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

While he waited anxiously in London for the result he took the opportunity to see the sights, visiting Madame Tussaud’s and the Law Courts. With great excitement he went to Charing Cross station to see for himself the new phenomenon of electric light, noting that it was ‘a sort of pale blue—melancholy—but unquestionably stronger than gas’. Later, he was contemplating the statue of Demosthenes in the British Museum when to his surprise he was hailed by Mr Lloyd, the Tremadoc parson. But the highlight of the trip was to be his first visit to the House of Commons:

Sat 12 Nov. Went to the Houses of Parliament—very much disappointed with them. Grand buildings outside but inside they are crabbed, small and suffocating, especially House of Commons. I will not say but that I eyed the assembly in a spirit similar to that in which William the Conqueror eyed England on his visit to Edward the Confessor as the region of his future domain. Oh, vanity.6

Even as he took the next step towards a career in law, the young David Lloyd George was regarding the House of Commons as his ‘region of future domain’.

There was no inherent contradiction between Lloyd George’s pursuit of a law qualification and his desire, ultimately, to make his name in politics. MPs were not paid a salary until 1911, so it was very difficult for someone without money to enter Parliament. An aspiring politician needed either a private income or a profession that was flexible enough to combine with a parliamentary career. Law was ideal, and men like Herbert Asquith, Edward Carson and Rufus Isaacs had all used it as a stepping-stone to a career in public life.

It was necessary to have an ongoing source of income when in fulltime politics, and it seems that Lloyd George had a plan from the very beginning. He needed training within an established law firm, and Breese, Jones & Casson fitted the bill perfectly, but he never seriously considered staying with the firm beyond the initial five years of his articles. After he had passed his final examinations as well, to become a fully-qualified solicitor in 1884, Randall Casson would ask him to supervise the firm’s new Dolgellau office. It was a good offer, but Lloyd George was impatient to be his own master.7 He left the firm and set up on his own, working from the back room of the family home in Criccieth. His plan was neat and unashamedly self-serving. Randall Casson had taken William George on as an articled clerk, and Lloyd George only had to wait until William too was qualified before his brother could join his own firm and take over the donkeywork. In the meantime, while he built up the practice, he concentrated on the real love of his life, and the only mistress to whom he was completely faithful: politics.

David Lloyd George came to believe very early in life that he was destined for a career in politics. There was no sudden moment of realisation: politics was in his nature, and he was raised to believe that public life was the highest possible calling for a man of talent—apart from religion, which for him was never a serious option. Richard Lloyd encouraged his ambition, and introduced him at an early age to political debate to encourage his confidence and independence of mind. There was always plenty of debate around the workshop in Llanystumdwy, and there was also scope for extending Lloyd George’s education at the ‘Village Parliament’, a debating society that met in the smithy to discuss religious and philosophical topics, providing an intellectual outlet for the working men of Llanystumdwy. Highgate too was not a typical village cottage, in that practically every periodical published in Wales, some twenty-eight of them, was delivered to its door. In this way the young Lloyd George absorbed the issues of the day, and although he lived in a remote part of North Wales, he was connected to the debates and topics of the wider world by a chain of ideas.

Lloyd George’s upbringing, his uncle’s political views and his nonconformist background all made him a natural Liberal, but in Porthmadoc he came into contact for the first time with radical ideas such as the need for social reform and the disestablishment of the Church in Wales. He found a mentor in John Roberts, a prominent member of the Porthmadoc Baptist community who often held political debates in his candle-making workshop. In his diary Lloyd George described his new friend as ‘a socialist and an out and out one’,8 and Roberts held views that went far beyond the accepted orthodoxy of the Liberal Party. He was a fierce opponent of the extravagance of the upper classes, especially the royal family, and spoke passionately about justice for the poorer people in society.9

This was socially and politically risky. There had been a time when the Calvinistic Methodists, the largest group of nonconformists, had mostly supported the Conservative Party, which chimed with their belief in self-reliance, independence from the state and individual determination. Although their unease at the widening division in Wales between the landlords and the working classes had eventually aligned them with the Liberal Party, they strongly disapproved of its more radical fringes. When the young Lloyd George found himself at the heart of a group of radicals in Porthmadoc, he risked alienating the Welsh-speaking chapel-goers who would be his natural political support base.

