My Quotation and I
From Volume 1, Number 2, January 1992 issue of The
“Quote... Unquote” Newsletter
If one was to look for an equivalent British example of President
Reagan’s ‘High Flight’ quotation – that is to say, an
outstanding choice of quotation in a head of state’s
speech – the most obvious, and possibly only, candidate would be
found in King George VI’s Christmas radio broadcast of
1939.
George VI, hampered by a severe speech impediment, was scarcely a
man noted for what he said. Yet when he quoted an obscure war
poem that year, he captured the public imagination as few Royals
have done (and certainly not since). He concluded his message by
quoting (anonymously Miss Minnie Louise Haskins (1875-1957), a
retired lecturer at the London School of Economics, who had
written these words as the introduction to a poem called The
Desert in 1908:
I said to the man who stood at the Gate of the Year,
‘Give
me a light that I may tread safely into the
unknown.’
And he replied, ‘Go out into the darkness, and put your hand into
the Hand of God.
That shall be to you better than light, and safer than a known
way.’
One can imagine how the nation collectively responded to the
King’s difficult delivery of these words – especially given that
this was the first Christmas of the war. The King added: ‘May
that Almighty Hand guide and uphold us all.’
Miss Haskins did not hear the broadcast herself but was soon
inundated with writing offers. Her reprinted poem sold 43,000
copies, she was ushered into Who’s Who and merited an
obituary in The Times – all testimony to the power of being
quoted by the right person at the right time. One assumes that
the King’s speech was written for him by a member of the Royal
Household, though the identity of the Buckingham Palace Peggy
Noonan has never been divulged. According to the King’s official
biographer, John Wheeler-Bennett, the poem had merely been ‘sent
to him shortly before the text of his broadcast was
completed.’
Copyright © 1992 by Nigel Rees
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