The Pain and the Privilege: The Women in Lloyd George’s Life

The first months of marriage were golden for Maggie. She was a good-humoured young woman, naturally disposed to be happy, and had been very distressed by the endless quarrels of the previous months. Now she could live again as the pampered daughter of Mynydd Ednyfed while at the same time enjoying married life. To add to her happiness, she took pride in the professional success of her new husband. Each time he won a case or achieved public praise for his oratory she would carefully cut out the press reports and paste them in a scrapbook. A letter she wrote to him soon after the wedding is full of affection and contentment:

My dearest Die,

…I was very glad to hear that the case was partly heard yesterday &I fully trust that you will be able to return home Sunday morning. I will stop at home to expect you, so come up straight, will you?…Mother &I were at Morvin House last night, we had a cup of coffee before going home. You didn’t relish the going away without a few minutes with your Mag, so I was told. Well neither did I. If it had been possible I would have been at the station in no time, but there was no chance.3

Living with her parents may have appealed strongly to Maggie at the time, but it was probably not the wisest start to the young couple’s married life. A more definitive separation from her family might have given Maggie a better chance of learning about being a wife. At Mynydd Ednyfed, Mary Owen ran the household. Maggie was allowed to avoid all but the tasks she truly enjoyed: mainly gardening, which was a lifelong passion. She had never embraced the traditionally feminine skills: her school reports confirm that although she was a very good student in all other subjects, she was only ‘fair’ when it came to domestic science and simple sewing.4 She was neglectful of the more mundane aspects of housekeeping, and never seemed to get the hang of daily tasks such as lighting fires. This did not matter at Mynydd Ednyfed, where Mary and the servants attended to such things, but it became a bigger issue between Maggie and her husband later on.

Lloyd George was as fond of his creature comforts as Maggie was careless of them. He had been raised by extremely capable women whose first priority had been his comfort and welfare. Lloyd George and Maggie were raised in an age when it was considered a wife’s first duty to care for her husband and children. Maggie would prove to be superb at the latter, but she did not always attend as assiduously to the former. Lloyd George upbraided her from time to time for her lack of expertise in sewing and cooking, and they would often quarrel if he came home to an unlit hearth or an empty larder. But in the early days of their marriage it was not a cold hearth that awaited Lloyd George at the end of the day. His diary records his contentment when he returned home late one night to find that ‘Maggie was lying on the hearth waiting for me,’5 and in the summer following their wedding, Maggie found that she was expecting their first child.

The whole family rejoiced at the news, and Maggie was happy and contented during her pregnancy, which passed without complication. Her husband was working hard, and her letters to him while he was away on business or speaking at political gatherings are full of love:

Your letter to hand this morning &many thanks to you for writing, as I did not expect a letter this morning till tomorrow &it was all the sweeter for that reason.

I am afraid you won’t come home till Thursday, will you? Unless Mr Meek says you must which would be a good thing from my point of view…

I have no more to tell you, only that we are all alive and kicking here all of us mind you, hoping your cold is better. Let me know when to expect my sweetheart home, will you?

Best love

From your loving child* [&] wife

Maggie

Maggie did not have to wait long for her faith in Lloyd George’s ability to be justified. Only weeks after their wedding he took on a legal case that would put him on the first rung of the political ladder and make his name famous throughout Wales. He was asked to act in it partly because of his growing reputation for impressive performances in court, and partly because it coincided neatly with his political views, which were also becoming well known. The case concerned a prime example of the discrimination and injustice suffered by Welsh nonconformists at the hands of the English establishment; Lloyd George could not have devised a more appropriate peg on which to hang his political career.

The story began in 1864 when the parish church of Llanfrothen, a village eight miles east of Criccieth, received the gift from a Mr and Mrs Owen of a small adjoining strip of land to be an extension of the graveyard. It was walled in, consecrated and used for burials over the following years. At the time all burials on church ground had to be held according to Anglican rites, a rule that was bitterly resented by nonconformists. In 1880, after a decade of fruitless attempts, the Liberal MP for Denbighshire, George Osborne Morgan, succeeded in passing an Act to allow nonconformists to conduct funerals in parish churchyards according to their own rites. The law was changed, but the Church of England was not going to give up its monopoly on burials without a fight.

