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

Write me your views candidly & in as good & honest a spirit as I impart mine to you.

With fondest love

From your sweetheart D. Ll.G.26

This is an extraordinary letter, and is highly revealing as to the psychology of both author and recipient. It is a lawyer’s, not a lover’s letter. Love is secondary to business—no suitor ever made that clearer. Lloyd George will ‘thrust even love itself under the wheels of [his] Juggernaut’ if necessary to advance his career. It is in order to ‘get on’ that he needs Maggie by his side, and yet even in this frank letter he refrains from spelling out for her that he is referring to his political ambitions, not simply to his career as a rural attorney. Although the language he uses betrays the scale of his ambition, he draws back from telling her directly that he intends to make his mark on the national stage: that would have to wait until she was fully committed. His career would always come first, but he softens the blow a little by calling her his ‘guiding angel’. She is necessary to him, if only to achieve his ambitions.

There is no doubt that Lloyd George wrote sincerely and from the heart, but the letter is also a clever attempt to bend Maggie to his will. He appeals to her deep-rooted sense of duty, and the work ethic that was both a feature of her faith and a strong characteristic of her family. Maggie was raised to believe in hard work and obligation. Lloyd George knew this well, since it was her unyielding sense of duty to her parents that had frustrated him for so long. Appealing to her emotions would be like trying to persuade a river to leave its course: she would always place her duty first. In writing this letter he showed how well he understood her character, and how readily he would use that knowledge to manipulate her. His skill was to make it seem as if she had an equal duty to help him in his career. It was his strongest card, and he played it supremely well.

The letter must have given Maggie considerable food for thought, and while she was digesting it her concerns about his breach of promise case grew stronger. Unable to persuade him to drop the case, she wrote to him to air her views—it is one of the first letters from her that he kept.

My dear Mr George,

I have begged them to let me come to Portmadoc this evening, but father has utterly refused to let me go. I am sure I don’t know why, therefore I must submit to his will and stay at home…I am returning you the girl’s letter. After reflecting upon what you told me yesterday I must tell you that I should much prefer your leaving it to some one else to take up; not because of your relationship to the man nor to let him go unpunished by any means for he really deserves it, but for your own sake. All the old stories will be renewed again. I know there are relatives of mine at Criccieth, and other people as well, who will be glad to have anything more to say to my people about you, to set them against you and that will put me in an awkward position. I know this much, I shall not be at my ease while the thing is on, if you will be taking it up. If she were a stranger to you, and you took her case, people would wonder why on earth you took it against your cousin, knowing that your relations were against your doing so; but now they will draw different conclusions—that you are on friendly terms with these people while your duty is to do all that is in your power to make them forget that you ever were on friendly terms with them & taking up this case will not help you in the least to do it.

Let some one else do it. You can get plenty of excuses; one that your people are against you doing it and recommend some other lawyer. Should your reputation depend on it, as you said, that would only be from a professional point of view, not from any other point of view, I can assure you.

Yours faithfully,

M. Owen.27

The formal way in which she addresses him and the plaintive tone of the letter betray her anguish at the thought of the renewed contact between Lloyd George and Lizzie Jones. But even faced with this highly convincing case, Lloyd George bafflingly dug in his heels, choosing to face the opposition of his family and his sweetheart and to risk his personal reputation by prosecuting his cousin on behalf of his former love’s sister. He does not explain his reasons in his diary, nor in any letter that survives, but financial considerations must have been among them, as well as sheer stubbornness and perhaps a desire not to allow Maggie to dictate to him which cases he should take and which drop.

When Maggie tried again to persuade him not to take the case, with a threat to end their engagement, he came out fighting. He wrote her a second carefully crafted letter designed to make her accept him on his own terms, using every means at his disposal to end her indecision once and for all:

My dearest Maggie,

Your ultimatum to hand & here I launch my protocol in reply.

What I wish to make clear is this. That whatever course you may think fit in your unfettered discretion to adopt has not been necessitated or even occasioned by any dishonourable or disgraceful proceeding on my part.

