The Pain and the Privilege: The Women in Lloyd George’s Life

There are many facts that would have affected her decision. Travel between Criccieth and London involved an uncomfortable and expensive nine-hour train journey via Bangor, Shrewsbury and Crewe. Money was desperately short, and when Lloyd George was elected, the twenty-three-year-old Maggie had a baby of fourteen months with another on the way. When Mair Eluned was born the practical difficulties doubled. It was far from clear in 1890 that Lloyd George would hold on to his seat for more than a couple of years, when the next general election was expected. Also, in the 1890s the parliamentary timetable was less regular and less frantic than it is now: sessions ran, typically, from January to late summer, with a short break at Easter, but Members were then free to return to their constituencies for the rest of the year, unless they were in office with government departments to run. Life as a backbencher involved having one foot in Westminster and the other in the constituency. It may have seemed utterly reasonable to Maggie that she and the family should stay where they were, with Lloyd George returning as often as he could.

The family’s health was another major factor. Lloyd George wrote to Maggie in June 1890:

You can’t imagine how glad I was to get such a long and interesting letter from you. I read it with avidity and delight. I went out for a stroll before breakfast to the Embankment Gardens & read your letter there. It made me quite happy. There is a sort of pleasure even in ‘hiraeth’ [homesickness] itself. I am sorry that they are cutting the hay so soon. Were it next week I might come then. I would so like to scent the hay. It would be such a contrast to this infernal sooty stinky [city].13

London was not a healthy place to live in the 1890s. Country people had long feared the contagion and ‘bad air’ of the rapidly growing cities—one of the reasons for Betsy and William George’s return to Wales from Lancashire in 1864. In subsequent years things had got worse. Some of the richest men in London were brewers, who provided an alternative to drinking the city’s dirty water, which posed a very real danger: a House of Commons cleaner died of cholera as late as 1893. City doctors were widely mistrusted, especially with regard to childbirth: infant mortality in the cities was 30 per cent higher than in the country. Maggie was happy to visit London before she became a mother, but with young children it was a different matter. The prospect of looking after two babies in a cramped set of rooms was a real deterrent. No wonder she thought it best for the children to stay in their comfortable house by the sea in Criccieth, with her parents on hand and servants to look after them.

In later life, Maggie declared with seeming sincerity that ‘a wife must put her husband first, her children second, and herself last. That is the way to take couples happily to their golden wedding.’14 It is difficult to reconcile that view though with her actions when her children were young. From the moment she first fell pregnant in 1888, the children filled her world, and although she loved her husband passionately, there is not much evidence to support the view that she put his needs above theirs. All in all, this was the worst time in her life to ask Maggie to live for long periods in London. During the first seven years of their marriage, she was pregnant for a total of thirty-six months, gave birth four times,* and assuming she nursed each child for six months after birth (a conservative estimate for the period), there were only fourteen months during the years 1888-95 when she was not either pregnant or nursing. After 1895 Maggie’s health was not strong, and she miscarried twice before giving birth to the couple’s last child, Megan Arvon, in April 1902.

Maggie’s life was centred around her children, her family and chapel. In London, she had none of the support systems she needed to make a home. Her social circle was small and scattered across the city, and getting about with small children was not easy. Lloyd George was wholly preoccupied with the intoxicating world of politics, and kept highly irregular hours. Yes, it was her duty to look after her husband, but did she not have an equal duty to look after her children? In the years ahead, this question was to cause increasing tension between them.

