George VI and Elizabeth, page 22
Nearly a century later, the bond between the sympathetic and straightforward therapist and his determined patient would form the plot of the award-winning film The King’s Speech. Logue did not, however, call the duke “Bertie,” as shown in the film. Nor did Prince Albert spout profanities as part of his regimen. But the mutual trust and admiration were genuinely portrayed.
The Yorks solved their housing problem when Elizabeth found a London property that would work for them. Number 145 Piccadilly near Hyde Park Corner had been vacant for five years and was in a state of disrepair. Elizabeth fell in love with the four-story gray stone house with twenty-five bedrooms including servants’ quarters, as well as a conservatory, a ballroom, and an electric elevator. From the front it had a view of Green Park and Buckingham Palace, and it shared a large rear garden with adjacent townhouses.
Queen Mary insisted, “In spite of yr new house being dirty & untidy,” that she and the King inspect it “before the improvements are commenced.” The four of them took the tour on July 7. “There are possibilities in the house,” Queen Mary wrote in her diary. In other words, she could see yet another project to supervise. It was perfect timing, actually, as the Queen was wrapping up her extensive alterations to the Big House at Sandringham so that she and the King could leave York Cottage in the autumn after thirty-three years.
Like White Lodge, the house in Piccadilly belonged to the Crown Estate—the vast property holdings owned by the monarch—so Bertie negotiated a favorable grace-and-favor lease requiring a “peppercorn” rent. The Yorks could then begin the renovation and redecoration financed by the Crown Estate.
Bertie assiduously applied himself to Logue’s regimen. He allotted time during official engagements to take hour-long breaks, and he even cut short his foxhunting to squeeze in his therapist before dinner. He implored Logue to accompany him on the trip Down Under, but the therapist firmly but gently said no. The duke needed self-reliance, and Logue believed it would be a “psychological error” to travel with him.
The Yorks had been savoring their first eight months of parenthood, with holidays at Glamis and Balmoral. Elizabeth reveled in her baby girl. “She is going to be very wicked, and she is very quick I think,” she wrote to her mother. They had their first Christmas at the Big House, which Elizabeth proclaimed “a million times better” than York Cottage. “Plenty of room and a much better atmosphere.” At St. Paul’s Walden Bury for the New Year’s holiday, she “talked hard” with her mother. “We shall not see dear S.P.W. for a long time now,” she wrote on January 2.
London was a whirl of preparation for what Elizabeth privately called “this horrible trip”: packing, shopping, inoculations, and partings from family and friends, including James Stuart, who came to lunch at Bruton Street while Bertie was shooting at Windsor. The Prince of Wales threw a sparkling farewell party at York House, his apartment in St. James’s Palace. Among the guests were the Astaires, the recently divorced Sheila Loughborough, and her future second husband, Sir John “Buffles” Milbanke. The Plantation Orchestra, a popular African American jazz ensemble, started playing at midnight. “I did the Charleston with David for nearly 20 minutes!!” Elizabeth wrote in her diary. “Home at 3:30. Bed 4. Oh Lord.”
“His new confidence, he said, ‘comes from being able to speak properly at last.’ ”
The Duke of York with the Duchess of York at the opening of the Federal Parliament in Canberra, Australia, on May 9, 1927.
SEVENTEEN
Eager to Do Well
On January 6, 1927, the day of their departure from Bruton Street for Victoria station, Elizabeth felt “very miserable at leaving the baby. Went up & played with her & she was so sweet. Lucky she doesn’t realize anything…. I drank some champagne & tried not to weep.” Parting from the baby gave Bertie a “terrible pang.” He told his mother that she would be “so grown up when we return.”
HMS Renown, a battle cruiser dating from the First World War, flew the Duke of York’s standard, and the navigating bridge was painted with the white rose of York surmounted by the duke’s coronet. A tidy officer’s cabin was scarcely altered for the duke’s quarters. The duchess had her own sleeping cabin and adjacent boudoir. The chairs and sofas in the sitting room were covered in a blue chintz selected by Elizabeth. Tucked into the stern was a small paneled chapel, and the dining saloon had a long table that seated thirty-four.
