Bertie and David

They should have had a close relationship, raised as they were under the domineering hand of an unloving father and failing to find nurture from their chilly mother. Yet they detested each other.

They were princes and brothers – two of the four sons of King George V. Despite the shortcomings of their parents, David grew into an attractive and capable young man – blond, athletic, self-assured. As the eldest son, he was born to be a king and he looked the part.

Bertie was the opposite. Knock-kneed, his father compelled him to wear braces at the age of eight. Though he was naturally left-handed, his father insisted that he write with his right hand. He suffered from chronic stomach problems, no doubt stress related. Perhaps also due to the psychological stresses of his childhood, he had a relentless stammer that infuriated his father and made him an object of sibling ridicule.

It didn’t take David long to discover how attractive he was to women. In 1916 two of the prince’s attendants packed him off to France and left him in the arms of a prostitute. The next year he spent three days in bed with a Parisian woman named Maggy.

Back in England David continued to have affairs – mostly with older women, mostly the daughters of dukes, and mostly married women. The notable names of his liaisons included Viscountess Coke, 12 years his senior, Lady Sybil Cadogan, Lady Cynthia Hamilton, Lady Diana Manners, Lady Rachel Cavendish and Lady Rosemary Leveson-Gower.

The prince’s addictive womanizing continued into the 1920s and 1930s and caused much hand wringing by his father as well as Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin and others concerned for his future as king. David’s private secretary believed that "for some hereditary or physiological reason his normal mental development stopped dead when he reached adolescence."

The king grew disgusted with his son’s affairs and, at the same time, was concerned with his fitness to be king. "After I am dead, the boy will ruin himself in 12 months." King George V could not have known how prescient his words would be.

In contrast to his brother, Bertie seemed to have no attraction to women. The royal photographer, Sir Cecil Beaton, would later record that Bertie “was a backward young man and the courtiers were beginning to worry.” Since he showed none of a young man’s usual interest in women, it was the custom of that time to find “some trustworthy young woman could be chosen to initiate the young Prince into the rites of sex.”

Beaton believed that the chosen lady was the revue actress Phyllis Monkman, almost four years Bertie's senior, with whom Bertie was alleged to have dined privately in rooms in Half Moon Street, Mayfair. But months before, the 22-year old prince had slipped away from the British Embassy in Paris and spent the night with an unnamed French girl – or so he claimed to his brother David.

Two years later, Prince Bertie became infatuated with a 19-year old singer, Evelyn “Boo” Laye, who appeared in the London Palladium. She was a remarkable beauty who would become one of Britain’s most celebrated stars. In her old age she would recall her first meeting with Bertie:

“He came backstage clutching the most beautiful bouquet and he paid me the loveliest compliment I have ever received. ‘Miss Laye,' he said, and he struggled to get the words out because of that cruel stammer, 'I would really like to invite you out to supper, but if I did that, there would be gossip and publicity. Your people wouldn't like that and neither would mine.'”

It never went beyond that with Bertie and “Boo.” Yet the future wife of the prince knew he carried a life-long crush on her, and when they attended her shows, the queen would elbow him teasingly and say, “Look, Bertie, here comes your girl friend.”

Learning of Bertie’s deep feelings for Evelyn Laye, the royal family realized how emotionally immature and vulnerable he was and decided it was time for him to marry. He was introduced to the Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, daughter of the Earl and Countess of Strathmore. Elizabeth was a descendant of King Robert the Bruce (Robert I of Scotland) and King Henry VII of England.

But Elizabeth had no interest in marrying into the Royal Family and had even less interest in Bertie because, at the time, she was in love with the prince’s womanizing equerry, Captain the Honorable James Stuart. It would take Bertie two-and-a-half years of patient courtship, several rejections, and the intervention of Queen Mary, who removed Stuart to the oilfields of Oklahoma, before Elizabeth finally consented to marriage.

Elizabeth’s influence over Bertie was almost hypnotic. Though he had continued to see Evelyn Laye regularly, when he and Elizabeth married, Laye was delighted with his choice. “He needed to marry a strong and confident wife,” she said in later years. “Thank God for him, and for the country, that he found the right girl.”

In 1930, King George gave David, the older brother, a country home. There he carried on a series of relationships with married women including textile heiress Freda Dudley Ward and Lady Furness. It was Furness who introduced Prince David to an American woman, Wallis Simpson, the woman who would change David’s life forever. Simpson was divorced from her first husband and at the time of her introduction to the prince, was still married to her second husband, Ernest Simpson, a half-British, half-American businessman. While Lady Furness was traveling abroad, Simpson became David’s mistress, ousting Lady Furness and Freda Ward from his life.

Despite having been discovered in bed by David’s staff, he denied to his father that he and Simpson were lovers. But it soon became evident that the Prince was under her sway. Simpson dominated David and was irreverent toward his royalty. He vacationed openly with her in Europe and began neglecting his official duties, causing his father to say of his sons and granddaughter Elizabeth ("Lilibet"): "I pray to God that my eldest son will never marry and have children, and that nothing will come between Bertie and Lilibet and the throne."

On January 20, 1936, King George V died, and David ascended the throne taking the name King Edward VIII. Since he was not married and had no heirs, Bertie would be the presumptive heir to the throne until David had children. In November of that year, the new King invited Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin to Buckingham Palace to discuss his intention to marry Wallis Simpson. Baldwin told him that the English people would not accept the King’s marriage to a woman with two living husbands, not only because the Church of England opposed divorce, but also as King, he was the head of the Church and its protector. The king’s options were to leave Simpson, or marry her and cause a constitutional crisis, or abdicate.