In the early 1890s, however, their relationship was warm and close, and Lloyd George’s affection for the children fills his letters: ‘When am I going to get little Dickie’s photo? I want it badly. I can’t stand this solitude much longer.’15 But while he was missing Maggie, he was not missing Criccieth. He had found life there, with gossips monitoring his movements, too confining and he never grew to like the town. He complained about the weather (very wet), and the fact that as his fame grew he was never left in peace. As the years wore on he came to regard time spent in Criccieth as a matter of duty, not respite. Early on in his parliamentary career he was making excuses to Maggie instead of returning to the family home at weekends. The truth was that, in his early thirties, he was relishing his freedom and enjoying the more cosmopolitan life in London. Maggie’s absence gave him plenty of time, and the incentive, to make the most of the social opportunities that were open to a young star in the Welsh Liberal Party. He made friends with his fellow Welsh MPs and with members of the flourishing Welsh community in the capital.

There has been a flow of people from Wales to London as far back as records exist, and the numbers grew to a torrent in the nineteenth century, forming a large, socially mixed group of immigrants. Then, as now, the Welsh in London did not feel a pressing need to gather protectively together. They spread themselves out across the city, with a slightly denser concentration in the west and north-west around Paddington and Euston, the two great gateways to Wales. Many of the migrants came from farming communities, and they made two farming-based trades their own: dairy and drapery. The sight of a Welsh dairy or draper’s shop was a familiar feature of Victorian London, and the great Welsh retailers’ names are still visible, Peter Jones, Dickins and Jones and D.H. Evans among them. These establishments, and countless smaller ones, attracted more Welshmen and women to work as dairy maids, shop assistants and domestic servants. They intermarried freely with native Londoners, lived above the shop or in the houses they served, and built up a community life around the numerous Welshlanguage chapels and churches they built in the city. Some did well: two nineteenth-century Lord Mayors of London were Welsh, and when the National Eisteddfod was held in the Albert Hall in 1887, royalty attended.

The prosperous Welsh in London readily opened their doors to Lloyd George, who enjoyed their lively social gatherings. He got to know them—and their wives—and there was enough evidence of flirting to make Maggie suspicious. In a letter written soon after Mair’s birth, she sounded a warning: ‘I am glad you have not seen any girl you should like better than poor me, but are you sure that you have not seen anyone to flirt with. Remember to be careful in that line as I will soon find out.’16

As early as 1893-94, in an undated fragment, Lloyd George had to defend himself against the same charge: ‘Am y reception [As for the reception]. I behaved very modestly. I am sure Mrs Gwynoro hardly saw me speaking even to any ladies—at least very casually.’17 He evidently felt he needed to make it clear to Maggie that his companion on this occasion was not physically attractive: ‘I dined that evening at Wynford Phillips & took his wife, a black thin skinny bony Jewess whom you could not squeeze without hurting yourself. This lady I took to the reception & left her there directly he arrived.’ He then lists all the women he met at the event, some of whom were clearly known to Maggie, and others whom he took care to describe in highly unflattering terms: ‘I met Mrs Evans of Llanelly (formerly Miss Hughes) Belle Vue, Miss Griffith Springfield, Miss Jones (hogan goch & spectols) [a red-haired girl with spectacles] & Mrs Dr. Price, Mrs Dr. Parry & a few more whose names even I do not recollect.’18

Dick recalls that this was a typical tactic of his father’s. Maggie was quick to confront her husband with evidence of any inappropriate behaviour. She had inherited a little of her mother’s temperament, and could be fierce when roused. Lloyd George believed that attack was the best form of defence: when accused he would come out fighting, disarming Maggie with a teasing response or a forthright denial. Their letters, though warm and affectionate, are littered with accusations and denials, some jocular, others less so. In November 1895, Lloyd George wrote: ‘Oh yes, Miss Jones. She is lovely. Twenty-one, charming & so jolly. It is a perfect delight to spend Sunday in the same house. Dyna i ti rhen Fagi! [There you are, old Maggie!] Love, fond & warm from your sweetheart.’19 Again, in February 1896: ‘You are a jealous little creature! Miss May is not there. As a matter of fact I have not seen her for months.’20 And from Rome, where he was holidaying with two colleagues, he addresses a letter to ‘My dear suspicious old Maggie’:* ‘Mrs Blythe is a widow—young, pretty and genial. Are you scared stiff to hear this, old Maggie? Well, you needn’t be. She worships the memory of her dead husband and can think of nothing else.’21