The vicar of Llanfrothen was Rev. Richard Jones, a dyed-in-the-wool conservative who deeply resented the new Act and was determined to prevent its implementation, in his churchyard at least. Rev. Jones examined the paperwork closely, decided that the Owens’ land had not been properly transferred in 1864, and persuaded Mrs Owen to re-convey her gift to the Church, specifying that only Anglican burials were to be permitted in it. This meant that nonconformists in the parish either had to submit to being buried according to Church rites or be buried in a scrap of land used for the graves of suicides and other undesirables.

The situation came to an explosive head in April 1888, when Robert Roberts, an old quarryman and a nonconformist, died. He had specified in his will that he wished to be buried next to his daughter, who had previously been buried in the Llanfrothen churchyard extension. The family arranged for a nonconformist funeral to be held, and to prevent this from happening, the Rev. Jones locked the churchyard gates and ordered the grave which had been prepared to be filled in. In desperation, Evan Roberts, the deceased’s brother, turned to Lloyd George for advice. Lloyd George came to the conclusion that, since the churchyard extension had been used for burials since 1864, it was subject to the 1880 Burial Act, and therefore the Rev. Jones was acting illegally. He confidently advised the family to return to Llanfrothen, prise the gates open by force and conduct the funeral according to the deceased’s wishes. Such open defiance of the Church was virtually unprecedented, and the case attracted widespread publicity.

The Rev. Jones was incensed, and sued the Roberts family for trespass. The case came before Porthmadoc County Court in May 1888, with Lloyd George acting for the defence. A jury of local people found in favour of the Roberts family, but in a breathtaking example of bias, the judge inaccurately recorded their verdict and ruled for the Church. Lloyd George refused to be beaten, and encouraged the family to appeal. The case came before the High Court in London in December 1888. Amid triumphant scenes that were reported widely in newspapers and celebrated throughout the length and breadth of Wales, the Lord Chief Justice overturned the previous judgement, awarded the family their costs and, for good measure, reprimanded the Porthmadoc judge for his conduct.

The commentators were virtually unanimous: Lloyd George had single-handedly challenged the persecutors of nonconformism and won justice for his people against the English-speaking establishment. The young lawyer from Criccieth was a hero.

Maggie was proud of her husband, who had proved to the world that he was principled, courageous and eloquent. Had she realised the full consequences of his notoriety, though, she might not have been so happy. The Liberal Party in Caernarvon Boroughs was selecting a candidate for the general election presumed to be forthcoming in 1892. Ten days or so after the Llanfrothen triumph they made their decision. Their candidate was Lloyd George, the hero of the hour.

Though he lived in a rural area of North Wales, the constituency which Lloyd George was to represent in Parliament for fifty-five years was comprised of the urban populations of six townships: Criccieth, Pwllheli, Nevin, Caernarvon, Bangor and Conway. It had around 4,000 registered voters out of a total population of nearly 29,000. The naturally Liberal populations of Criccieth, Pwllheli and Nevin were counterbalanced by the Church-dominated, largely Tory-voting citizens of the cathedral city of Bangor. The constituency could sometimes confound expectations, as had happened in the general election of 1886. The Liberals and the Liberal Unionists had swept the board in Wales, winning twenty-eight of the thirty-four parliamentary seats, but, presented with an unpopular Liberal candidate, Caernarvon Boroughs had elected the Tory Edmund Swetenham.

