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

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.