a hitch, &I did not hesitate once,’ he wrote. ‘I was relieved as making speeches still frightens me, though Logue’s teaching has really done wonders for me as I now know how to prevent