There is an element of luck in every successful political life, and it was Lloyd George’s good fortune that there was an opportunity for him to be selected as a candidate in his home constituency so early in his career. He had worked hard to be in a position to be a credible candidate, serving as Secretary of the local Anti-Tithe League and launching a Liberal newspaper, Udgorn Rhyddid (Freedom’s Trumpet) with some friends. Financially he was worse off after marrying than before, but perhaps his Llanfrothen victory had given him confidence that he could make a success of his law practice, or perhaps he simply could not bring himself to refuse an opportunity that might not come again for years. Having stood aside in 1886 he was not about to do so again, and after winning the nomination he prepared to wait—at least two years, he thought—for the next general election.

This was not at all to Maggie’s liking. As she prepared for the birth of her first child, she might have been able to ignore Lloyd George’s increasing preoccupation with politics, but when he accepted the candidacy for a seat that was winnable at the next election she could no longer do so. She tearfully tried to dissuade him from accepting, arguing that it was impractical for him to take on an unpaid job in London when they were expecting a baby and did not even have a house of their own. This was not unreasonable. A less ambitious man might have preferred to secure his family financially before launching himself into national politics. But Lloyd George had been raised to go as far as he could as early as he could. He took the view that his family would always provide for him, and he received encouragement from Morvin House. It was left to William George to worry about how the newly formed two-man legal practice could support two families with Lloyd George, at best, a part-time partner.

Lloyd George and Maggie’s first child, Richard (known as Dick), was born on 15 February 1889 in the room in which Maggie herself was born. His parents’ excitement was matched by his grandparents’ delight. Richard and Mary Owen loved children and would play a large part in their grandchildren’s lives, often taking care of them for weeks while their parents were in London. In happy anticipation of many more new arrivals, Richard Owen decided to retire from farming, and after realising his assets he built a pair of tall, semidetached stone houses in Criccieth overlooking the bay. He and Mary would live in one, and Maggie and her family would be close at hand, next door.

This new arrangement was much more to Lloyd George’s taste. Despite his improved relationship with his in-laws, there were signs that he was missing his personal freedom, and he was finding reasons for spending evenings away from Mynydd Ednyfed. This was, to an extent, justifiable, since as he was the Liberal candidate he needed to make himself known, and he was also working hard to build up his legal practice. He did not see the two as separate activities: to place himself in the best possible position at the time of the next general election, he had to develop his reputation as a public speaker, and following the Llanfrothen case, his court addresses were often reported in the press. During 1889 his law and political careers progressed in harmony, his success in court adding to his reputation as a rising political star. As an advocate he displayed the eloquence, the debating skill and the remarkable independence of mind that were to characterise the mature politician. He was at his best championing the rights of the people he had grown up with against the landowners, and he became famous for his audacious and aggressive challenges to any display of prejudice from the bench.

The impact of Lloyd George’s behaviour was all the greater because the local JPs and judges would have expected a local solicitor to show due deference not only to their legal authority over him, but also because the landowners had grown accustomed to getting their own way where nonconformists were concerned. It might have been wise for Lloyd George to be a little less antagonistic towards the bench, but he had already left behind the thought of a career in law, and was playing to a wider audience than that in the courtroom. His clashes with the magistrates attracted valuable publicity, and his reputation as defender of the working man’s rights helped his political career. He had nothing to lose in attacking the pompous, class-prejudiced magistrates who presided in court. They in turn did not know how to deal with the fearless young attorney who simply would not let them ride roughshod over the rights of the Welsh people.

Maggie was delighted by Lloyd George’s growing fame as a lawyer, speaker and people’s champion, but he was also becoming more established in the Liberal Party in Caernarvonshire, which was less to her liking. She did not join in any of his political activities, but she faithfully wrote to give him the political gossip during his business trips. Early in 1889 she wrote: ‘I am sorry to inform you that the most zealous person on the side of Cebol at Mynydd Ednyfed has turned round to canvass for Mr Graves. She is going to see these persons instead of Father. Old Cebol is very ill, poor fellow. Father thinks that if he gets in, he will jump out of bed like a shot, and should he lose will die poor fellow.’6