What is the gravamen of your charge? Simply this—that I have deigned to permit myself to be entertained with a little harmless music by a couple of girls whom a bevy of dried-up dessicated [sic] & blighted old maids object to. I am not sure whether their objection is not a recommendation. And can you give me anyone whom they don’t object to? Miss R: Bronygadair objected even to you. I might plead guilty if I only knew the charge. My calls upon the girl were of a purely professional character—as witness the fact that prior to this breach of promise affair I was not on speaking letting alone visiting terms with her.

Again, his tone is legal: he is writing a protocol, an early version of a treaty between them. In other words, he is setting out his terms, which Maggie must accept or reject him altogether. He knew that he was on firm ground, since Maggie had given away the fact that she was jealous of the time he spent with his former girlfriend. Knowing that her love for him was strong, he chose not to promise an end to such behaviour. Instead, he decided again to appeal to her sense of duty by arguing, not entirely successfully, that his professional duty required him to socialise with clients:

—Now I could give you good reasons for my not objecting to a little music to finish up the consultation. I aim to please all my clients & thus make them as much as possible personal friends & were an Italian organ grinder to put anything in my way I would probably endeavour to please him at the risk of a little personal discomfort by asking him to display the musical qualities of his infernal machine. Now Miss Jones is to me a really good client—for if her case is fought out as it may (& as it would but for my regard to your anxiety for a settlement) my bill of costs would be a matter of between £50 and £100. There is moreover the notoriety of advertisement involved in the case which is in actual fact more valuable to me. Well such a client, to begin with, is worth trying to please. Moreover whilst music is as innocent a recreation as you could possibly indulge in it always affords me unlimited pleasure.

Then, with breathtaking nerve, he justifies his behaviour on religious grounds, and accuses Maggie of snobbery in her disapproval of the Jones sisters:

Furthermore the girls are members of the same chapel as I am and one of the few religious dogmas of our creed I believe in is—fraternity with which you may couple equality. My God never decreed that farmers & their race should be esteemed beyond the progeny of a fishmonger & strange to say Christ—the founder of our creed—selected the missionaries of his noble teaching from amongst fishmongers. Do you really think that the Christ who honoured & made friendship with Zebedee the fishmonger’s son would disdain the acquaintance of a poor toiling fishmonger’s daughter…To tell you plain truth I thought there was more humanity in you than to be led away by such silly notions.

My preference for you rather than for those girls arises not from any social distinctions—these I have the utmost contempt for—but it arises entirely from your superiority in many endearing qualities.

He goes on to criticise her debating tactics, demolishing her arguments as if he was facing a particularly inept prosecutor in court:

And now, honestly, don’t you think you have chosen the most inopportune moment for your outburst…even if it were a very improper &wicked thing to listen to the song of a fishmonger’s daughter—it is now about a month since I heard the chime of her voice—except in chapel. You are like Blucher of Waterloo—you only appear on the field when the enemy has fled…I will admit your letter is a clever piece of special pleading. You have picked up disjointed tit-bits from one story and shown that in conjunction with a rag from another story it bears such &such a colour. You have been mixing colours &then accuse me with being responsible for the hideousness of the resulting picture. Very clever you know but scarcely candid.

Then comes the most crucial passage in all the letters of Lloyd George and Maggie’s long courtship. He lays out in an entirely unambiguous way what he expects of her as his wife, the terms on which their future lives are to be lived, and his ambition as both lawyer and politician:

You very fiercely suggest that possibly I have committed a blunder in my selection. Well, I do make mistakes often, but as a rule it does not take me two years to find them out. And besides…my ideas as to the qualifications of a wife do not coincide with yours. You seem to think that the supreme function of a wife is to amuse her husband—to be to him a kind of toy or plaything to enable him to while away with enjoyment his leisure hour. Frankly, that is simply prostituting marriage. My ideas are very different—if not superior—to yours. I am of opinion that woman’s function is to soothe &sympathise ¬ to amuse. Men’s lives are a perpetual conflict. The life I have mapped out will be so especially—as lawyer &politician. Woman’s function is to pour oil on the wounds—to heal bruises of spirit received in past conflicts &to stimulate to renewed exertion. Am I not right? If I am then you are pre-eminently the girl for me. I have a thorough belief in your kindliness and affection.

