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

Uncle Lloyd was overjoyed. He was not an excitable man, nor one given to exaggeration, but he wrote in his diary that night that the result was ‘almost a miracle’ 16 —a word he did not use lightly. At 6 p.m. the newly elected Lloyd George returned to Criccieth, where he was greeted by crowds, bonfires and bunting—but no wife. Five months pregnant and with a fourteen-month-old baby to nurse, Maggie had decided that it was not sensible to leave Mynydd Ednyfed, despite her husband’s request. Lloyd George was rather prone to make unreasonable demands of her, ignoring her physical condition when she was pregnant and the practical difficulties of looking after young children. Although she occasionally ignored his pleas, it did not cause much friction between them, at this stage at least.

The celebrations in Criccieth lasted well into the night, and when, finally, Lloyd George was escorted home by an elated and noisy crowd he was met, not by an adoring and excited wife, but by a furious nursemaid charged with looking after the infant Dick. The new MP was brought quickly down to earth. He was subjected to a stern telling off, and his supporters were ordered to stop their shouting immediately for fear of waking the baby. It was a sharp reminder of his wife’s priorities.

*The word ‘child’ was added as an afterthought by the expectant mother.

*Lloyd George’s brother William would be elected Chairman of Caernarvonshire County Council in 1911, and in 1917 he too was co-opted as Alderman, a position he held until his death in 1967.

WHEN MARGARET HEARD THAT HER husband had been elected to Parliament, she wept. Lloyd George later recalled that they were ‘tears of regret for the ending of her hopes for a quiet, untroubled existence in the country’. 1 However unrealistic her expectations of a quiet country life had been when she married, they were, it seems, genuine, and were now dashed to pieces.

The result of the Caernarvon Boroughs by-election attracted extensive coverage in the Welsh press and nationally. This was partly due to the name the successful candidate had already made for himself, but also because Lloyd George had overturned the Conservative majority of the previous general election, and, then as now, such upsets attracted a lot of comment. Lloyd George’s arrival at Westminster also received far more attention than it would have done if he had been elected amid a throng of others at a general election.

David Lloyd George MP took his seat on budget day, 17 April 1890, and his wife added the newspaper reports to her scrapbook:

It was a striking sight, the closely packed benches, the Chancellor of the Exchequer [George Goschen] with many little volumes of notes, bracing himself up for a grand effort; while immediately below the venerable figure of Lord Cottesloe stood the young M.P. for the Caernarvonshire Boroughs, nearly seventy years his junior, pale with excitement and the thoughts of the career opening before him. 2

Maggie did not accompany her husband to London: amid the excitement following the election, Lloyd George had no time to find accommodation, and when he was in the capital he stayed with Criccieth friends or at the National Liberal Club, according to his circumstances. But she was not far from his thoughts, and he took the first possible opportunity to write to her, during the budget speech itself. His pride and sense of achievement in getting into Parliament, the ‘region of his future domain’, is tangible: ‘This is the first letter which I write as an introduced member of the House of Commons and I dedicate it to my little darling. I snatch a few minutes during the delivery of Goschen’s budget to write her. I was introduced amid very enthusiastic cheers on the Liberal side.’ 3 The next day, he wrote to his brother with the bemusement of a new Member of Parliament: ‘My first division last night. I voted against Bi-metallism, but I couldn’t tell you why.’ 4

As Lloyd George was finding his feet at Westminster, Maggie was wondering how they would manage now that her husband was an unsalaried MP with little or no time to spend on building his business. Unlike Lloyd George, who was not practical by nature, both she and William George could see the financial difficulty his election had placed them in as a family, and William’s diary betrays the sleepless nights the situation caused him: ‘For the village lad to have beaten the parish country squire is a (great) honour. Two practical questions present themselves: (a) How is D to live there? (b) How am I to live down here?’ 5

The law practice, now mainly run by William George, would have to provide for all: Lloyd George, Maggie and their growing family as well as Uncle Lloyd, Betsy and Polly. The firm was doing reasonably well as a result of some hard work by William, and had moved to premises in Porthmadoc. Uncle Lloyd helped out as an office clerk, but the family’s income would be spread thinly for some years to come. As late as 1894, William George recorded in his diary that his supper consisted of a cupful of hot water with some bread and butter. The first of many requests for financial help came from London when Maggie paid her husband a visit:

Dei wished me to ask you to send him £5 by return please. He has been using some of my money. If he doesn’t get it your dear sister can’t return home on Saturday without leaving her husband quite penniless in this great city…He also wants you to send him a few blank cheques. For goodness sake don’t send him many. They are such easy things to fill in and then the slashing signature of D. Lloyd George put to them—which I fear you would not be too glad to see. 6

Maggie was as careful with money as Lloyd George was extravagant. Every penny was precious, and she formed money-saving habits that remained with her for life. Unfairly perhaps, they gave her a reputation for being tight-fisted. In her defence, she never enjoyed spending money on herself, but even Polly, who was perfectly aware of their financial situation, commented on her meanness to William George while on a visit to London in 1891:

You will be anxious perhaps to know whether your P.O’s came to hand safely. I may say that they are in the strictest sense of the word. Mag pounced upon them directly &no one has seen a scrap of them since or ever will…A rare one for keeping money is my little sister-in-law. She is a very kind little hostess and we get on very nicely together, it is when it comes to spending that she shows her miserliness, she will borrow a penny to pay the tram sooner than pay for you herself. 7

During the first few weeks after his election, Lloyd George immersed himself in national politics and London life. He was anxious to find a place to live so that Maggie could join him, and did not seem to see the impracticality of this plan. In June 1890 he entreated her to make the eighteen-hour round trip from Criccieth by train so that they could spend Sunday house-hunting—not a prospect that would entice many women who were seven months pregnant. 8 His pleading was all the more extraordinary because Maggie’s second pregnancy had not been straightforward. Her letters to Lloyd George, though trying to reassure him, are full of fear that she might lose the baby: ‘This afternoon we are going to Dwyfor Villa to tea, the walk will do me good if I do it slowly &rest at Criccieth. I’m going and coming back. Much more good than a drive that shakes me so much.’ And again: ‘I don’t feel very well today don’t be alarmed if you find an unease in the family when you come down. I am in good spirits. Mag.’ 9

Lloyd George was worried, and despite his efforts to cheer her up, Maggie was clearly having a hard time. She wrote:

I am longing dreadfully after you today. After being home for a flying visit you seem to have gone from my sight without hardly having seen you, &it may seem very silly on my part but I go to every room in the house today to find a trace of your having been occupying it, &I find but little traces of you, but when I do I relieve myself in tears, but I shall be alright when I get a letter tomorrow morning.