The King's Speech - Mark Logue [53]
Some foreign observers allowed themselves a more cynical aside. ‘Neither King George nor Queen Elizabeth has lived a life in which any event could be called of public interest in the United Kingdom press and this last week was exactly as most of their subjects wished. In effect a Calvin Coolidge entered Buckingham Palace with Shirley Temple for his daughter,’ commented Time.71
Looming over the King was the question of his speech impediment. Thanks to Logue, he had made huge progress since his humiliating appearance at Wembley a decade earlier, but he was not completely cured of his nervousness. For obvious reasons, the tactic adopted was not to draw attention to it, which meant Logue was appalled when Cosmo Lang, the Archbishop of Canterbury, mentioned his stammer in a speech on 13 December, two days after the abdication.
In what shocked many of those listening, Lang, a highly influential figure, had begun his words with an attack on the former King who, he said, had surrendered the high and sacred trust placed in him to a self-admitted ‘craving for private happiness’. ‘Even more strange and sad it is that he should have sought his happiness in a manner inconsistent with the Christian principles of marriage, and within a social circle whose standards and ways of life are alien to all the best instincts and traditions of his people,’ the Archbishop thundered. ‘Let those who belong to this circle know that today they stand rebuked by the judgment of the nation which had loved King Edward.’
The directness of the Archbishop’s comments promoted an angry response from several people who wrote in to the newspapers – and distressed the Duke of Windsor who listened to this news from the castle in Enzesfeld, Austria, where he was staying with Baron and Baroness Eugen Rothschild.
Ultimately more damaging, however, was what the Archbishop had to say about the new King. ‘In manner and speech he is more quiet and reserved than his brother,’ he said. ‘And here may I add a parenthesis which may not be unhelpful. When his people listen to him they will note an occasional and momentary hesitation in his speech. But he has brought it into full control and to those who hear, it need cause no sort of embarrassment, for it causes none to him who speaks.’
The Archbishop clearly thought his words were for the best. In a speech the following day in the House of Lords, he praised the new King’s ‘sterling qualities’ – his ‘straightforwardness, his simplicity, his assiduous devotion to public duty’ – which, even though he did not say so directly – were clearly in direct contrast to the brother whom he had succeeded.
Archbishop Lang’s comments were picked up by the American press. ‘The 300 Privy Councillors were asked by all their intimates one question: “Does he still stutter?”’ reported Time on 21 December. ‘No Privy Councillor could be found willing to be quoted as saying that His Majesty does not still stutter.’
Although the British press refrained from discussing such matters, Lang’s comments helped fuel a whispering campaign of gossip against the new King and his fitness to rule. This grew in intensity after he announced in February that he was postponing a Coronation Durbar in India which his brother had planned for the following winter, blaming the postponement on the weight of duties and responsibilities he had faced since his unexpected accession to the throne. For some, though, it was taken as a sign of weakness and frailty; several among the Duke of Windsor’s dwindling band of allies suggested Bertie might not be able to survive the ordeal of the coronation, let alone the strains of being King.
Back in Australia, Bertie’s accession to the throne had led the newspapers to refocus attention on the role of one of their own in helping cure his speech impediment. A rare