Nevertheless, he put his toe in the water by joining the Liberal campaign in Criccieth during the general election of March 1880. He was put to work checking the register of voters, which in view of his legal apprenticeship he was well qualified to do. Nationally, the election resulted in a victory for the Liberals under William Gladstone.* The Liberal Party won all but four seats in Wales, including Caernarvon Boroughs, the constituency that included Criccieth, where Watkin Williams defeated George Douglas-Pennant, Lord Penrhyn’s son, who had captured it for the Conservatives in 1874.

Later that year, as he gained confidence in his political views, Lloyd George tried his hand at journalism. The general election was followed in December by a by-election in Caernarvonshire, caused by the appointment of Watkin Williams as a High Court judge, which meant he had to resign his seat as an MP. Using the pseudonym ‘Brutus’, Lloyd George sent an article to the North Wales Express. His subject was the Tory Party, soon to undergo a change of leadership from Disraeli to Lord Salisbury, and much to his delight it was published on 5 November. He was sufficiently encouraged to write a second piece, this time a response to an address by the Tory by-election candidate, his old Llanystumdwy adversary Hugh Ellis-Nanney. This too was published, albeit with one particularly aggressive passage omitted. Over the next few weeks ‘Brutus’ appeared several times in the press, and Lloyd George was even able to see his ‘Address to the Electors’ printed in large characters on North Wales Express posters around the town.

Lloyd George wrote on both local and national issues with precocious boldness. His literary style was slightly awkward and over-elaborate, mimicking the convoluted syntax and long words of the worthy but antiquated books in the Highgate library. Nevertheless, English was his second language, a language for reading and writing, but not for everyday speaking, and it was an extraordinary achievement for him to write so fluently in what was to all intents and purposes a foreign language.

On 1 December 1880 Lloyd George savoured his second electoral victory of the year as the Liberal candidate, William Rathbone, defeated Ellis-Nanney, although with a reduced majority. Still, victory was sweet, and Brutus was content.

Between law, chapel and politics, the waking hours of the young Lloyd George were filled to bursting. There was always time for a little recreation, though, and his favourite hobby was flirtation. He had grown to an average height for his place and time, around five feet five inches, but he had a good, upright figure, and he had inherited the striking looks of his father. He emphasised these by growing a dashing moustache and by taking great care of his clothes and general appearance. His reputation as a local genius and ‘young man on the make’ also made it easy for him to attract the attentions of young ladies. The three Sunday services at Capel Ucha and frequent evening meetings during the week were perfect opportunities for him to practise his flirting skills on local girls, and he made the most of his chances.

At first, with the burden of fulfilling his uncle’s expectations weighing heavily on his shoulders, Lloyd George professed himself to be intent on behaving decorously, but before long he had begun his first relationship with a young Baptist girl. Jennie Evans, one of the prettiest girls in the area, was a friend of Polly’s. A flirtatious, teasing relationship developed between her and the teenage Lloyd George, and their encounters were faithfully recorded in his diary: ‘A very lively singing meeting…Sitting in the middle of girls—in the arm of Jennie ha-ha!’10

Lloyd George was very conscious of the danger of becoming distracted from his work. He was also being watched over by every member of his family, even his younger brother, who reproved him for signs of ‘fast behaviour’, although William’s words mostly fell on deaf ears:

Good singing meeting. Went up with Jennie about 5. I was rather dry with her tonight for many reasons. I was determined to be so, because if I went on to court her as I have done I would soon fall in love with her and really I have gone further than I thought…Jennie has been flirting with other boys. I must stick to my lessons. It was not right for me to carry on flirting with her, as WG my brother says. All the same I mean to carry on with her. I am a fool!11

The relationship continued, but by March 1880, when he had just turned seventeen, his family’s concerns had begun to take effect:

Fri. 26. Dull…To Caerdyni. Annie & Jennie came there. I went to Criccieth with John. Saw the girls afterwards. Was reserved with Jennie. I want to get rid of her—we are being talked about. Uncle knows it this long time!

