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

Maggie was unlikely to be reassured by the fact that Parry, with his ‘numerous sweethearts’, was responsible for keeping Lloyd George in line, but neither did she realise the full, obvious implication of his continual flirting: while she was with him he resisted casual flirtations, but when they were apart he was unable to be faithful.

In a letter from the same period, there is a tantalising hint that Maggie may have tried to bring Lloyd George to heel with a little flirting of her own. This was disastrous. He retaliated triumphantly that she had now given him an excuse for all his indiscretions: ‘Your letter…will justify all my flirtations for the past—and future [these two words were added as an afterthought]—and teach me how to gloss them over when caught.’ 9 She could not say she had not been warned.

The Capel Mawr controversy had a special resonance for the Owen family because Richard and Mary Owen had at one time hoped that Capel Mawr’s young minister would eventually be their son-in-law. Lloyd George was not aware of this at first, but over the summer Maggie confessed to him that she had received three offers of marriage, and that one of her suitors was the Rev. Owen. Secure in her affection, Lloyd George felt that this showed becoming modesty in his future wife, and recorded proudly in his diary: ‘Cannot help admiring the honour and lack of brag which caused the girl not to show these letters to me ere this.’ 10

After a lull of many months Lloyd George was back on track and escalating his campaign to get a wedding date fixed. Having gained a strategic advantage with the Owens at last, he pressed his case. The first objective was to be allowed to visit Maggie openly, for, six months into their engagement, Mrs Owen would still not allow him across the threshold of her house, nor would she give Maggie permission to meet him elsewhere. The couple had to meet in the dead of night, which must have been tiring as well as somewhat ridiculous. Lloyd George’s midnight roving had not gone unnoticed at home. Uncle Lloyd was still in the dark with regard to his nephew’s relationship with Maggie, but he had noticed his night-time excursions. Suspecting the worst, Richard Lloyd had taken to wandering the streets of Criccieth asking if anyone had seen him, so it was more important than ever for Lloyd George to be able to meet Maggie during civilised hours. In the meantime he did the best he could by hiding his uncle’s boots before leaving the house so that the old man could not follow.

Feeling more confident now that he was on better terms with Mr Owen, Lloyd George chose to go on the offensive and bully Maggie into confronting her mother:

Long talk as to my night visits. Told her that I was not enamoured of them especially as my uncle seemed to feel them so sorely—but they were our only resource since her mother was not civilized enough to permit my visiting her during decent hours. I suggested that she shd. tell her mother that I intended to come up at 8 every evening &she said that she had been thinking of the same thing, that she was thoroughly tired of our midnight meetings as they involved a sense of transgressing respectable rules. She finally promised to tell her mother on Monday without fail. She may do so. 11

Lloyd George was not absolutely sure that she would go through with it, but Maggie was not lacking in courage, and she resented the indignity and the impropriety of the midnight meetings too. She was also getting thoroughly tired of being caught in the middle between her mother and her lover: ‘My parents are angry with me one day and you another. I am on bad terms with one or the other continually…Well I am very miserable, that is all I have to say, Dearest Dei, *and I hope things won’t be long as they are now.’ 12

This time, perhaps feeling short of friends as a result of the Capel Mawr rift, or perhaps responding at last to their daughter’s pleas, the Owens relented. Mrs Owen made a half-hearted attempt to limit Lloyd George’s visits to three a week, but she must have known that she had been utterly defeated. With Lloyd George comfortably ensconced in her parlour from eight till ten each evening, it was only a matter of time before she would have to agree to a wedding.

By October, the issue was not if Lloyd George and Maggie would be married, but where and how. Lloyd George turned his mind to how to announce his engagement to his own mother and uncle. The denominational difference was likely to be an even greater obstacle to his own family than it was for the Owens, since even the strict rules of the Calvinistic Methodists did not live up to the puritanical standards of the Disciples of Christ. The prospect of their Davy, the golden boy of the family, marrying into another denomination was bound to cause a great upset. Lloyd George’s regard and respect for his uncle’s judgement was still strong, and he wrote in his diary in October: ‘We had a good talk about marriage. We arranged to get married soon—provided my uncle did not upon my talking the matter over with him show good cause to the contrary.’ 13

November 1887 came, and with it a significant milestone. On the fourth Maggie reached her twenty-first birthday, and her parents could no longer legally prevent her from marrying, although they could still withhold their blessing. They could only ask the young couple to respect their wishes, arguing that there were still practical reasons why the wedding could not take place yet. Lloyd George wrote in his diary on 1 November:

I then had a talk with Mr &Mrs Owen—they pleaded for delay—that they had made up their minds not to stay at Mynydd Ednyfed…but that they could not get anything like a good price for the stock these bad times…that if they sold their things under value it would be our loss in the end—they wished us to wait for a yr. or so—that we were quite young &c…I thought the old man very cunningly tried to persuade me to delay by showing me it was in my own interest…I told them when [Richard Owen] said something about money that I wanted no money as I had of course before coming to that point seen that I wd. have sufficient myself without any extraneous aid (I am not sure whether it would have been better to plead poverty—but I wanted to show them that I took no commercial views of my engagement). The interview ended by their asking me to reconsider the matter &see them again about it. 14

With matters having reached this advanced stage, it was time for Lloyd George to steel himself to tell his invalid mother that he would soon be leaving home. He was careful to make sure that Polly was on hand with plenty of praise for Maggie, but this was not enough to soften the blow, and he recorded in his diary how upset Betsy was on hearing the news: ‘the poor old woman cried and said she felt my leaving very much. She then gave me some very good advice about being kind to Maggie, never saying anything nasty to her when I lost my temper, to be attentive to her if &when she was ill, that sort of thing. She praised M. very much from what she had heard from M.E.G. [Polly].’ 15

In her weakened, dependent state Betsy could not bear the thought of either of her sons marrying. She would have been upset even if Lloyd George were marrying a Baptist, but he knew that it would not be as easy to gloss over the chapel issue with Uncle Lloyd. For the meantime therefore he decided to say nothing to the old man until the very last minute, when all the arrangements for the wedding were in place.

At the end of November the Owens were still refusing to give the couple their blessing, but they finally gave in to Maggie’s pleading over Christmas—the denominational mismatch was such a serious matter that they had to formally consult Seion’s deacons before acknowledging the engagement. They began to bargain with Lloyd George over the location and form of the ceremony. Richard Owen would not hear of his daughter being married in a Baptist chapel, and Lloyd George knew that his uncle would not countenance a Methodist wedding. Two things were clear: a compromise would have to be found, and since neither family would be in a mood to celebrate, the wedding had better take place at a distance from Criccieth. Lloyd George argued strongly for Capel-y-Beirdd, a Baptist chapel three miles away, but Richard Owen had been defeated on every count thus far, and insisted on having his way with regard to the location. Lloyd George’s diary records his frustration: ‘The old folk still very adverse [sic] to going to Capel y Beirdd. Their hostility due in a great measure to a silly pride quite as much as to religious bigotry. I am inclined to get stiff about the matter. I would not care a rap where to get married, were it not that I am going out of my way to cater for sectarian pride and bigotry.’ 16