The King's Speech - Mark Logue [39]
The Evening News took up the same theme that October. ‘The Duke of York grows in fluency as a speaker,’ it noted. ‘He is markedly more confident than he was two years ago, more confident, indeed, than he was a few months ago. Continued practice tells in public speaking.’ The Daily Sketch was impressed that the Duke was ‘freeing himself more and more from the impediment that formerly interfered with an appreciation of the true gift he possesses for the apt and finished phrase’. Hearing the ‘music’ in the Duke’s voice during a speech at the Stationers’ Hall, a somewhat more imaginative writer for the Yorkshire Evening News was reminded of other examples of great orators who had overcome hardships. ‘I thought of Demosthenes and the story of his victory over hesitant lips; of Mr Churchill and his conquest; of Mr Disraeli whose maiden speech was a humiliation; of Mr Clynes, who in his teens, used to go out into a quarry to practise the art of speaking.’50
While newspaper writers noticed the improvement in the Duke’s speaking, quite how he had managed to achieve it (and the special role played by Logue) remained a mystery to those who heard him speak, to the wry amusement of his teacher. In another cutting from the period headed ‘How well the Duke of York has trained himself to speak’, Logue has underlined the phrase ‘has trained himself ’. In a short report on 28 November 1928, the Star attributed the Duke’s overcoming of his ‘old difficulty in speaking’ to the influence of his equerry, Commander Louis Greig, who had become a close friend since they first met almost two decades earlier when Greig was assistant medical officer at Osborne naval college.
Yet it was only going to be a matter of time before the secret got out, given the number of visits the Duke was making to Harley Street and the frequency of Logue’s appearances at his side. On 2 October 1928 Logue received a letter at his practice from Kendall Foss, a correspondent in the London office of the United Press Associations of America news agency.
‘Dear Sir,’ wrote Foss from the agency’s office in Temple Ave, EC4.
I understand that you are in possession of the facts concerning the curing of the Duke of York’s speech impediment.
Although some miscellaneous information on this subject is current in Fleet Street, I should naturally, like to have the truth before printing this story.
Out of deference for His Royal Highness, I am writing to you for an appointment, hoping that you will be good enough to supply us with the facts for an exclusive story to be published in North America.
Trusting to hear from you favourably, I remain,
Kendall Foss for the United Press.
Logue appears to have rung Hodgson for advice but was told he was ‘on holiday, and lost on the Continent’. Foss followed up over the next few days with phone calls both to Harley Street and Bolton Gardens. On 10 October an exasperated Logue wrote back: ‘While thanking you for your courteous letter of the 2nd October, it is quite impossible for me to give any information on the subject.’
Undaunted, Foss pressed on with his researches. His story eventually appeared on 1 December 1928 on the front page of the Pittsburgh Press and in a number of other US papers. ‘The Duke of York is the happiest man in the British Empire,’ it began. ‘He no longer stutters . . . The secret of the duke’s speech defect has been well kept. Since boyhood he has been troubled and for about two years he has been undergoing a cure which has proved successful. Yet the story has never been published in Great Britain.’ The account that followed had, Foss wrote, been ‘only obtained after the most exhaustive inquiries and investigations. Almost no one in Great Britain seemed able to provide information’.
Foss went on to tell the story of Logue, his techniques and how he had come to work for