King Edward had been a modern day Esau throughout his adult life. So it was not surprising that on the night of December 11, 1936, in a broadcast to the nation and the Empire, he announced his decision to abdicate the throne, explaining "I have found it impossible to carry the heavy burden of responsibility and to discharge my duties as king as I would wish to do without the help and support of the woman I love." He had reigned only 325 days, one of the shortest reigns in British and Commonwealth history. He was never crowned.

Next in line to the throne, Bertie would become king. With all of his psychological baggage – a self-confidence emasculated by his father and a terrifying stutter – to be King of the British Empire was a responsibility from which he cowered.

It is unlikely that Bertie, now King George VI, could have risen to the task without the strong hand of his wife, Elizabeth. She had seen him weep on his mother’s shoulder when he learned he would be king. She knew that a secret report had been written concerning Bertie’s fitness to rule. She also knew that, because of doubts about Bertie, a plan was contrived to make Queen Mary the Regent, setting the stage for Bertie’s youngest brother to become King. But the private Elizabeth was not the smiling, jocular public Elizabeth. She seethed with anger at Edward’s frivolous abdication. But once he was gone, she was determined that Bertie would be king.

Bertie himself knew that, because of the concerns about his qualities as a national leader, he was not a shoo-in to inherit the throne. That only compounded his humiliation. Then there was the emerging medium of radio, which would compel the new king to speak more often to his people than if he spoke to them only in public. And there would still be numerous public speeches. The thought of standing before those seen and unseen audiences handicapped by a stutter was terrifying.

The coronation of George VI took place on May 12, 1937, the date previously intended for Edward's coronation. Despite Bertie’s misgivings, the coronation was followed by a live radio broadcast that evening that was heard by tens of millions of people across the Empire. It proved a resounding success. He barely stumbled over his words. "The King's voice last night was strong and deep, resembling to a startling degree the voice of his father," reported The Star. "His words came through firmly, clearly – and without hesitation."

The success of the king’s speech was due largely to one man: a failed actor and self-taught Australian speech therapist 15 years the King’s senior, named Lionel Logue. In 1926 Bertie consulted him about his stammer. Logue had been working with Bertie ten years by the time of the coronation speech. After his initial meeting with the royal patient, Logue had written an assessment in spidery hand-writing on a small card which survives to today:

“Mental: Quite Normal, has an acute nervous tension which has been brought on by the defect. Physical: well built, with good shoulders but waist line very flabby.”

His prescription for the future King was a mixture of breathing exercises and some fiendish tongue twisters, combined with a form of Freudian talking therapy – including some unkingly profanity.

A brewer’s son, Logue was an unorthodox choice for a king’s minister. His technique was developed out of his work with speech-impaired veterans of World War I in Australia. Because he had no medical or professional credentials, however, he was dismissed as a quack by the British medical establishment. Still, he helped his royal patient conquer his speech impediment, but more importantly, he helped Bertie overcome his feelings of inferiority and inadequacy, which made it possible for the young king to become a greater monarch than the modern kings who had preceded him. With Elizabeth at his side, they would become the embodiment of English resolve during the darkest days of the Second World War.

After Bertie became King, Logue’s relationship with him came into its own. The two men became friends – as much as is possible between king and commoner – and remained so until Bertie’s death. Out of his gratitude to Logue, King George inducted him into the Royal Victorian Order, appointing him to be a Member (MVO) in 1937. Logue wore the MVO badge as he sat in the apse as the king delivered his coronation speech. Later, in 1944, the king elevated him to Commander (CVO) of the Victorian Order. The Order rewards personal service to the sovereign and admission to it is the personal gift of the monarch.

When the King spoke to the Empire on the evening of September 3, 1939, the day Britain declared war on Germany, Logue had rehearsed the speech with Bertie several times, striking out difficult words from the text. Logue was beside the king in the room from which the speech was broadcast at Buckingham Palace. The king began:

"In this grave hour, perhaps the most fateful in our history, I send to every household of my peoples, both at home and overseas, this message, spoken with the same depth of feeling for each one of you as if I were able to cross your threshold and speak to you myself."

As the red light faded on the broadcast lectern, Logue turned to him and said, "Congratulations on your first wartime speech." Bertie, relieved his ordeal was over, said simply: "I expect I will have to do a lot more."

The story of the king’s speech is delightfully told in a film of the same name that has been in the theaters since December. My wife and I saw it last weekend, and I can say it hews closer to historical accuracy than most historical dramas. The King’s Speech has Colin Firth in the role of Bertie with Geoffrey Rush as Logue. I suspect both may win Oscars for their performances so I can’t think of a better way to spend a leisurely couple of hours than watching them performing their roles.

King George died in 1952 at an all too young age of 56. He had been a heavy smoker and developed lung cancer. Logue wrote Queen Elizabeth to offer his condolences. She was now beginning what would be half a century of life as a widow and the Queen Mother. She replied to Logue with gracious thanks.

“I know perhaps better than anyone just how much you helped the King, not only with his speech, but through that his whole life and outlook on life. I shall always be deeply grateful to you for all you did for him."