Hardly reassuring. He went on to deploy another favourite tactic, suggesting that another member of his party was misbehaving, making himself look angelic in comparison: ‘They all know how fond I am of my Maggie. They see me writing letters when that is difficult…Gilchrist never talks of his wife and children, but I do often.’22

Lloyd George genuinely considered himself to be a good husband and family man.* He was certainly a regular and enthusiastic correspondent, and he took a close, affectionate interest in his children. But left to his own devices in London, there were plenty of women who were more than happy to offer him the comfort of their parlours, posing a threat to the distant Maggie. An undated letter written to Lloyd George in the 1890s spells out the danger:

My Dear Mr Lloyd George

I have just returned from Birmingham. Went there yesterday and now I am back here in my flat [and my maids]. If you are going no where else tomorrow afternoon come up here and have some music. I shall be staying here now for a while so hope to see you.

In haste, yours etc

RFL23

Again, from 1899 comes the distraught voice of a lady friend who wanted more attention than Lloyd George was able to offer:

My Dear Lloyd

Do please answer my letters. I never knew whether you got the one I sent you before you went abroad wishing you ‘bon voyage’. I am on [illegible] in case they do not reach you safely. Come & see me one Evening this week only let me know then I shall be in. I am dying for a long talk with you. Now do not fail to answer this letter.

Ys in haste,

Kate24

Scribbled across the top of the letter, which is on black-edged mourning paper, is the instruction:

Read & tear it up at once but mind and write me. I have news for you too. A surprise.

We do not know what happened next, but the end of the story emerges in a telegram sent to Lloyd George at the Liberal Club. It seems that he had used the time-honoured way out of a tedious correspondence by continuing to ignore her letters:

I do think you unkind—you might put me out of my misery & acknowledge the receipt of my letters. I shall never write again unless you answer this. Will you come here or meet me tomorrow night—Friday? K25

It is possible that Lloyd George was innocent of any wrongdoing in this case—there is no concrete evidence of indiscretion. But he was at the very least unwise to behave in such a way as to invite emotional letters of this kind. He was alone in London, at the height of his attractiveness. He was a popular and entertaining guest, and was as free as a single man to enjoy some music and female company once the business of the House was over for the day. From the start, he had redrawn the rules of marital fidelity to exclude sex from the deal. Maggie had his first loyalty, his love and his name. Anything she could not provide—including companionship and sex when they were apart—he felt free to take from others. Maggie had every reason to fear the worst.

The one thing Maggie did not have to fear was divorce. Quite apart from the fact that he loved her, Lloyd George was not going to leave his wife, for before he had served his first full session in Parliament he had witnessed at close quarters one of the most calamitous divorce scandals of the age. The affair between the leader of the Irish National Party, Charles Stewart Parnell, and Mrs Katharine O’Shea rocked the political establishment to its core. It made the young Welsh MP even more determined to put ambition before love, and political success above all else.

Katharine O’Shea, the wife of a captain in the 18th Hussars, met the charismatic Parnell in 1880, and they were soon living together in London and Brighton. She became closely involved in his political work, nursed him through his frequent periods of illness, and was often consulted by British and Irish politicians alike as Irish Home Rule became a more pressing issue. Her home was the first port of call when Gladstone or his lieutenants wanted to speak to Parnell, who was rapidly becoming one of the most prominent politicians of the day. He was worshipped in Ireland, and as the leader of the Irish Nationalists in the House of Commons, he held the balance of power.

