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

…send me a loving letter tomorrow &I shall be happy &make haste home on Saturday if you cant come before. I feel that I must see you once more before I am taken ill. 10

There was great joy when Mair Eluned Lloyd George was born without complication on 2 August 1890, although the proud father was not at home to witness the event. He was told of the birth of his first daughter by his brother in a telegram, and caught the mail train to Criccieth for a flying visit before returning to London.

Lloyd George naturally wanted to participate in full in his first parliamentary session, but when the House rose in mid-August his family expected him to return to Criccieth to nurture his constituency, to help his brother with the law practice, and to spend time with his wife and new baby. Maggie was clearly looking forward to having her husband back, but he had other ideas: to Lloyd George politics was a full-time occupation, and when Parliament was not sitting he gave speeches across the country and travelled abroad with his political friends, a fact that his wife and brother eventually had to accept.

This was hard for Maggie. She could not see the attraction of London for her husband, and resented the time he spent there when he could be with his family. On one occasion soon after Mair’s birth Lloyd George announced that he was staying in London for the weekend to prepare a speech instead of coming home. Maggie had been looking forward to a visit, and her disappointment was sharpened when he mentioned casually that he had been distracted from his work by his friend and fellow Welsh Liberal MP, S.T. Evans, who she felt was a bad influence on him. On the Sunday, the two had taken a bus to Kew Gardens and had failed to attend chapel. Maggie was incensed:

Well I don’t approve of the way you spent your Sunday &I am sure by the way my old Dafydd put it that he knows I don’t. Thanks to you all the same for being honest in telling your Maggie. Tell her everything will you always never keep anything from her. If you were at home now &wanted to make a speech &your old Mag asked you to come with her to Chapel for 2 hours you would at once say well I can’t come I can’t go to such and such a place unprepared &make a fool of myself &that I must be responsible for the result if you come with me, but S T Evans turns up &asks you to go with him to waste a day you consent I am sure with a bright smile &no conditions as to responsibility. I shall remember last Sunday in future.

Maggie chose to believe that Lloyd George was a reluctant participant in the day trip, and blamed his friend for the episode:

I can’t bring myself to like S T Evans after what you told me. He is not teetotller (I am sure that is not spelt properly) for one thing &other things [i.e. his flirting] that you’ve told me, which I always dislike in men, that he must be rather fast. Perhaps I am mistaken. Tom Ellis [nonconformist MP for Merioneth] would be the man I should like to see you friendly with. I don’t think there would be any danger of your being any the worse for being in his company. I am not so sure about STE.

Her idea of a well-spent Sunday was not at all the kind that appealed to Lloyd George: ‘Buasai yn llawer gwell i ti fod yn Grassgarth hefo Davies yn cadw cwmpeini iddo fe. Gallset neud dy speech tra buasai Davies yn y capel ond iti fynd yno hefo fo unwaith’ (It would be far better for you to be at Grassgarth with Davies *keeping him company. You could prepare your speech while Davies was in Chapel, if you only went with him once). 11 Maggie’s outburst did not change her husband’s behaviour, but it did make him more careful to conceal his pleasure trips from her.

Lloyd George’s entry into the world of national politics took place during a period of great change. Irish Home Rule was dominating the political headlines, supporters of female suffrage were beginning to attract attention to their cause, and demographic and social changes in densely populated industrial areas were leading inexorably to the formation of a new political force as the Independent Labour Party was formed in 1893 under the chairmanship of Keir Hardie. Simultaneously, the dominance of the landed gentry in Parliament was giving way to men with ‘new’ money or from the professions, although in 1890 the average Conservative MP still had roughly twice the personal income of the average Liberal Member. The House of Commons reflected the habits and lifestyle of the aristocracy, creating a potentially hostile and threatening atmosphere to a working-class MP. But it was not intimidating to Lloyd George. He soon grasped the ways of the House, taking to it as naturally as if he had been born to it.

The change of character in the membership of the House meant that in the general election of 1892, Lloyd George was joined by more men of similar backgrounds. He himself increased his majority from the wafer-thin eighteen votes of the by-election two years previously to 196, despite facing the well-liked Tory candidate Sir John Puleston, Constable of Caernarvon Castle and veteran of the American Civil War. Of the thirty-four Welsh Members returned, thirty-one were Liberals, and over twenty were Welsh-born. Significantly, the group contained six village-school-educated men, fourteen lawyers, fourteen businessmen and twenty-two nonconformists. The Liberals, led by Gladstone, were not so successful elsewhere, and with a reduced Liberal majority of only forty, if they banded together as a group the Welsh Members to some extent held the balance of power. They were not slow to take advantage of the fact. Courted by the government, the Welsh MPs were determined to secure the great prize: a Bill for the disestablishment of the Welsh Church which would end the state-maintained dominance of the Anglican Church in Wales and give religious equality—at last—to nonconformists.

Maggie was not politically aware when she married, but she could see that these were important battles, and that her husband’s participation in Westminster politics at this time was crucial to the future of her own country, denomination and way of life. She could not see though why he had to be away from her when Parliament was not in session. He in turn could not understand why she did not want to follow him to London to look after him there.

Lloyd George wanted his family with him in London—‘I don’t know what I would give now for an hour of your company. It would scatter all the gloom &make all the room so cheerful,’ he wrote in June 1890 12 —but the unpleasant reality was that he could not afford to set up a second household on his income. At first he stayed in Acton with the Davies family, who became close friends and welcomed Maggie whenever she could visit London. But she now had two children under two years old to take care of, and also had plenty to occupy her at home, packing up at Mynydd Ednyfed and preparing to move to the new house in December 1890. It would have been difficult for her to spend more time in London even if the succession of temporary digs had been satisfactory, and they clearly were not.

The Lloyd Georges’ first home in London was a set of rooms in Verulam Buildings, Gray’s Inn, which they took on a lease of £70 (£6,147 at today’s values) a year early in 1891. The rooms were serviced, and there was a porter at the gate and two housekeepers on the premises, but the lease was surrendered at the end of the 1892 parliamentary session. That winter they took a six-month lease on a set of rooms at 5 Essex Court in the Temple, and in late autumn 1893 Lloyd George took a flat, No. 30 Palace Mansions in Addison Road, Kensington, for £90 a year which was to be their London home for six years. For the most part, however, Maggie stayed in Criccieth, resigning herself to the long absences that came to characterise her relationship with her husband at this time.