With stunning clarity and disarming honesty, Lloyd George outlines his firm, lifelong philosophy for Maggie to accept or reject: her role would be to ‘soothe and sympathise’, to be the companion of his hearth and to heal his wounds after each battle. She need not worry about amusing him: his words contain just a hint of a suggestion that he could—and would—find his playthings elsewhere.

With all the facts laid out, he challenges Maggie to make her decision:

As to setting you free, that is a matter for your choice ¬ mine. I have many times impressed upon you that the only bond by which I have any desire to hold you is that of love. If that be lost then I would snap any other bond with my own hand. Hitherto my feelings are those of unflinching love for you &that feeling is a growing one.

You ask me to choose—I have made my choice deliberately &solemnly. I must now ask you to make your choice. I know my slanderers—those whom you allow to poison your mind against me. Choose between them &me—there can be no other alternative.

He concludes his case with the confidence of an advocate whose victory is assured, but his anxiety as to her answer shows, if only in the pleading postscript:

May I see you at 7 tomorrow? Drop me a note will you. I would like to have a thorough talk with you. We must settle this miserable squabble once &for all.28

This time, after deploying all his courtroom eloquence, the field was his, and Maggie finally accepted a diamond cluster ring as a formal token of their betrothal.

When she allowed Lloyd George to place the ring upon her finger she accepted more than just his word that he was faithful to her: she accepted his definition of her role as his wife. This was to be a defining moment in Maggie’s life, but it is far from clear how well she understood the deal she was accepting. She can have been in no doubt as to the strength of Lloyd George’s ambition, for he literally spelled it out for her, but even so, did she really understand how far he wanted to go, and in which direction? In later life she was to acknowledge her naïvety in this respect in an interview: ‘I thought I was marrying a Caernarvonshire lawyer. Some people even then said he was sure to get on, but it was success as a lawyer that they had in mind. I am sure neither of us guessed then what lay before us.’29

Most commentators have interpreted her words as retrospective selfjustification for her refusal to leave Criccieth for London—if she did not know at the outset that he was set on becoming a politician, she could not be accused of subsequent unreasonableness or lack of support for her husband. But in view of the rift that beset their marriage later, it is worth pausing to consider exactly what future Maggie thought she was accepting.

Maggie must have known of Lloyd George’s ambition to become a Member of Parliament, for as we have seen, he briefly considered becoming a candidate in the 1886 election. This does not necessarily mean, though, that she understood what being the wife of an MP involved. Maggie Owen led a sheltered life at Mynydd Ednyfed, and her knowledge of politics was filtered through either her father or her fiancé, neither of whom was very keen to talk to her about such matters. She could not have known much about what being married to an MP was like. Furthermore, the nature of the job itself was changing at that very point in history, with MPs who regarded their parliamentary roles as status-enhancing, albeit unpaid, sinecures giving way to a more professional political class.

In 1887 that change was only beginning to show in North Wales, and local MPs had hitherto managed to keep a fairly constant presence in Caernarvonshire as well as to carry out their parliamentary duties. Surely it was reasonable for Maggie Owen to assume that she would continue to live in Criccieth while her husband pursued his ambition and ‘got on’ in Westminster? There is no evidence in their letters that they ever discussed the details of their future life, or that she ever gave him an undertaking that she would leave Criccieth for London. Also, if Maggie failed to anticipate how high her husband would climb, she was not alone, since his eventual success was unprecedented. If in the full flush of her first serious love affair she chose not to look too far ahead, and to take the future on trust, how far is she to be blamed?

From her rare public comments, it seems that Maggie never envisaged leaving her beloved Criccieth for good. It would have been entirely out of character for her to do so, and would make her later behaviour inexplicable. But she did accept the wifely role that her future husband described. She would help him through the ‘perpetual conflict’ of his life. It was an essentially submissive role: she was to be the companion of his hearth, the comfort to which he returned each night. For better or worse, she would be Mrs Lloyd George.

*John Jones was the son of Elin, Betsy George’s sister.