Maggie was referring to the local elections of January 1889, when, following the 1888 Local Government Reform Act, county councils were formed for the first time. The elections were the cause of much celebration in Wales, representing as they did the first wholesale transfer of local power from squires and magistrates to elected politicians. The voters of Caernarvonshire were not slow to take advantage of their opportunity. The Liberals were determined to maximise their representation on the new council, and took control with a handsome majority. Indeed, the Liberals took every county in Wales, with the exception of Brecon in the south. Naturally Lloyd George had been seen as a potential candidate, but his eyes were on the greater prize of Westminster. Nevertheless, he campaigned energetically throughout the county with the message that electing Liberal, Welsh-speaking nonconformists to the councils was a vital step along the road to self-government for Wales.

At the age of twenty-six, Lloyd George was already seen as one of the most able and prominent politicians in North Wales, and the newly formed council co-opted him to the position of Alderman, usually reserved for senior Councillors.* The co-option of the ‘Boy Alderman’ was widely reported; there was no doubt that Lloyd George’s star was in the ascendancy.

In welcoming the results of the county elections, Lloyd George spelled out his desire for self-determination in Wales. As ever, he was at the forefront of the radical wing of the Liberals, stating in a speech in Liverpool in 1889: ‘Those elections afforded the best possible test of the growth in Wales of the national movement, which, after all, is but a phase of the great Liberal movement.’ The growing confidence of the new political class in Wales was creating momentum for a campaign similar to that which Irish MPs were pressing for Home Rule. The young Lloyd George and his fellow radicals were impatient for self-determination, tired of having Wales’ claims to Home Rule treated less seriously than those of Ireland. To the South Wales Liberal Federation in February 1890 he declared:

Welsh Home Rule alone can bring within the reach of this generation the fruits of its political labours. Now it surpasses my imagination to conceive how persons who are ardent advocates of Irish Home Rule can discover any plausible reason for objecting to Welsh Home Rule…For my own part, I cannot help believing that the prospects of Wales would be brighter and more promising were her destinies controlled by a people whose forefathers proved their devotion to her interests on a thousand battlefields with their hearts’ blood, and a people who, despite the persecutions of centuries, have even to this very hour preserved her institutions and her tongue, and retained the same invincible love for her hills.7

With so many calls upon his time, one might have expected Lloyd George to save his leisure hours for his wife and young son. But the parlour of Mynydd Ednyfed was less attractive to him than the meetings of the local amateur dramatic society, where the company was congenial and he could indulge his love of oratory. He became a regular attendee at the society’s private parlour meetings, and was able to indulge his love of female company at the same time. His son Dick later claimed that Lloyd George had an affair during this period with a widow in Caernarvon. The lady was identified only as ‘Mrs J’, a well-known Liberal activist and a popular member of Lloyd George’s social circle. If this is true, his marital fidelity to Maggie lasted only a few months.

The revelation that Mrs J and Lloyd George were on intimate terms was apparently prompted by the sensational discovery that she was pregnant, which soon came to the attention of the leaders of the Liberal Association. Faced with the potential ruin of all his political hopes, Lloyd George had to ensure both that the scandal was ended before he could be deselected, and that Maggie did not find out about it. With Mrs J’s cooperation, he succeeded on both counts. Dick writes that she accepted an annuity for life with the condition that no documentary evidence or photographs of the child ever came to light.

Dick’s colourful account of his father’s love life has been rightly viewed with a degree of scepticism, since he had reason to be angry with his father. When the book was published in 1960 Lloyd George was long dead, and a rift between them had led to him disinheriting his firstborn. Furthermore, Dick was by then a sick man who needed money, and some say he was well remunerated for his sensational material, and that the book was actually ghost-written. The book contains many rumours of affairs. Dick concluded that his father was ‘probably the greatest natural Don Juan in the history of British politics’, and that ‘With an attractive woman he was as much to be trusted as a Bengal tiger with a gazelle.’8