The duke and duchess had a retinue headed by the Earl of Cavan, a much-decorated First World War veteran and field marshal who was appointed by George V as the chief of staff. Among his duties was to send the King regular reports on the duke’s performance. Lord Cavan’s wife, Joan, a friend of Queen Mary, was designated as a lady-in-waiting for Elizabeth, who was twelve years younger.
“It is clear that both Their Royal Highnesses dislike the Cavans,” Bertie’s private secretary, Patrick Hodgson, reluctantly confided to the Queen. They saw Lord Cavan as “too punctilious and rather narrow,” and the couple’s “little mannerisms and ways” irritated the Yorks. But Cavan proved efficient in running the logistics of the tour, and Bertie and Elizabeth eventually warmed to them both.
A companionable contemporary, twenty-five-year-old Victoria “Tortor” Gilmour, was the twenty-six-year-old duchess’s second lady-in-waiting. She was the mother of a three-year-old daughter and six-month-old son, so would be feeling the same pangs of interrupted motherhood. A blithe spirit like Elizabeth, she was also the second youngest in a large family, and had been a similarly favored child. Tortor’s grandfather was the fifth Earl Cadogan, and her four older sisters were known as “the Cadogan Square.” Hodgson reported to Queen Mary that Tortor was “much liked and keeps us all amused.” She quickly became “the life and soul of the Staff, and both their Royal Highnesses are very fond of her.”
Patrick Hodgson was a classic aristocratic courtier, descended from an earl and a marquess. He knew precisely how to serve as a back channel to Queen Mary during the lengthy trip, offering the sort of frank information she required. “I feel it is better to describe things just as I see them so that you may really know what is happening,” he wrote.
The duke was also served by equerries Colin Buist and newcomer Major Terence Nugent, as well as the British government’s representative, political secretary Harry Batterbee. The ship’s company comprised 1,300 officers and men, along with the band of the Royal Naval School of Music, a drum and fife band, 16 marine buglers, and 150 Royal Marines to serve as guards of honor during ceremonies. The Yorks also hired an official chronicler, journalist Taylor Darbyshire, to write a book about the tour, as well as a photographer and two newsreel cameramen. As in Africa, they had a personal physician, Surgeon Commander H.E.Y. White, in addition to the medical staff on the ship.
Bertie and Elizabeth amused themselves throughout the long voyage much as they would on a typical country house weekend. Elizabeth spent many hours chatting with Tortor and reading from a library stocked with popular titles by authors including P. G. Wodehouse, John Buchan, and Agatha Christie. Bertie sometimes read aloud to his wife, although more often he played deck tennis or shot clay pigeons. Every evening they had cocktails, and after dinner they played mah-jongg, watched films, or danced to gramophone records.
During brief stops in Las Palmas, Jamaica, Panama, and Fiji, the Yorks ran through their official paces, but faced no particular challenges. Patrick Hodgson told Queen Mary that Bertie’s “natural tendency to shyness is being overcome” and that he was talking to strangers “genially.”
Bertie stuck with Lionel Logue’s treatment regimen every day. After making three short speeches in Jamaica and Panama, he proudly reported to Logue, “I have not been held up for a word in conversation at any time,” adding, “I don’t think about the breathing anymore…. I try to open my mouth and it certainly feels more open than before. You remember my fear of ‘The King.’ I give it every day at dinner on board. This does not worry me anymore.” Hodgson told Logue the speeches went well enough, “though perhaps there is a trifle more hesitancy than when you are near at hand.” But he emphasized that Bertie was “full of confidence” and “much better than I expected he would be in your absence.”
Bertie and Elizabeth yearned for news of their daughter, which came intermittently, like everything else posted across great distances. “I miss the baby all the time, & am always wondering what she is doing,” Elizabeth wrote in her diary after a month at sea. Several days later she told Queen Mary, “I miss her quite terribly.”
