The King's Speech - Mark Logue [97]
I am so sorry to hear that you have not been well again,’ the King wrote. ‘As for myself, I have spent a wretched year culminating in that very severe operation, from which I seem to be making a remarkable recovery. The latter fact is in many ways entirely down to you. Before this operation, Price Thomas the surgeon asked to see me breathe. When he saw the diaphragm move up and down naturally he asked me whether I had always breathed in that way. I said no, I had been taught to breathe like that in 1926 & had gone on doing so. Another feather in your cap you see!!
Logue wanted to reply, but he was taken into hospital before he could respond.
The King stayed on at Sandringham into the New Year with the Queen. The note of hope and confidence in his Christmas speech appeared to be justified. He was well enough to begin shooting again, and when he was examined by his doctors on 29 January, they pronounced themselves satisfied with his recovery. The next day the royal family went to the theatre at Drury Lane to see South Pacific. The outing had something of an air of celebration about it, partly because of the improvement in the King’s health and partly because, the following day, Princess Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh were due to set off for East Africa, Australia and New Zealand.
On 5 February, a cold, but dry and sunny day, the King enjoyed a day of shooting. He was, according to his official biographer, ‘as carefree and happy as those about him had ever known him’.93 After a relaxed dinner, he retired to his room and, about midnight, went to bed. At 7.30 the following morning, a servant found him dead in his bed. The cause of death was not cancer, but rather a coronary thrombosis – a fatal blood clot to the heart – that he suffered soon after falling asleep.
By this time, Elizabeth and Philip had reached the Kenyan stage of their trip: they had just returned to Sagana Lodge, one hundred miles north of Nairobi, after a night spent at Treetops Hotel, when word arrived of the King’s death; it fell to Philip to break the news to his wife. She was proclaimed Queen and the royal party quickly returned to Britain.
On 26 February Logue wrote to the King’s widow, who, at the age of fifty-one had begun what was to be more than half a century as Queen Mother. He referred to the ‘wonderful letter’ that her late husband had sent in December and expressed his regrets that his own illness had prevented him from replying to it – until it was too late. ‘Since 1926 he honoured me, by allowing me to help him with his speech, & no man ever worked as hard as he did, & achieved such a grand result,’ Logue wrote. ‘During all those years you were a tower of strength to him & he has often told me how much he has owed to you, and the excellent result could never have been achieved if it had not been for your help. I have never forgotten your gracious help to me after my own beloved girl passed on.’
In her reply two days later, the Queen Mother was equally fulsome in her praise of Logue. ‘I think that I know perhaps better than anyone just how much you helped the King, not only with his speech, but through that his whole life & outlook on life,’ she wrote. ‘I shall always be deeply grateful to you for all you did for him. He was such a splendid person and I don’t believe that he ever thought of himself at all. I did so hope that he might have been allowed a few years of comparative peace after the many anguished years he has had to battle through so bravely. But it was not to be. I do hope that you will soon be better.’
That May, her daughter, now Queen Elizabeth II, mindful of how close Logue had been to her father, sent him a small gold snuff box that had belonged to the King, together with the following message: