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

At the same time, William had to accept that his school had failed. Prompted by his lack of professional success, by his bereavement, or both, he decided to leave Pembrokeshire. In 1857 he responded to an advertisement for a schoolmaster to teach at the British School at Troed-yr-Allt in Pwllheli. He took up his position in 1858, and joined the Baptist chapel, where he met the attractive, dark-haired Betsy Llwyd. They were married in St Peter’s, the parish church in Pwllheli, on 16 November 1859, Betsy’s brother Richard acting as a witness.

After the wedding, Betsy left her domestic position to keep house for her husband. William was badly paid even by the standards of the day, and it is likely that they could not afford to run their own household. They moved back to Highgate, from where William walked or rode on horseback daily to school. William and Richard shared the same intellectual disposition, and quickly became firm friends; the fact that William was a Baptist no doubt pleased the fervently religious Rebecca.

Highgate was also home to the son of Betsy’s elder sister Elin, who had married William Jones, a Criccieth farmer. Finally free of the upkeep of her two daughters, Rebecca had decided to ease her elder daughter’s burden by taking in one of her children. This was a fairly commonplace arrangement at a time when resources were strained and large families were the norm. The boy was named David Lloyd Jones, his Christian names the anglicised version of Dafydd Llwyd in memory of his grandfather. For Rebecca, the young David was more than another mouth to feed. He was an intelligent, bookish child who from an early age was marked out as the gifted member of the family. Rebecca devoted all her spare time to his development, much as she would to Betsy’s talented son in future years. In both name and upbringing, David Lloyd Jones was to be the precursor of his later, famous cousin. The young David was undoubtedly bright, but he was a sickly, delicate child, and William George doubted whether he had enough drive to find his way in the world. Nevertheless, he took him under his wing and acted as his mentor and teacher, encouraging him to read and take notes from his own small library of precious books. Space in the confined household was found for him to study, and candles allocated to his late-night study. As he read, others did his share of the household chores, and pennies were found to pay for paper, ink and other essentials.

When Betsy returned to Highgate after an absence of fifteen years, she took some of the burden of caring for the household from her mother’s shoulders. It was hard work: water needed to be carried daily from the village pump for cooking and washing, and the earth closet had to be tended with noisome regularity. Life did not progress smoothly for Betsy and William. William was experiencing difficulty in relearning the Welsh language, which disadvantaged him in a wholly Welsh-speaking area. Language issues apart, Llanystumdwy did not provide him with enough intellectual stimulation, and it seems that he was not entirely happy in his school in Pwllheli either. Betsy quickly fell pregnant, but the daughter born to them did not live long enough to be named. It was a crushing disappointment, and when Betsy discovered that she was pregnant again, fears of another tragedy in the cramped accommodation of Highgate were enough to drive the couple to seek better fortune elsewhere. William secured a teaching position in Newchurch, a small town near Blackburn in Lancashire, twenty miles or so from Manchester, and in 1861, only two years into their marriage, they took the stage-coach from Pwllheli to Caernarvon, from where they could travel by steamer to Liverpool. The fourteen-year-old David went with them, in the hope and expectation that he would qualify as a teacher under William’s watchful eye.

As soon as they reached their destination, Betsy and William summoned a doctor to examine David. He warned them that the boy was in danger of becoming consumptive, confirming their worst fears and reminding them of the threats to their own health. As the months passed, the restless William became increasingly disenchanted with life in Newchurch. The one piece of good news was the birth of a daughter, Mary Ellen (called Mary or Polly), in November 1861. By the following year, William had managed to get himself a temporary position in a mill-school in Manchester. The move would mean a return to unhealthy urban life, but William was desperate to leave Newchurch. He wrote to Richard Lloyd:

The place itself we could do with very well—though cold and rather damp, it is healthy—the air is much purer there than at Manchester, and neither of us could hold out long without pure air. It was the Newchurch school and the people connected with it that did not suit me; and I need not say that I did not suit them. Nearly all the ‘Directors’ are rough working men who had not the means to act liberally even if disposed to do so,—and besides my temper is such that I would rather be the master of work people than their servant. 7

The little family moved to take up lodgings at 5 New York Place, Chorlton-upon-Medlock, but this time David did not go with them. Aged fifteen, he was on the brink of independence, and William remembered the wrench of leaving home himself at a similar age. He sympathised, but he knew that David would have to make his own way. William hardened his heart and left the boy behind.

The Manchester school better suited William’s temperament, but his health deteriorated and he reluctantly concluded that he would have to give up his position and go back to the country. He could not act on this decision immediately, because Betsy was in the late stages of pregnancy, which meant that on 17 January 1863, Wales’ most famous politician was born in England. The new baby was named David Lloyd after his grandfather and his cousin.

Betsy was not strong, and her recovery from her third labour was slow, not helped by the difficulty of getting clean water to drink. William had decided to give up teaching altogether in favour of farming. He consoled himself with the thought that at last he might have time to fulfil his ambition of writing a book that would make his name. He still dreamed of becoming one of the foremost scholars of his generation. Sadly, like all his other dreams, it was not to be.

The family settled in South Pembrokeshire, a more naturally English-speaking area of the county, and from Bullford, a smallholding near Haverfordwest, William continued to watch over the career of the elder David. He involved his Liverpool friend Thomas Goffey in his attempts to get the boy a place as a schoolmaster, but by then David’s threatened consumption had taken hold, and his family’s hopes of a glittering career were dashed only a few years later, when he died at the age of twenty.

In the meantime, a different tragedy had engulfed the family. The move had failed to strengthen William George’s health. At the end of May 1864 he spent a day out in the fields attending to the hay harvest, and caught a chill. His condition quickly deteriorated, and Betsy took the unusual and expensive step of calling the doctor. There was nothing to be done. Pneumonia had set in, and on 7 June William died, at the age of forty-four.

Betsy was heartbroken. She was left alone with the financial burden of a smallholding as well as two small children to support. She might also have suspected, even at that early stage, that she had another baby on the way. The family’s small capital, amounting to only £640 (about £56,000 at today’s values), was invested in a Liverpool building society, but the interest was not enough to provide for their day-to-day needs. Betsy was effectively destitute. She gathered enough strength to send a telegram to her brother: ‘Tyrd Richard’ (Richard, come!). The two-word message summed up her helplessness and despair.