Mon 29. Fine…Jennie here; avoided her…It costs me some trouble to get rid of that girl, but in flirting with her, I have everything to lose and nothing to win. This shall be regarded as proof of my pluck. If I cannot resist this, how do I expect to gain other things, which require a good deal more determination. She attempted to tease me by flirting with others—bastards.12

He was not able to keep from flirting for long. His brother’s counsel had had no effect whatsoever, and soon Uncle Lloyd and Polly pitched in as well. On 15 June he was on the receiving end of a stern talk from Uncle Lloyd, who ‘told me I was becoming the town talk, that I must mend my ways in this matter at least, or else it would ruin my chances of success’.13 Two days later he wrote with great seriousness in his diary:

My sister gave it me rather solemnly for flirting with Jennie etc. Indeed I am rather seriously disposed to give up these dealings—this I know—that the realization of my prospects, my dreams, my longings for success are very scant indeed unless I am determined to give up what without mistake are the germs of a ‘fast life’. Be staunch and bold and play the man. What is life good for unless some success, some reputable notoriety be obtained—the idea of living for the sake of living is almost unbearable—it is unworthy of such a superior being as man.14

Throughout the summer and autumn of 1880 Lloyd George was caught between the attractions of flirting with Jennie and his family’s disapproval. Occasionally the latter won, and he was particularly indignant when his good behaviour was not acknowledged: ‘Out with John Caerdyni—on top of Dinas. Splendid view. Feel quite as happy without being troubled as to whereabouts of any girls, though I have not courted with any of them. On good terms with all. It is when I have occasional fits of total abstention from girls that I am sometimes attacked!!’15

This does not sound as if he means to make his ‘occasional fits of total abstention’ more permanent, and his Christmas Day diary entry in 1880 reveals that he was back to his old ways: ‘In the afternoon went with a gang of girls towards Llanystumdwy. I had many kisses on the road, especially of Jennie. Such a fool I am! At 6 went to a Literary Meeting here—a wretched affair if I had not had a lot of girls by my side.’16

Finally, in his diary entry of 31 December, he acknowledges that he has lost the fight: ‘To my lasting shame be it said—Love can fairly record me amongst its infatuated, brain-skinned devotees.’17

Perhaps Lloyd George thought his genius invincible, but his family were growing ever more concerned that he was being distracted by his flirting. Having failed to get him to stop seeing Jennie by direct appeal, the shrewd Polly resorted to more subtle tactics. She began to widen the circle of his female acquaintance by bringing more friends home. She organised little trips: a walk to a local beauty spot, or after-service singing sessions at which teenage boys and girls could mix. Faced with a greater choice of companions, Lloyd George concluded that he should not get so serious with Jennie. He began to take his evening walks with several different girls, and eventually the references in his diary to Jennie disappear entirely.*

The family’s move from Llanystumdwy to Criccieth in 1880 had been prompted by a number of factors: Uncle Lloyd’s health broke at the age of forty-five, and he was not strong enough to keep up his shoemaking as well as his preaching. His congregation were so anxious not to lose him prematurely that they arranged for him to have Morvin House, a small terraced house in the shadow of Criccieth Castle, at a peppercorn rent, enabling him to retire from his daily grind. At the time, it was not thought likely that he would ever recover his strength, a perfectly reasonable expectation given the premature deaths of his father, Dafydd, aged thirty-nine, and his brother-in-law William, aged forty-four. In the event, after a few years of ill-health he recovered, and lived to the age of eighty-two.

