The King's Speech - Mark Logue [94]
The couple married on 20 November 1947 in Westminster Abbey in a ceremony attended by representatives of various royal families – but not Philip’s three surviving sisters, who had married German aristocrats with Nazi connections. On the morning of the wedding, Philip was made Duke of Edinburgh, Earl of Merioneth and Baron Greenwich of Greenwich in the County of London; the previous day the King had bestowed on him the style of His Royal Highness.
The King’s public speaking may have been getting better and better, but his health was getting worse. He was still only forty-nine when the war ended, but he was in poor physical shape: the strain he suffered during the war is often given as a prime reason, yet it is difficult to see how this strain was any greater than that suffered by the millions of men who served on the front line or indeed by the civilian population left behind. Another factor was his chain-smoking: in July 1941 Time magazine reported that, in order to share the hardship of his people, he was cutting down from twenty or twenty-five cigarettes a day to a mere fifteen. After the war, he started smoking more again.
Despite his poor health, the King set off in February 1947 on a ten-week tour of South Africa. He had already been to Australia, New Zealand and Canada, but had never visited South Africa and was keen to see it. The itinerary was a gruelling one and the King tired easily; a warm reception from the Afrikaners, especially from those old enough to remember the Boer War, was by no means guaranteed. There was also an added psychological strain: Britain was in the grip of one of the bitterest winters for decades, and the King suffered pangs of guilt at not sharing his subjects’ suffering. At one point he even suggested cutting short his trip, although Attlee strongly advised against it, warning that this would only add to the sense of crisis.
Within two months of his return, the King was beginning to suffer cramp in his legs, complaining in a letter to Logue of ‘feeling tired and strained’.91 By October 1948 these cramps had become painful and permanent: his left foot was numb all day and the pain kept him awake all night; later, the problem seemed to shift to the right. The King was examined the following month by Professor James Learmouth, one of Britain’s greatest authorities on vascular complaints, who found him to be suffering from early arteriosclerosis; at one stage it was feared that the King’s right leg might have to be amputated because of the possibility of gangrene. A few weeks later Logue wrote to express his concerns: ‘As one who had the honour to be closely connected with you during those dreadful war years and had a glimpse of the enormous amount of work you did, and saw the strain that was constantly made on your vitality, it is very evident that you have driven yourself too hard and at last have had to call a halt,’ he wrote on 24 November. ‘I know that rest, medical skill and your own wonderful spirit will restore you to health.’
The King appeared to have recovered by December, but the doctors ordered continued rest, and a trip to Australia and New Zealand planned for early the next year had to be abandoned. The King nevertheless seemed upbeat in a letter to Logue on 10 December. ‘I am getting better with treatment and rest in bed, and the doctors do have a smile on their face, which I feel is all to the good,’ he wrote. ‘I hope you are well & are still helping those who cannot speak.’
Lionel, who was fifteen years the King’s senior, was also having a bad year – and was confined for some of the time to his new flat, which was on the eighth floor. As he wrote in his annual birthday letter to the King that December, he was in such poor health that friends wrote home to Australia saying they didn’t think he would