Mary’s Limerick link to
The King’s Speech
Written
by Exclusive by Marie Hobbins Friday, 28 January 2011 10:13
AS audiences continue to flock
to The King’s Speech, it emerges that there
is a connection between the real live Lionel Logue, who taught King George V1
of England to largely overcome his stammer, and a Limerick woman named Mary
Reddan, who left Limerick for London before travelling on to Tasmania. Last
week, the broadcaster, Gay Byrne, speaking on his radio show on Lyric FM said
that a family named Logue, had emigrated from their home in Stillorgan, South
Dublin to Adelaide, Australia, sometime in the 1880s and that it is from this
family that Lionel Logue is descended.
iit is believed
that a young woman named Mary Reddan left Limerick between 1820 and 1830.
Niall
Kelly of the University of Limerick, who is a teacher of the Alexander
Technique and a personal change consultant, has learnt from a newspaper
article sent to him from Australia that a reporter named Helen Trincas has
reported on how Lionel Logue came to travel to London to learn from the
“master,” Fredrick Mathias Alexander.
Alexander,
who had lost his own voice, was left jobless and without a career when the
medics of the day failed to help him.
“He later went on to create the eponymous Alexander Technique, which
addresses body and mind, as well as the voice - he developed his own
technique for voice and breathing.,” Mr Kelly told the Limerick Post.
The
Alexander Technique is a practical method of learning to release patterns of
chronic tension, habits that have slipped below the level of conscious
awareness.
By adopting the principles of the Alexander technique, breathing and speaking
become easier; movement becomes freer, lighter and more enjoyable. Learning
the technique opens up a world of never ending possibilities to release the
potential of mind and body to their best advantage.
Fredrick Mathias Alexander travelled to London where he established his
practice.
Now for the Limerick connection.
The
grandmother of Alexander was a Mary Reddan, who came from Limerick. Having
emigrated to London, it appears that Mary, who according to the writer
Michael Bloch, “had an attraction to frocks, dresses and silverware that the
retailers, householders and courts of the time did not appreciate,” found
herself in Tasmania, where in time, she met the grandfather of Fredrick
Mathias Alexander, whose groundbreaking work so greatly impressed the
Australian-born Lionel Logue that he too, travelled to London to learn more
about the Alexander Technique
Lionel
Logue established his practice in Harley Street, London, and it was here that
the then Duke of York (soon to become King George V1, when his brother, King
Edward V111 abdicated to marry the American divorcee, Wallis Simpson) came to
put himself under the professional guidance and instruction of Logue
Speaking to the Limerick Post, Mr Kelly, who teaches on two programmes at UL
- the MA in Chant and Ritual Song and the BA in Voice and Dance (both courses
in the Irish World Academy), said he has been trying unsuccessfully to get
more details of Mary Reddan.
“So far
I’ve failed to unearth anything of much use but perhaps some reader of the
Limerick Post may have some worthwhile information on Mary,” he said
The Alexander technique has been taught for over one 100 years.
In 1958, the Society of Teachers of the Alexander Technique (STAT) was
founded in the UK to ensure high standards of teaching training and practice,
and to promote public awareness of the technique.
