The King's Speech - Mark Logue [61]
Despite the fog and gloom, everyone was in high spirits. Logue and the King went back to the microphone to try out the speech. As they did so, they could hear it booming back through the large radiogram in the room next door. So this was switched off and the rest of the royal family and their guests trooped up to the nursery to listen from there instead.
At five minutes to three, the King lit a cigarette and began to walk to and fro. Wood tried the red light to see it was working properly and they synchronized their watches. With one minute to go, the King threw his cigarette into the fireplace and stood with his hands behind his back, waiting. The red light flicked four times, and he stepped up to the microphone. The red light ceased for a moment and then came back on full, and he began to speak in a beautifully modulated voice.
‘Many of you will remember the Christmas broadcasts of former years, when my father spoke to his peoples, at home and overseas, as the revered head of a great family . . .’
He was speaking too quickly: close to a hundred words a minute, rather than the eighty-five that Wood had wanted. He also had trouble with one of the words, running on to it too quickly.
‘His words brought happiness into the homes and into the hearts of listeners all over the world,’ the King continued. Logue was pleased to note that he was pulling himself up.
Then, high up in the speech – an inclusion that was to be noted by the newspapers – came the insistence that this was to be a one-off rather than a tradition: ‘I cannot aspire to take his place – nor do I think that you would wish me to carry on, unvaried, a tradition so personal to him.’
The King continued at the same pace, sweetly towards the end, when he paused. After precisely three minutes and twenty seconds, it was all over. ‘Just a shade too long on two words through trying to get too much of an emphasis,’ Logue recorded.
But to the King, he said: ‘May I be the first to congratulate you, Sire, on your first Christmas Broadcast.’ The King shook his hand, gave what Logue described as ‘that lovely schoolboy grin of his’, and said, ‘Let’s go inside.’
They went back into the reception room where the royal family and guests were thronging down from the nursery. They crowded round the King and they, too, congratulated him. It was now 3.20 and the royal family and visitors began to disperse: some went to their rooms; others went out for a short walk. The King, his wife and mother went back into Wood’s room to wait and hear the broadcast played back.
Queen Mary, aged seventy, was as interested as a schoolgirl in all the paraphernalia and, after shaking hands with all the men, had the instruments explained to her. Then the telephone rang. Wood took the call and said, ‘London is now ready to play it back to us, your Majesty.’ Queen Mary sat in front of the microphone and Logue stood with his hand on the chair. The King was leaning against the wall, and the Queen, her face animated and flushed, was standing in the doorway.
Then the opening bars of ‘God save the King’ came through and they heard the speech back again. When it was over, Queen Mary thanked them all and asked Wood: ‘Was all this done when my late husband broadcasted and were all you gentlemen here?’
‘Yes, your Majesty,’ replied Wood.
‘And I knew nothing about it,’ replied Mary, rather sadly as it seemed to Logue.
As they passed through the microphone room, her daughter-in-law, Queen Elizabeth, stopped Logue and, putting her hand on his shoulder, said: ‘Mr Logue, I do not know that Bertie and myself can ever thank you enough for what you have done