Читать книгу The Pain and the Privilege: The Women in Lloyd George’s Life - Ffion Hague - Страница 13

VISITING THE HOMES OF Welsh friends was a normal Sunday-afternoon activity for the Lloyd Georges in London. When Dick was about eight years old, he and his father went to pay a social call in Putney, finding the lady of the house alone. Returning home, Dick ran to find his mother and excitedly told her of his adventures. He had seen Tada (Father) and the lady playing a game. ‘He was eating her hand,’ he said.¹ Maggie knew what that meant: Lloyd George was having an affair with Elizabeth, wife of his friend Timothy Davies. A row followed, the first of many over ‘Mrs Tim’.

Elizabeth Davies was twenty-six in 1897, fourteen years younger than her husband. She lived in Oakhill Road, Putney, in a house named Pantycelyn,* within walking distance of the Lloyd Georges. Her life was comfortable if not exciting, with a rather dull husband and three children. Timothy Davies was a solid member of the London Welsh community, who Lloyd George rather unkindly held up to Maggie as a kind of ‘insipid, wishy washy fellow’.² On his letterhead he styled himself a ‘General Draper, Silk Mercer, Ladies Outfitter, Carpet and a furnishing warehouseman’, and he owned a number of premises in Walham Green in Fulham. He was President of the Welsh Presbyterian Association and a Liberal who shared the same radical views as Lloyd George. He married Elizabeth (known as ‘Lizzie’ to her husband, ‘Mrs Tim’ to the Lloyd George family) in 1893. She became an accomplished hostess, popular among the London Welsh, and Tim soon began to bring Lloyd George home. After making a success of his commercial ventures, Davies concentrated on politics, serving on London County Council, becoming Mayor of Fulham in 1901 and, with Lloyd George’s active support, Liberal MP for Fulham from 1906 to 1910 and for Louth from 1910 to 1920. Before then, his home had become a refuge for the lonely young Lloyd George, a haven of good meals, blazing fires and political conversation.

The two men struck up a friendship, travelling abroad together at least twice without their wives—to Rome in December 1897 and on a cruise at the end of 1898. Perhaps Timothy Davies was oblivious to the growing attraction between Lloyd George and Lizzie, or perhaps he decided to follow the lead of the Prince of Wales’ set and ignore the relationship. Either way, as Mrs Tim embarked on an affair with Lloyd George that was to last many years, her husband looked the other way.

Dick described Mrs Tim as ‘a lively, attractive creature, rather loquacious, very stylish, perhaps a little flamboyant’.³ She wore a scent that reminded him of a basket of carnations, and she went out of her way to charm the little boy. As for his father, Mrs Tim became the first woman to occupy a regular place in Lloyd George’s life since his marriage to Maggie.

It was inevitable that this relationship would hurt Maggie. She could be certain that Lloyd George would not risk the major scandal of divorce, but it irked her that he should spend his time with another woman, especially a woman she considered inferior to herself in all but housekeeping ability. This tension shows in her letters. In May 1897 she upbraided Lloyd George for giving Mrs Tim a ticket for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee festivities, instead of the more worthy Davies family he had stayed with in Acton as a new MP. In reply, he came out fighting:

What a jealous little wife I have got to be sure! Now let me prove to her how groundless her suspicions are—as usual. So much was I in agreement with her as to the prior claims of the [Acton] Davies’s, that I offered them my extra seat last night—but they had already received as many as eight seats elsewhere. I then told the Morgans, having got the Davies’s out of the way, that I had an available seat—but they also had ‘excellent seats’ in another quarter. So poor Mrs Tim only comes third or even fourth. But still I don’t wish her to occupy even that back seat if you object. Is there anyone else you would like me to hand my seat to?⁴

Lloyd George believed in brazening out any embarrassing situations, both in politics and in his personal life. His mistress, unlike Kitty Edwards, was not the type to risk her own comfortable situation, and Lloyd George trusted her not to expose their affair or to make excessive demands on him. Far from trying to keep the families apart, Lloyd George encouraged social contact between them. As the relationship between him and Mrs Tim flourished, his whole family was drawn into their social arrangements. Dick recalls being taken often to Pantycelyn, and going for long walks on which he and the Davies children would be sent ahead, allowing his father and Mrs Tim to have a leisurely tête-à-tête. Finally the penny dropped that this woman was making his mother unhappy, and although Mrs Tim was friendly and generous towards him, Dick turned against her with a fierce ‘childish hostility’.*

Other members of the family also realised that there was more to their father’s visits to Putney than social duty, including Olwen, who already had a reputation for being outspoken. She recalls playing a guessing game with her father, her siblings and Maggie, who had made her husband a present of a pen. Lloyd George held the pen aloft and invited his children to guess who had given it to him. ‘Is it a lady?’ he was asked. ‘Oh yes!’ ‘Is it someone you kiss?’ asked Dick. ‘Well, yes!’ came the reply. Then, in her innocence, Olwen dropped the bombshell. ‘Is it Mrs Timothy Davies?’ The embarrassed silence that followed opened her eyes for the first time to her father’s infidelity.⁵

In the spring and summer of 1897, tension simmered between Maggie and Lloyd George. Maggie was jealous of Mrs Tim, and they were both feeling lonely as they continued to spend long periods apart. At the end of May, Maggie wrote from Criccieth chiding her husband once more for not spending enough time with his family. He, always on the lookout for ways of increasing his income, was about to start up a law practice in London, at 13 Walbrook in the heart of the City. His partner, the Anglesey lawyer Arthur Rhys Roberts, was expected to do the work, while Lloyd George, with his store of London contacts, provided the clients. Money, he replied to Maggie, was the reason he needed to stay in London. Her dismissive response provoked him to set out a few home truths:

You say you would rather have less money and live in a healthy place. Well, hen gariad [little love], you will not forget that you were as keen about my starting as I was myself. Then you must bear in mind that we are spending more than we earn. I draw far more than my share of the profits [of the North Wales practice] though I don’t attend to 1/10th of the work. This is neither fair nor honourable & feel sure you do not wish it to continue.

For all their sakes, he argued, it was time for his family to join him on a permanent basis:

Now you can’t make omelettes without breaking eggs & unless I retire from politics altogether & content myself with returning to the position of a country attorney, we must give up the comforts of Criccieth for life in England. As to attending to the business during sessions & running away from it afterwards your good sense will show you on reflection that it is impossible. No business could be conducted successfully on those terms. You are not right, however, that this presupposes living entirely in London. If you prefer, we can take a home somewhere in the suburbs—say Ealing or Acton, Ealing for choice. There the air is quite as good as anything you can get in Wales as it is free from the smoke of the great city. Or if you prefer we could go still further out & live say in Brighton as Clifton does…Think of it, old pet, & think of it with all the courage of which I know you capable.⁶

Maggie would not budge, and by August Lloyd George’s sympathy was wearing a little thin: ‘How infinite your self-pity is! Poor lonely wife. You are surrounded by all who love you best—father, mother, children, Uncle Lloyd & all. But can’t you spare some sympathy & compassion for the poor lonely husband who is surrounded on all hands by wolves who would tear him—did they not fear his claw?’⁷

A few days later he wrote Maggie a loving letter, but the teasing, affectionate tone of the correspondence between them was about to be rudely interrupted. They were still under pressure from the Edwards divorce case, but the incident that sparked their most serious quarrel yet was Maggie’s decision not to accompany her husband on a trip to Llangadog in Carmarthenshire, presumably on political business. On 13 August Uncle Lloyd recorded in his diary that both Maggie and William George had received strong letters from Lloyd George: ‘Mag heard from D.Ll.G—fully expecting her to go to Llangadock. Pity he made his mind so—as she is unable to go. W.G. had letter today also, it seems.’⁸ His tone is sympathetic towards Maggie—at least, he does not seem to blame her for not going. He and William George often thought Maggie’s decision to stay in Criccieth far more reasonable than Lloyd George allowed. They were in a position to see the practical difficulties of moving a young family between Criccieth and London, and tended to take Maggie’s side.

Not so Lloyd George. His letter to William was angry and vengeful. He decided to force Maggie to join him in London permanently by giving up their house in Criccieth:

My wife declines to go out of her way to spend Sunday with me at Llangadock. She makes the kids an excuse. Becca [Owen, a cousin] would be only too glad to take up her quarters at Bryn Awel* for a few days to look after them. I have made up my mind to give up the Criccieth house altogether. M. is giving notice today. She has failed to let it furnished, and even if she succeeded I shall want the furniture for a house up here [in London]. I mean to let the flat and take a small house in the suburbs. You can’t keep kids in a flat. Can’t you let Bryn Awel for me unfurnished?⁹

Lloyd George’s peremptory tone and unilateral decision-making might have brought some wives to heel, but not Maggie. It was one thing for him to ask her to join him in London, quite another for him to give up the house her father had built for their use without her agreement. Maggie wrote a furious and destructive letter threatening her husband with a public scandal. It has not survived, and we do not know if she was alluding to his relationship with Mrs Tim, some other personal matter, or, since Lloyd George was under pressure from his constituents because of the infrequency of his visits, a political exposure. The gist of her threats can be deduced from Lloyd George’s reply. In a cold, cruel letter he hit back, targeting her own weak spot: her failure as a wife:

When next you discuss your relations with your husband with the servants you may tell Jane—since you quote her views as having so much weight—that the marriage vow was not one-sided. You have worried me to distraction about my share of it. What about yours? You have wilfully disobeyed your husband—in a matter he was entitled to obedience—yes in a matter any other wife would have been only too delighted to obey him in.

You threaten me with a public scandal. Alright—expose me if that suits you. One scandal the more will but kill me the earlier. But you will not alter my resolution to have neither correspondence nor communication of any sort with you until it is more clearly understood how you purpose to guide your course for the future. I have borne it for years & have suffered in health & character. I’ll stand it no longer come what may.¹⁰

He does not deny that Maggie has the ammunition to cause a scandal. Instead he argues that it is all her fault. Her neglect is responsible for his defects of both ‘health’ and ‘character’. Instead of reassurance, she received an ultimatum: he would not write or talk to her again until she agreed to join him in London. Her reply, unfortunately, is also lost and the trail of letters is difficult to follow, since in the heat of the argument they wrote to each other more than once a day,* but it seems that it was an angry one. This drew a curt and equally unconciliatory letter back from Lloyd George: ‘What colleague do you allude to? You are still at your old trick of innuendo. You say this business is childish. You may yet find it is more serious than child’s play.’¹¹

Maggie must have sent another letter the same day containing an apology, for Lloyd George wrote again later in a softened tone, and although he returned to the ongoing quarrel, he also sent a gift of fruit: ‘I would much rather see you express sorrow for your refusal to comply with your husband’s earnest desire to see you than defend yourself as you do. It was a wilful act of disobedience. Of course I did not command. That is what no husband cares to do to his wife but I did entreat—for the last time.’¹²

Maggie, though, was not quite ready to let the matter rest. It seems she sent another intemperate letter—or perhaps their letters crossed—followed immediately by an apologetic and capitulatory telegram. Sensing victory, Lloyd George wrote back pressing his advantage to secure his goal of getting Maggie to agree to move to London:

My sweet but stupid Maggie

That telegram just saved you. Your letter this morning made me wild—there was the same self-complacent self-satisfied Pharisaism about it as ever. You had done no wrong. Even now there is a phrase in it that I cannot pass by unnoticed. When did I ever suggest in the faintest measure that you were a burden to me? Have I not always complained rather that you ‘burdened’ me too little with your society? You have no right to make these charges. What I have said I neither withdraw nor modify how grave soever the implication may be—nor do I wish to retract a syllable of what I told you in London about my being even happier when you & the kids are around me. A wise woman who loved her husband well & who knew herself well-beloved by him, would not write foolish letters arguing out the matter with him & doing that badly—she would rather put these things together, ponder them well & resolve at all costs to redeem the past.

He then goes for the kill.

Be candid with yourself. Drop that infernal Methodism which is the curse of your bitter nature & reflect whether you have not rather neglected your husband. I have more than once gone without breakfast. I have scores of times come home in the dead of night to a cold dark & comfortless flat without a soul to greet me. When you were surrounded by your pets.

Next comes the nearest thing to a confession Lloyd George ever made:

I am not the nature either physically or morally that ought to have been left thus. I decline to argue & you will mortally offend me if you attempt it. I simply ask you in all sincerity of soul—yes, & as a message of true love I supplicate you to give heed to what I am telling you now—not for the first time. I shall then ask you how you would like to meet your Judge if all this neglect led me astray. You have been a good mother. You have not—& I say this now not in anger—not always been a good wife. I can point you even amongst those whom you affect to look down upon—much better wives. You may be a blessing to your children. Oh Maggie annwyl [darling] beware lest you be a curse to your husband. My soul as well as my body has been committed to your charge & in many respects I am as helpless as a child.¹³

As an argument of defence, the letter is masterful. It would not sound out of place as a sermon, delivered in solemn tones from the pulpit of Seion. How well Lloyd George knew his wife. In asking her to abandon her Methodism he plays on it for all he is worth, conjuring up the Calvinistic exhortation to reflect on sin, and encouraging her to take on the responsibility and guilt for his own moral lapses.

The row was over, and the correspondence between them swung back into its previous comfortable rhythm, but a powerful message had been delivered to Maggie. She did not dismiss Lloyd George’s covert warning that her absences were leading him into temptation. While she was in Wales the despised Mrs Tim had a clear field, and with the children growing older, she had less reason to cling on to Criccieth. Nevertheless, the bonds were difficult to break, and it was not until the end of 1898 that she finally agreed to join her husband in the city she hated.

With peace restored—somewhat precariously—between Maggie and Lloyd George, a happier period ensued. Indeed, for a family commuting between North Wales and London, theirs was a remarkably stable home life, due to Maggie’s unblinking focus on her children. The elder children, Dick, Mair and Olwen, had happy memories of growing up in Criccieth, largely cared for by Richard and Mary Owen and watched over by Uncle Lloyd in Garthcelyn, the house William had built for the family. With Maggie dividing her time unevenly between Criccieth and London, Dick remembers her as an occasional visitor during his infancy, with longer spells at home before a new brother or sister arrived. As a young child he missed his mother very much, and he may have exaggerated their periods of separation. His early memories may also have been coloured by the fact that he was sent back to Criccieth to attend school during the Boer War which broke out in 1899, and lived apart from his family for large parts of the year. Mair left no diary or memoir to speak for her, but Olwen, three years younger than Dick, writes of growing up in London with only extended holidays spent in Criccieth. The truth probably lies in between: the family was firmly based in Criccieth in the early 1890s, but as time went on pressure grew on Maggie to spend more time in London. She usually took the youngest member or members of the family with her, leaving the elder children behind, which would account for the different recollections of Dick and Olwen.

Dick was a sensitive boy who inherited his mother’s love of North Wales but did not possess his father’s brilliance and ambition. His restless energy found an outlet in mischief, especially during endless sermons in chapel, and he was made to sit with Richard Owen in the ‘set fawr’, the front pew reserved for deacons, on more than one occasion to put a stop to his antics. He had a gift for mimicry, and when he began to acquire some English he found he could deflect his mother’s anger by assuming an exaggerated accent and declaring ‘Oh I say!’, reducing her to helpless laughter. He was very close to Maggie, whom he worshipped, and as the first grandchild in either the Owen or the Lloyd family, he was secure in the attention of both.

As a child growing up by the sea in Criccieth, Dick was enthralled by the sight of the hundred-ton schooners moored to the stone jetty under the castle rock waiting their turn to load up with Porthmadoc slate. He watched their sails unfurl as they left the shelter of the bay for the open sea, and listened to the tales of weather-hardened fishermen on the seafront. The ‘maes’ (village green) gave yet more scope for entertainment as farmers and stockmen compared notes with Richard Owen presiding. Here, though, young Lloyd Georges had to behave or risk the displeasure of Uncle Lloyd, who frequently sat on a bench overlooking the maes. As the eldest child, Dick was more aware of the tension between his parents than were his siblings, and he was badly affected by their heated rows.

With regard to religion, a compromise was reached despite the entrenched attitudes of the older generation. Dick was raised a Baptist, and attended Berea, the handsome new chapel which replaced Capel Ucha in 1886, with Uncle Lloyd every Sunday; Mair was christened a Methodist like Maggie; Olwen was a Baptist; and Gwilym a Methodist. Only Megan, the youngest, bucked the pattern by becoming a Methodist too. When Maggie was at home she would take all the children with her to Seion, but when she was away Dick would sometimes take Megan to the Baptist service on Sunday mornings, and both would go to the Methodist service in the evening. This was all highly irregular, but not, it seems, confusing to the children, who were loyal to their own denomination while being perfectly at home in the other.