It was perhaps inevitable that the chink in his armour, his relationship with Mrs O’Shea, with whom he had three children, would be used against him. The long-absent Captain O’Shea, who had seemed wholly unperturbed by his wife’s living arrangements, was persuaded by Parnell’s enemies to sue for divorce in 1889, citing Parnell as corespondent. Parnell refused to fight the case, relying on his personal reputation to help him ride out the crisis, but he lost the support of Gladstone, and with it the leadership of his party. It was the end of his career, and also the end of the campaign for Irish Home Rule which was his life’s work. He and Mrs O’Shea were eventually married in June 1891, and he died a little over three months later. He was forty-five.

The sheer scale of the scandal surrounding the O’Shea divorce case is difficult to imagine today. ‘Kitty’ O’Shea was reviled in the press, and Lloyd George attributed the loss of a by-election in Bassetlaw in December 1890 to the scandal. Parnell’s fellow MPs were amazed and appalled that he could have sacrificed the great Irish cause for the sake of a woman, no one more so than Lloyd George. He wrote: ‘The Irish party are now upstairs discussing Parnell’s future. I saw him just now in the tea-room looking as calm & as self-possessed as ever. But it is a serious business for him. Here he is quite a young man having attained the greatest career of this century, dashing it to pieces because he couldn’t restrain a single passion. A thousand pities. It is a still worse business for some of us fellows holding doubtful seats…’26 A few days later he referred to Parnell as ‘a base selfish wretch’:

Everyone is so preoccupied about Parnell. Well it appears that fellow persists in brazening it out. The situation is getting very serious & acute & no one knows what will become of it. If Parnell sticks & his party stick to him it is generally conceded that Home Rule is done for. Isn’t he a rascal. He would sacrifice even the whole future of his country too.27

Parnell was universally condemned for having put personal happiness ahead of his duty to his country.

What did Lloyd George glean from this episode? It was an early lesson in the ways of high society. Queen Victoria was still on the throne, but the Prince of Wales, heading the fast ‘Marlborough set’, was establishing new rules when it came to combining public life with private happiness. The Parnell affair elicited a strange mix of old attitudes and new ones.

Prince Edward, who became Edward VII in 1901, was the ultimate playboy prince. He had earned himself the nickname of ‘Edward the Caresser’ with a series of affairs which scandalised his parents and enthralled the nation. Indeed, it was during a visit to his son’s college in Cambridge in the wake of an incident involving a popular actress called Nellie Clifden that Prince Albert contracted his fatal dose of typhoid, and Queen Victoria never forgave her son for being the indirect cause of her widowhood. In an attempt to regularise his private life, Prince Edward was married off to the beautiful and virtuous Princess Alexandra, but that did not curb his behaviour for long. Soon he and his intimate circle, the so-called Marlborough House set, were developing a code of practice that allowed them to indulge in serial affairs without upsetting the social order. The rules of the game were simple, and designed to keep the players out of the divorce courts. Affairs were confined to women of the same, aristocratic social class. Single women were out of bounds, as were married ones until they had had two or three children, including the necessary heir. But after family obligations had been fulfilled, gentlemen and married ladies could conduct discreet affairs during country-house Saturday-to-Monday parties or long afternoon visits in town while husbands were at their clubs. House-party hostesses would understand what was expected of them in arranging bedroom accommodation for their guests. In this way immoral behaviour was cloaked in respectability, and scandal averted. Young girls’ marriage prospects were not ruined by affairs with older men, and elaborate rules involving chaperones were devised to make sure that everyone obeyed the code.

After making the proper kind of dynastic marriage, providing their aristocratic husbands with heirs, and transferring their children’s care to nannies, well-born women would find themselves at leisure. They were often bored, and played the game as enthusiastically as their husbands. Society colluded to keep everything discreet, even when prominent ladies gave birth to ‘late’ children who looked nothing like their husbands. The only threat to this happy arrangement, the thing to be avoided at all costs, was the public scandal of the divorce courts. Then the gloves came off, and the losers—usually women—were reviled in the press and excluded from society.