Dr. George F. Still, the princess’s pediatrician, dispatched regular progress reports that were informative but dry: pulling herself to a standing position, saying her first words (“Yight!” when pointing to an electric light), waving, and cutting teeth. Queen Mary offered more satisfying descriptions. She told Bertie about the baby’s “funny little noises & screams & shouts for fun.” Princess Elizabeth uttered “shrieks of delight at each dog she saw.” And at breakfast, Charlotte the parrot entertained her as she “watched the bird eating pips with an air of absorption.”
The grandmothers engaged in a polite tug-of-war over possession of their little princess. Days after the Yorks’ departure, Cecilia told Beryl Poignand that Elizabeth had “begged me to see all I could of her,” so she planned to keep her granddaughter at St. Paul’s Walden Bury “until the Queen appropriates” her. Elizabeth knew that her mother would be more hands-on and naturally affectionate than Queen Mary.
Princess Elizabeth stayed with the Strathmores for the first month while the King and Queen were at Sandringham. When they returned to London in early February, their granddaughter was whisked to Buckingham Palace and installed in an airy nursery in the north wing. Each day, dressed in a white gown with fringed sash, she would be presented to the King and Queen at teatime. “Here comes the Bambina!” Queen Mary would exclaim.
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The Yorks steeled themselves for their landing in New Zealand on February 22. Hodgson reported to Queen Mary that the duke was “determined to make a success of it,” and that the duchess, at first seemingly uninterested in the details of the arrangements, had grown “alive to all that is involved.”
Still, fear of his father’s censure lay heavily on Bertie. He had already received captious letters from the King, in one of which was enclosed a press photo showing the duke in the wrong place while inspecting a guard of honor. Lord Cavan sent a top-secret letter to Clive Wigram, reminding him that the Yorks were “both sensitive and frightfully anxious to do well,” but they had been “plunged into depths of woe” by the King’s criticism. An “approving word” from George V “wd work wonders.” In particular, Cavan asked for a “short encouraging telegram” before the young couple began their “difficult & arduous work.”
Two days prior to the Yorks’ arrival in Auckland, they received the requested reassurance from the King and the Queen. They underlined the importance of Bertie and Elizabeth’s “mission,” which they would be following “with affectionate interest.” They acknowledged that the program would be “strenuous” but expressed the belief that the duke and duchess could rise to the challenges. “I cannot thank you enough for His Majesty’s splendidly timed message of encouragement,” Cavan wrote to Wigram.
Once on shore, Bertie immediately wrote to his mother to say that “the New Zealand programme has filled us with awe, as it looks & I am sure will be very full & very tiring. Every day we are traveling except in the big cities, & at each place where we stop for a few minutes we do exactly the same thing.”
For the next three months, the Yorks repeated all the familiar rituals of royal engagements, but at a level of intensity and duration they had never previously experienced. They saw natural wonders such as hot springs and geysers (Elizabeth “thinking every moment we would all disappear through a thin crust into the unknown!”), witnessed countless local customs, such as the fierce Maori haka dance, and formed strong impressions of individuals and groups. For the first time they watched massive pageants performed by thousands of children doing precision formations such as the “living” Union Jack and Cross of St. George.
On the North Island of New Zealand, from Auckland to Rotorua to Wellington and multiple towns along the way, they were hailed by cheering crowds in the tens of thousands. Bertie made a half dozen speeches. In his final remarks in Wellington, he took note of all the thriving children they had seen, and he memorably said, “Take care of the children and the country will take care of itself.”
He reported to his mother that he was “really pleased…as I had perfect confidence in myself & I did not hesitate at all. Logue’s teaching is still working well but of course if I get tired it still worries me.” Elizabeth had absorbed so much of Logue’s techniques that she could almost serve as his proxy. Bertie relied on her loving glances and comforting touch to defuse his temper when fatigued and frustrated.
Their fortnight on the North Island included two respites—one day of deep-sea fishing, and a week later two days fishing for trout. Nevertheless, the subsequent four days in Wellington proved too much for the duchess. The entire New Zealand program, she told her sister May Elphinstone, “was simply ghastly, & I stuck it for 16 days, & then suddenly cracked.” Early in the morning of March 9, 1927, Renown crossed the sixty-three-mile Cook Strait from Wellington at the bottom of the North Island to Picton at the top of the South Island. Their procession of cars took nearly all day—including five hours on dusty mountain roads through hairpin turns and steep declivities—to reach the coastal town of Nelson.