The logic of the move was inescapable. Although modest, Morvin House offered far more space and privacy than the cramped rooms at Highgate. Betsy was struggling to make ends meet, and in addition she had to find £180 (£14,965 in today’s money) to pay for her younger son’s articles. Practical considerations aside, the whole family was aware of the rumours of ‘fast living’ surrounding Lloyd George, and it would suit very well to have him back home, where they could keep an eye on him. In May the family packed up its possessions, including the precious collection of books, Betsy and Lloyd George dug up their favourite plants from the garden, and they moved a mile down the road to Criccieth. They left Llanystumdwy in a positive frame of mind, their financial worries eased for the present. Lloyd George wrote in his diary: ‘Left Llanystumdwy without one feeling of regret, remorse nor longing.’18

But the move to Criccieth was to herald their bleakest years as a family, and their financial difficulties, far from being over, were about to get much worse. Disaster struck when the building society in which Betsy had invested her capital collapsed, taking her remaining savings with it.* The family was left with virtually no capital, and little income beyond the minimal earnings of the young Lloyd George on which to live.

For proud people like Betsy and Richard, this was a bitter blow. They had survived many hardships without asking for help, but this time there was simply no option. Richard was forced to swallow his pride and ask a neighbour to lend him some money, but these occasional ‘loans’ barely kept the family afloat. Richard Lloyd mended and re-mended Polly and Betsy’s shoes, and Lloyd George records in his diary how Polly was unable to attend a festival in Caernarvon for want of the four-shilling fare until he managed to scrape it together for her. Betsy’s health suffered under the strain, and Lloyd George helped care for her as best he could while keeping up his punishing schedule of studying. In 1883 he recorded in his diary: ‘Mother had a very bad attack of asthma this morning prevented my going to my books until between 10 and 11. Reading few pages of Middleton’s Settled Estates & Statutes had to get candle at 7 tho’ I had my head out through the garret window.’19

Finally, desperate to bring in a little money, it was decided that they would offer room and board at Morvin House to tourists during the summer months. This seemed like an indignity to Lloyd George, conscious of his status as a budding lawyer and more mindful of his own comfort than his siblings, but in the end he had to agree to the inconvenience, and he was a little mollified when he discovered that one of their early visitors was H. Rider Haggard, the author of King Solomon’s Mines.

While Polly and Betsy struggled to keep house and home together, Lloyd George’s mind was on other things. He had been raised by one of the best pulpit speakers in the district, and under Uncle Lloyd’s tutelage he began to speak at Baptist services in the area, sometimes even preaching. He was keen to practise his speaking skills: he needed to become a good public speaker if he was to fulfil his dreams of a political career. Among the chapels he visited regularly was that in Penmachno, near the famous beauty spot of Betws-y-Coed. Unbeknownst to his family, he had a second motive for his frequent visits there, for among the congregation was a young girl called Kate Jones.

During the summer of 1882 Lloyd George walked the twenty miles to Penmachno a good deal more frequently than was strictly necessary. Kate, then aged eighteen, lived with her parents in a house called Glasgwm Hall. Lloyd George would have had plenty of opportunities to see her, for her father was an active Liberal and would become the first Liberal member of the new Caernarvonshire County Council when it was formed in 1889. Politics and religion combined to bring the two young people together, and soon Lloyd George was smitten. This time it was no mere flirtation. He was only nineteen and yet, without his family to intervene to keep things light, he seemed serious enough about Kate to consider marriage for the first time. The young girl was certainly a ‘catch’: she was from a respectable family and from the same Liberal, Baptist stock as Lloyd George himself. Best of all, she lived at a distance from Criccieth, and for a while was blissfully unaware of his reputation as the town flirt. Her innocence in that respect could not possibly last. However well he played the part of faithful suitor, in a close-knit society, people talked. The seriousness of his love did not extend to fidelity—it never would—and he was simultaneously courting a girl in Porthmadoc. This second affair was not significant enough for him to record it in his diary, but relying on geographic distance alone to keep his two girlfriends in ignorance of each other was bound to end badly, and the news of Lloyd George’s other girlfriend soon reached Kate.