5 Mrs Lloyd George

PERSUADING MAGGIE TO ACCEPT his ring was one thing, but getting her mother to accept their relationship was quite another, as Lloyd George was to discover. In the early months of 1887 the outlook was indeed bleak. Lloyd George was not allowed near Mynydd Ednyfed, and the lovers still had to meet in secret. The situation in Morvin House was no better: Lloyd George did not dare tell his mother about the relationship, and to confide in Uncle Lloyd was out of the question. But Lloyd George was not easily deterred. Throughout his life he had found that if he worked hard and used his head, the things he wanted tended to fall into his lap, and although he was frequently frustrated at the slow progress of his courtship, he never once admitted the possibility of defeat.

As a boy, Lloyd George was fond of reading military history. He saw each challenge in his own life as a battle to be won, and, as befits a future war leader, his long campaign to be married to Maggie Owen was planned and executed with determination and precision. In his diary, he reveals his strategy: ‘Find I can always work much better for an immediate defined object than for a remote possible one—so think it advisable to have fixed time.’1

Since the previous summer Lloyd George had concentrated on winning Maggie’s heart. Now, in the next phase of the campaign, he was intent on winning her hand. His goal was to persuade Richard Owen to give him permission to marry his daughter, who, still only twenty years old, could not legally marry without her parents’ consent. Maggie loved her parents dearly, and was in all respects a dutiful daughter. Lloyd George knew that it would cause her great unhappiness to go against their express wishes in a matter as important as marriage. For that reason also he needed their agreement to the match, and he knew that the main problem was not likely to be the doting father, but his fiercely judgemental wife.

The breach of promise case involving Ann and Lizzie Jones had indeed caused all the local rumours about Lloyd George to resurface, as Maggie had predicted. On 22 March he wrote gloomily in his diary: ‘It appears that Misses Roberts of Bronygadair and Ystwellgu have been reviling me to Mrs Owen—tllg her that they are surprised how I could stand in my shoes [with Maggie] when I had been courting “merch Nansi Penwaig” [Nancy Herring’s daughter].’ But he turned the situation to his advantage, taking the opportunity to move towards his next goal: ‘Told her that if her parents continued to nag at her in that style that the only way to put an end to it was to get married.’2

Maggie was not to be manipulated so easily: her mother’s objections hit home, especially since she was already worried about Lloyd George’s flirting. Lloyd George knew that he needed to win over the disapproving Mrs Owen, and since he was not allowed to approach her himself, he would have to rely on impressing people close to her who could plead his case.

His first and most devoted advocate was Maggie herself, and Lloyd George had for many months been coaching his sweetheart on how to manage her mother. Back in November the previous year he had been half-jokingly feeding her excuses to slip out to meet him, and had even felt in a strong enough position to poke fun at Mrs Owen’s obstinacy: ‘I send you herewith a formal ticket of invitation to the lecture…You can square your mother by reminding her that Mr Williams is one of the etholedigion [the elect—i.e. a Calvinistic Methodist] &that Griffydd ap Cynan was an eminent Methodist divine who flourished before Christ &in fact initiated him into the true principles of Calvinism. That ought to propitiate her.’

Again, when he had received letters from T.E. Ellis, his friend who had been elected MP for Merioneth in 1886 and who was a respectable Methodist, he wrote:

I enclose the two last letters I received from T. Ellis. It would do your mother good to read these letters as it will bring home to her mind that it is not perhaps essential to even good Methodism that you should taboo other sectarians. Darllenwch nhw i’ch mam bendith tad i chi [Read them to your mother, for goodness’ sake]. She’ll pull as wry a face as if she were drinking a gallon of assafatida [a popular but pungent herbal remedy]. Did you tell her what a scandal she has created about us throughout Lleyn?3

Lloyd George’s humorous tone was becoming tinged with exasperation; he was not used to facing opposition as determined as this, and in Mrs Owen he very nearly met his match. But he had no equal in persistence. Shortly after giving Maggie her ring, when he was called to London at short notice he set her a tricky task to accomplish during his absence:

Remember to behave in my absence ‘fel pe byddwn bresenol yn y corph’ [as if I were present in the flesh] as I shall be ‘yn yr ysbryd’ [in spirit]. Redeem your faithful promise to show your mother the token of our engagement. You may also should you deem it prudent (this I leave to your discretion) arrange an appointment for me to discuss matters with your father mother or any or either or both of them.

That’s a good week’s work (for you)—I have cut out for you.