By the evening, Elizabeth was running a fever of 102 with a bad case of tonsillitis. The doctors insisted on bed rest and prohibited her from touring the South Island, which had an even more demanding schedule. Prince Albert momentarily considered canceling altogether but decided to press on alone. Compounding his anxiety, he was deflated by the prospect of losing Elizabeth’s vital support and encouragement. “In his innate shyness and modesty, he believed that it was the Duchess whom the crowds were really cheering and that it was she whom they really wanted to see,” wrote John Wheeler-Bennett.
By automobile and train the duke traversed the South Island from north to south, through Christchurch to Dunedin. Children, soldiers, and even hard-bitten coal miners greeted him heartily. The “Industrial Prince” was in his element. In an area supposed to be “Red,” noted The Times, “he met nothing but patriotic demonstrations wherever he went.” On one railroad platform he gave an impromptu speech. The “surging and wildly enthusiastic crowd” cheered him unceasingly for five minutes.
Elizabeth, meanwhile, returned to Wellington, where she could recuperate in more comfortable accommodations at Government House. Bertie kept in touch by telephone, and they exchanged affectionate letters. In mid-March she wrote to “My darling sweet” in Dunedin. She had received many kindnesses, but “all I wanted really was a nice comforting kiss from you.”
She confessed to feeling “such a failure.” But she emphasized that she and “everybody else” agreed that his perseverance was “marvellous.” “Darling when you are feeling very depressed and tired,” she wrote, “remember what wonderful work you are doing. They all loved you in N. Island and quite rightly.” She prayed he would “get through the nightmare program” and looked forward to “the moment when I shall see you again.” She sent him “hundreds of kisses & several hugs.”
He replied to “my own little darling,” that her letter had “spurred me on to greater efforts. Millions and millions of thanks for it you darling; it is just what I wanted & nothing could have given me greater help and encouragement.” His main concern, though, was that she “have a real rest and get the throat strong again.”
Back on Renown, she waited in rough weather for Bertie to arrive on the afternoon of March 22. The sea was so stormy he had to be transported by a harbor tug. When a gangplank proved inadequate, his only recourse was to jump from one vessel to the other. “It looked unpleasant,” Elizabeth wrote, “but he did not seem to mind much.” What mattered most was his father’s judgment on the New Zealand tour. “I am delighted you are getting such excellent reception everywhere,” George V wrote. “I congratulate you on the success of your visit.”
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They arrived at the spectacular Sydney Harbour late in the morning on March 26 under sunny skies. The city’s welcome was astounding, with a turnout of over a million people. Elizabeth wisely rested in the afternoon while Bertie did his rounds. That night, thirty thousand people clamored outside the town hall. Chains of Chinese lanterns and profusions of roses and laurels decorated the reception room inside, where three thousand invited guests “crushed and jostled” as the royal couple threaded through their midst.
And so it went for the rest of their forty-seven days of engagements in Australia. Their major stops after Sydney were Brisbane, Hobart, Melbourne, Adelaide, Canberra, and Perth. They had ten days set aside for travel and rest, mostly the former. They found brief downtime at a cattle station, a sheep station where Bertie went riding before breakfast, and a forty-three-thousand-acre ranch where the duke took part in a kangaroo hunt.
The emotional peak of their time in Australia was on April 25, Anzac Day in Melbourne, honoring the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps who had fought in the First World War. Surrounded by another massive crowd, the Yorks stood at a replica of the Whitehall Cenotaph, where the duke laid a wreath and took the salute as twenty-five thousand veterans marched past. They were preceded by the wrenching sight of seven hundred blind, disabled, and invalid soldiers in a procession of cars and trucks, some carrying the men in their hospital beds. At the brief commemoration ceremony, the duke spoke of the “traditions of loyalty, fortitude, and devotion to duty which animated those gallant men.”