But the story of the affair with Mrs J gains credibility from Lady Olwen Carey Evans, Lloyd George’s third child, who mentions the Caernarvon widow in her own autobiography. Olwen was in her nineties when her memoir (also ghost-written) was published in 1985, but unlike Dick she had maintained a good relationship with her father. More to the point, she was a sensible and level-headed woman who neither worshipped nor reviled her father. To a greater extent than any of his other children, she was immune to the glamour of his personality, and was better able to judge his strengths and weaknesses. Her book deals with his womanising in a matter-of-fact way, describing his lifelong weakness for women while emphasising also the strength of his marriage: ‘Although it was not until after I married that Mother ever mentioned Father’s infidelities to me, I was aware from an early age that there were other women in his life…I believe Father started having affairs with other women very soon after my parents were married.’9

Given the lack of hard evidence for many of Lloyd George’s rumoured affairs, it has been suggested that there is an element of myth in his reputation as a womaniser. It is true that he covered his tracks well, and no indisputable evidence has been uncovered to link him with any illegitimate offspring. No mistress has confessed publicly to a liaison apart from his second wife, Frances, and during his life he won every court case involving his personal life. But everyone who knew Lloyd George well acknowledged this side of his character, and the testimony of his closest confidants, his family and his political colleagues must carry significant weight. From the wives of his parliamentary colleagues to secretaries in his office, his conquests, it seems, were many and varied. If he did not in fact live up to his reputation, he must surely be among the most unfairly maligned figures in history.

It is not surprising that so little hard evidence exists. Lloyd George carried out his liaisons with women who had a great deal to lose and nothing to gain by exposing him. Either from preference or from deliberate calculation, he also often favoured women who did not keep diaries or make demands of one of the country’s most eminent politicians. Those who did were swiftly cut out of his life. He also won the loyalty of his mistresses because, in his own way, he genuinely loved women. He did not deceive them with promises of a future together, and he tended to leave behind goodwill, not enmity, at the end of a liaison. Such appears to have been the case with Mrs J, who remained on good terms with him for many years.

It was thanks to the good nature of his lover, and perhaps also to William George’s legal skills, that the young Liberal candidate survived to fight his first general election. Domestic harmony was also preserved, although the family later ‘tacitly acknowledged’, as Olwen put it, that they had a half-brother living in Caernarvon. Dick made extensive enquiries when he first heard the rumours as an adult, and concluded that the story was true. He avoided being seen with his half-brother in public because the physical resemblance between them was so strong. Due to the speed with which the settlement was arranged, Maggie never came to hear the rumours. As Olwen commented, she was spared this time, but was not to be so fortunate in the years to come.

Unaware of her husband’s behaviour, Maggie continued to play little part in Lloyd George’s professional and social worlds. Her life revolved around her baby, and she was preparing to leave Mynydd Ednyfed to move to the new house in town. She was also pregnant again, with Dick barely nine months old.

On 20 March 1890 Maggie had arranged to meet Lloyd George at Criccieth station. He had gone to Porthmadoc early in the morning on business, and the two of them planned to spend the rest of the day together in Caernarvon. As she arrived on the platform Maggie was handed a telegram addressed to ‘Lloyd George’. Assuming that it was for her, she opened it and read the four-word message that was to change her life: ‘Swetenham died last night.’ Maggie was thus the first to receive the shocking news that Edmund Swetenham, Caernarvon Boroughs’ Conservative MP, was dead of a heart attack at the age of sixty-eight. Maggie knew what the news meant: there would be a byelection in Caernarvon Boroughs, and instead of enjoying the next two years quietly with his wife, Lloyd George was facing the first major battle of his political life immediately, and with no time to prepare.

Struggling to take in the unexpected news, Maggie did not know what to do and held back from buying her ticket to Caernarvon in case Lloyd George wanted to cancel the trip. But when he arrived on the Porthmadoc train they decided to go ahead as planned, perhaps sensing that this would be their last outing together for the foreseeable future. They did not have a happy time. As Maggie later put it, ‘The sunshine seemed to have gone from the day…The shadow of the coming election spoiled everything.’10