With sincerest love…

It seems that Maggie did not find the courage to approach her parents during his absence—or decided that there was no point in doing so—and it was to be many months before she and Lloyd George could even meet at her home, let alone have her parents’ blessing to marry.

A few pages later in the carbon letter-book in which lie copies of all Lloyd George’s letters is a draft letter to Miss Roberts, Ynysgain, urging her despite her illness to keep an engagement for tea at Mynydd Ednyfed. Dorothy Roberts was a cousin of the Owens, and Lloyd George had been courting her good opinion almost as assiduously as he had courted Maggie’s. Miss Roberts lived some way outside Criccieth, and was therefore less influenced by the gossip surrounding Lloyd George’s love life. Despite being well established in middle age, she was in an excellent position to advise Maggie. The two were great friends, and Maggie confided her innermost feelings to her cousin. Miss Roberts was a frequent visitor to Mynydd Ednyfed, and could help soften Mrs Owen’s opposition to the match, so Lloyd George decided to launch a fullblown charm offensive.

He began to call on Miss Roberts frequently as he attempted to persuade her of the strength of feeling between himself and Maggie. Before long, Dorothy Roberts had fallen for his charm, and not only spoke favourably of him to Mary Owen, but also helped shore up Maggie’s courage as she faced her parents’ disapproval. According to Lloyd George and Maggie’s eldest son, Dick, ‘It was her aunt [i.e. Dorothy Roberts] who stiffened her backbone and helped her to follow the dictates of her heart in the face of her parents’ violent opposition.’4 Dorothy advised Maggie to put love ahead of family, chapel and politics. This might sound excessively romantic, but it was based on thorough knowledge of the characters involved, and was of course exactly what Maggie wanted to hear.

Another of Lloyd George’s supporters was also female. For some time, Lloyd George had found the ‘post office’, where he and Maggie left notes for each other, troublesome. The problem was that they could not be sure that the notes would reach their recipient quickly. When Maggie could not get away, or Lloyd George’s work sent him on an unexpected journey, letters often failed to reach them in time, and Lloyd George’s frustration grew with each mishap. He needed a go-between, someone who had access to Maggie, and so he began to work his charm on the Mynydd Ednyfed maid, Margiad.

Margiad was a steadfast but canny character whose devotion to her mistress, Mary Owen, was surpassed only by her fierce loyalty to Maggie, whom she had helped to raise. In the early stages of the courtship she was sent out to the lane by Mrs Owen to tell Lloyd George not to wait around for Maggie, and she also carried the message that he was not a welcome visitor to Mynydd Ednyfed. Lloyd George knew exactly how to get around a country girl like Margiad, though, and soon the two were conspiring together to persuade Maggie to slip away from under her mother’s nose. It was quite a feat to transfer Margiad’s loyalty from her employer to himself: Lloyd George’s attractiveness to women, it seems, was nearly universal—only his future mother-in-law remained impervious.

As the year wore on, Lloyd George made little progress. Maggie had got over the breach of promise case, but her jealousy was sharpened, and Lloyd George was frequently admonished for his flirtatious behaviour: ‘Got a lecturing from Maggie very strong about Tymawr girls. Wrote her a long reply in evening.’ And again: ‘long altercation…made up in the end as usual. “Love quarrels oft in pleasing concord end” quite true, fortunately, Mr Milton.’5

At the same time, Lloyd George was making sure that he had the support of his own family—at least, of those members of it in whom he could confide. This was vitally important, since he was relying on the Morvin House family to support him financially when, as he fully expected, his political career took off. The first step had been to persuade William to leave Breese, Jones &Casson to join Lloyd George’s fledgling practice. William had asked Mr Casson for permission to leave in 1886, but Casson saw no reason to help a rival firm, and refused. This was perhaps just as well. The atmosphere at work was difficult for William since his brother had started competing with his employer for cases, but without access to the firm’s legal textbooks he would have been hard pressed to pass his finals. He took his final examinations in May 1887, and there was much celebration in Morvin House when he passed with first class honours.* After qualifying William was released from his articles and promptly left to join his brother. The plaque on the door of Morvin House was changed to read ‘Lloyd George &George’, and from that point onwards Lloyd George had a diligent and tireless business partner in his younger brother.