Ffion Hague - The Pain and the Privilege - The Women in Lloyd George’s Life

There is an intriguing suggestion here that Polly, unlike Betsy, was no home-bird, and would have been better suited to an occupation other than looking after the family in Highgate. She was quite different from her mother—the family thought she had inherited some of her traits from the formidable Rebecca. But she was needed at home, and even the limited career options that were possible for a young Victorian woman were closed to her. Any potential that lay in her for other achievements was unfulfilled, since unlike her younger brother William, who was to follow David into the law, Uncle Lloyd never did succeed in getting a better deal in life for Polly.

Polly did not complain. She seemed to channel any frustration she felt into promoting her brother’s ambitions. Her role was mainly domestic, caring for Betsy and Uncle Lloyd, and later becoming a second mother to her nieces and nephews. Her oldest nephew, Dick, remembers her as ‘a strong character, definitely uncompromising’. She might have been ‘narrow-minded in religious matters’, but she was open-hearted when it came to her nieces and nephews: ‘Everything we wanted her lavish, generous hand gave us.’ 2 Polly looked after the family well. She kept an eye on Richard Lloyd’s diet, and was capable of launching a ‘devastating counter-attack’ if he dared help himself to a second slice of apple tart.

After a few sleepless nights, the young Lloyd George began to settle down. He lodged with Mrs Owen and her husband in a house on Porthmadoc High Street, paying ten shillings a week for his bed and board out of the small cash allowance that Betsy gave him. He would get up early, between six and seven, and make himself useful at the office of Breese, Jones & Casson all day, carrying messages, copying documents and taking dictation. He worked hard, keen to persuade Mr Casson to take him on permanently. If he was lucky he could supplement his allowance with commission earned by collecting insurance premiums from Porthmadoc householders. At the same time, he did not neglect his studies. He had further law exams to take if he was to be successful, and he continued the habit that Uncle Lloyd had instilled in him of setting a daily reading target, taking notes as he went. He was spurred on by ambition, and also by competitiveness: ‘I feel I must stick to reading,’ he wrote in his diary on 17 September 1879, ‘or my time will be wasted and I shall be no better than the clerks and I am determined to surpass (DV).’ 3 This kept him out of trouble on the whole, although Mrs Owen had occasional cause to show him the rough side of her tongue for staying out late.

Lloyd George was bursting with ambition and youthful ideals. Primed by both temperament and upbringing to believe that he was capable of great things, he could not wait to make his mark on the world. His diary is striking in its similarity to that of his late father at the same age. But the son shows more steel. Perhaps because of the innate selfbelief which was one of his strongest characteristics, or because of the firm guidance he received from Uncle Lloyd, Lloyd George never doubted his ability to ‘get on’. His diary records his advice to himself and sets out his goals as he entered his articles:

Q. Your chief ambition? A. To promote myself by honest endeavour to benefit others.

Q. The noblest aim in life. A. (1) To develop our manhood. (2) To do good. (3) To seek truth. (4) To bring truth to benefit our fellows.

Q. Your idea of Happiness. A. To perceive my own efforts succeed.

To ‘perceive his own efforts succeed’ was to be the driving factor of Lloyd George’s life. He put success in his work above all else, and never allowed love, illness or even bereavement to distract him for long. That said, leaving Highgate meant an end, temporarily at least, to his family’s close scrutiny of his leisure time. At sixteen years old he was experiencing the usual hormonal turmoil, and in essence Lloyd George had a country boy’s attitude to sex, no matter how hard his mother tried to restrain him with chapel decorum.

The practice among farming people and servants at the time was to allow a courting couple to meet at night for ‘caru gwely’ (bed-courtship). This was—in theory and probably in practice—a lot more innocent than it sounds. A young girl in domestic service would have limited opportunities to meet local boys. When she did, say at an evening chapel gathering, if she wanted to extend the encounter beyond a walk home, she could invite her beau to her room as a way of saving candles and fuel on cold nights. The bedroom was unlikely to be hers alone, but that did not seem to deter young lovers, and they would spend a few hours together in bed, fully dressed to avoid temptation.

This may seem extraordinarily permissive given the stern view of premarital sex taken by the nonconformists, but sex was not meant to be part of the deal. It was expected that the young lad would behave himself and not get his sweetheart in trouble. She, for her part, was not the innocent creature that her upper-class contemporary was raised to be, and not only knew the facts of life from an early age (living on or near farms meant that these mysteries were easily unravelled), but knew only too well the consequences of allowing things to go too far. If a girl became pregnant she would be drummed out of society, lose her chance of catching a good husband, and unless her family took her in, would have to fend for herself and her baby. This knowledge, it seemed, was quite an effective contraceptive.

Bed-courtship was normally confined to the labouring classes, and not to devout intellectuals like the George family, but Lloyd George, never one to let class considerations stand in the way of an exciting encounter, extended his experience of the world in this way at least once. In company with a Porthmadoc friend, Moses Roberts, he attended a Pentecostal dance at which they were ‘sorely tempted by two Irish girls’. 4 Caru gwely followed, and his studies were forgotten for one night at least.

Betsy, Polly and Uncle Lloyd would have been aghast at such behaviour. Lloyd George kept them firmly in the dark, but they were still concerned at the degree of freedom he was enjoying. He had begun to forget the strict ways of home, and one Sunday was enjoying himself digging in the garden when his mother gave him a sound telling-off, shocked at the sight of him breaking the Sabbath. She had good reason to be worried: her son was not growing up to be a faithful Disciple of Christ at all.

Taking pains to avoid Uncle Lloyd’s disapproval was something of a George family habit. Lloyd George and William had to find plausible excuses even to go and hear a good sermon in another chapel, and no grumbling at the three walks to Capel Ucha on a Sunday was tolerated, even after a hard week’s work. Uncle Lloyd’s reprimands were mild, and he never forced his family to conform to his views, but they never forgot how much they owed him, and were loath to disappoint him. But now Lloyd George was free for six days a week to ignore the rules and indulge his fancy. Away from the moral influence of Uncle Lloyd he explored his new environment to the utmost. In Porthmadoc he found a heady combination of work, politics and sex.

Lloyd George’s first priority, even as a sixteen-year-old, was his work. His uncle had hung a portrait of Abraham Lincoln above the fireplace in Highgate to inspire the young boy, who never forgot the story of the self-taught lawyer who had by his own endeavours become President of the United States. It took rare confidence for a village boy in Llanystumdwy to believe that he too was capable of such a feat. Having decided that the law was to be the starting point for his career, he worked diligently, and after persuading Randall Casson to take him on as an articled clerk, the next hurdle was to pass his intermediate law examination. He received little support for his studies from the firm, apart from access to law books and periodicals, but Uncle Lloyd devised a rigorous programme for both him and William, who had passed his preliminary examination in 1880. With typical thoroughness, Lloyd George rejected the easy option of cramming just enough information to scrape through from a primer in favour of reading texts from cover to cover. Every book, every chapter, even note-texts and footnotes were read, and notes taken.