This might not necessarily have been a terminal blow to the relationship, except that at the same time, a rival suitor came on the scene. The most eligible bachelor in Penmachno, the local doctor, Michael Williams—old enough to be established, but not too old to court an eighteen-year-old—took a shine to Kate. She was torn between the two for a while, and continued to see Lloyd George whenever he could arrange to speak in chapel. He in turn became more ardent in his suit, and wrote her long letters to impress her with his brilliance. Unfortunately, these backfired spectacularly, as Kate found his thoughts to be ‘far too independent’ for her liking. In November 1882 she gave in to her parents, who preferred their neighbour and friend to the struggling young lawyer from Criccieth, and accepted Williams’ proposal. She wrote to Lloyd George to tell him of her engagement and in his diary he recorded his stoic acceptance: ‘Well—I am not sorry. I think it is better she should stick to a man who is in a position to give her a comfortable position and not to an unthinking stripling of 19.’20

The reasonableness of her decision was obvious, and Lloyd George could see that she had had a better offer. But he had regarded himself as a serious contender for her hand, much more than a casual sweetheart. Whether this stemmed from genuine love or from the competition posed by his rival, we shall never know. The rather glum tone of his diary would suggest the former, and shortly after Kate’s engagement was announced he wrote her some verses. These prove that the world of politics did not rob the world of poetry of its brightest flame, but they do smack of true feeling:

I’m told there’s so bright a land

Beyond this night of sores

That neither pain nor cruel bond

Shall trample its happy shores.

If this be true—God grant it be—

Where no souls shall part

Fond heart from fond heart—

That is the world for you and me.21

Lloyd George was not trying to win Kate back, but he needed to express his feelings. He consoled himself with recording in his diary that Kate had let slip to a mutual friend, ‘Lord knows I prefer [Lloyd George] to anyone I have ever been with.’ But however much she might have liked Lloyd George, she stuck to her decision, and married Dr Williams in February 1883.

Deeply held feelings at the age of nineteen are often short-lived, and by the time of the wedding Lloyd George had recovered his sense of humour: ‘John Roberts only just come home from Penmachno—Brought me a piece of wedding cake Dr and Mrs Williams left with Miss Vaughan by Miss Jones to give me!!!’22

His affair with Kate had inspired Lloyd George to think of marriage for the first time, and had given him bitter experience of losing to a rival in love. It also taught him that he needed to be well established in his career before he could approach a girl with serious intentions, and also perhaps made him determined never again to lose a girl because of the intervention of her parents. These were all valuable lessons which were not forgotten.

Thus far, Lloyd George’s fledgling relationships had ended before he became fully entangled, but the next one was different. It was to have serious repercussions, nearly derailing his later courtship of Maggie Owen and laying down a lifetime’s habit of sailing close to the wind in matters of the heart. This time the object of his affections was a dark-eyed brunette called Lizzie Jones.

Young people in rural Wales were encouraged to meet and mingle in chapel. In this way they could get to know their future spouses under the protective gaze of the chapel elders, avoiding too much intimacy and the social and ideological complications of an inter-denomina-tional marriage. This was not just a means of keeping affairs respectable and young girls out of trouble: interdenominational rivalry ran high, and a cross-chapel marriage was socially troublesome. For nonconformists like Lloyd George and his family, chapel membership was a serious, lifelong commitment. The congregation acted as an extended family and an early form of social services, with each chapel looking after its own sick and elderly and members clubbing together to meet shared expenses. Each chapel had its own ceremony to accept new members and bind them for life, and the Calvinistic Methodists and other denominations took their ‘cwrdd derbyn’ (confirmation service) very seriously indeed. Members were expected to play a part in the chapel community, attend services faithfully and pay a subscription each week to meet expenses. Interdenominational, even same-denomination, inter-chapel rivalry meant that relationships that crossed the boundaries were heavily discouraged.

This caused practical difficulties within the broader community. How could married partners belong to different congregations when membership was, in effect, a subscription to a large family? Husbands and wives would have to inhabit different social circles. In which faith would children be raised, and what about the financial contribution that families were expected to make? They could hardly afford to pay two. It was just not feasible. Admittedly, marrying into a different nonconformist denomination was better than marrying Church, but only just.