From Campbell's 'The Royal Marriages'
dementordelta brought me from her bookstore a copy of The Royal Marriages by Lady Colin Campbell. This is one of the bitchiest things that I have ever read -- while the author adores Edward and Wallis, whom she considers the height of class and good taste (their Nazi associations, bigotry, etc. are ignored, while George VI and his wife are vilified for not bending to their every whim), she has nothing but terrible things to say about George V, Queen Mary, the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester, Prince George and Princess Marina, and especially Bertie and Elizabeth, claiming the latter was terribly vain, hypocritical, and insincere, while the former was a big twitching mess prone to fits of drooling whose solution to stress "was to get sick" (like he had a choice in it...she also makes it sound like Elizabeth chose to have pneumonia while George V was dying so she could avoid being with Bertie at this difficult time).
It is an atrocious book worth reading only to screech with laughter at its obnoxiousness, and I really had to share the quote about Lionel Logue (pp. 29-30):
"Ever since their marriage, [Elizabeth] had been beavering away, trying to cure [Bertie] of his twitches, his slobbers, his stammer and his rages. While she would never make much headway with the fits of temper to which he remained prone till his dying day, she did succeed elsewhere, though by 1926, Bertie had attempted several different cures for the worst of his ailments: his stammer, all of which had failed. Elizabeth, however, had heard of a medically unqualified faith-healer with a high success rate, and she wheeled Bertie to the Harley Street rooms of Lionel Logue.
The secret of Logue's success was to relieve the emotional disturbance underlying speech impediments by providing the patient with a spiritual antidote. He understood that no one stammers unless they are afraid of what they have to say and of the reception it is going to receive, so he gave his patients the tools to provide confidence in themselves and have faith in others. This he did partly by skilfully building a nurturing relationship with them, and partly by giving them the means, through such techniques as breathing exercises and breath control, to overcome the blockages that lead to recovery and through it to healthy independence.
Every day for nearly three months, Bertie and Elizabeth turned up at Logue's rooms, and, by the time they were ready to embark for down under, Bertie could speak, for the first time in his life since his childhood period of recuperation at Balmoral, with minimal hesitation...he had reached the point where his nervous ailments no longer made him a social embarrassment."
It is an atrocious book worth reading only to screech with laughter at its obnoxiousness, and I really had to share the quote about Lionel Logue (pp. 29-30):
"Ever since their marriage, [Elizabeth] had been beavering away, trying to cure [Bertie] of his twitches, his slobbers, his stammer and his rages. While she would never make much headway with the fits of temper to which he remained prone till his dying day, she did succeed elsewhere, though by 1926, Bertie had attempted several different cures for the worst of his ailments: his stammer, all of which had failed. Elizabeth, however, had heard of a medically unqualified faith-healer with a high success rate, and she wheeled Bertie to the Harley Street rooms of Lionel Logue.
The secret of Logue's success was to relieve the emotional disturbance underlying speech impediments by providing the patient with a spiritual antidote. He understood that no one stammers unless they are afraid of what they have to say and of the reception it is going to receive, so he gave his patients the tools to provide confidence in themselves and have faith in others. This he did partly by skilfully building a nurturing relationship with them, and partly by giving them the means, through such techniques as breathing exercises and breath control, to overcome the blockages that lead to recovery and through it to healthy independence.
Every day for nearly three months, Bertie and Elizabeth turned up at Logue's rooms, and, by the time they were ready to embark for down under, Bertie could speak, for the first time in his life since his childhood period of recuperation at Balmoral, with minimal hesitation...he had reached the point where his nervous ailments no longer made him a social embarrassment."