As an illustration of this code of conduct, there could be no better example than the Parnell affair. Everyone who knew Parnell and Mrs O’Shea, from the Prime Minister himself to the chambermaids who served them, treated Mrs O’Shea as Parnell’s lawful wife, and no one seemed to trouble themselves about the morality of the situation. But the fateful intervention of Captain O’Shea removed Parnell’s private life from the realm of the Marlborough House set rules, and cast it firmly into the public arena, where such things could not be accommodated. Thus Gladstone, who had been perfectly happy to acknowledge the affair in private, could not risk supporting Parnell through a public scandal. This may seem like utter hypocrisy—it seemed so to Mrs O’Shea at the time—but it was a reflection of the fact that the middle and working classes expected their national leaders to keep out of such scandals.

This was the world in which Lloyd George found himself when he entered Parliament, and this was the context to his own behaviour during the years that followed. The Parnell affair had lessons to impart in terms of both his marriage and his career, and he learned them well. Within his marriage, he was able to keep transient flirtations and affairs separate from the love and commitment he offered Maggie. While expecting total fidelity from his wife, he indulged in relationships with other women and was never faithful to any of them, making full use of the prevailing silence of the press in such matters. This was a million miles away from the attitudes in Criccieth, but then, Lloyd George was far away from Criccieth. Such was the impact of the Parnell affair on Lloyd George that he would give Frances Stevenson a biography of Parnell when he asked her to be his mistress. The warning was implicit: there would be no divorce in his case. There would be no scandal. His career came first.

However clear in his mind Lloyd George was on this point, the story of the gallant Irish politician who sacrificed his career for love sent a very different message to others of his acquaintance. One of them was Catherine Edwards, the wife of a respectable doctor in Cemmaes, Merioneth, who by fancying herself as the Welsh Kitty O’Shea caused the first major scandal of Lloyd George’s parliamentary career.

By the summer of 1896, Maggie’s life had settled into its uneven split between Criccieth and London, and since Lloyd George had maintained his majority in the general election of 1895, she could be confident that her life as an MP’s wife was likely to continue. She was thirty, and her brood now numbered four chicks, with Dick aged seven, Mair six, Olwen four, and the youngest, Gwilym, eighteen months. She was pregnant for the fifth time, and as usual she intended to stay in Criccieth until the birth. She and Lloyd George were still spending long times apart. He was making a name for himself as a backbencher and leader within the Welsh Parliamentary Group, and had taken several long holidays with political friends, while she stayed behind in Criccieth, which seemed to suit them both.

Money was still a problem. In his struggle to keep the family financially afloat, Lloyd George was apt to be tempted into unwise business dealings, and in 1893 the prospect of a quick return on a goldmine in far-distant Patagonia had been too attractive to resist. The consequences were disastrous, and in an attempt to turn the situation around he decided to take a trip to Argentina during the 1896 parliamentary recess, leaving on 21 August and returning on 27 October. He also needed a holiday, for his mother had died on 19 June. She was sixty-eight, and had been an invalid for many years. Lloyd George returned to Criccieth for a small, private funeral, and was so upset that Richard Lloyd sent him back to London so that politics could distract him from his grief. Maggie was too unwell to attend Betsy’s funeral, and during his trip—or possibly just before his departure—she lost the baby. While she was recovering from this setback, unbeknownst to her a child was being born to a cousin of hers, Catherine Edwards. This child was going to cast a shadow over her life for the next three years.

Catherine Edwards, or ‘Kitty’ as she was (ironically) known, was a ‘pretty, pert, amiable young woman’28 who lived with her daughter and her husband, the local doctor, near the village of Mathafarn. In August 1896 her husband realised that she was pregnant, which was a surprise to him since the couple were estranged and had occupied separate bedrooms since 1894. What happened next came within a whisker of destroying Lloyd George’s political career.

Kitty later claimed that on 10 August her husband used physical violence to induce her to sign a statement written in his hand. It read:

I, Catherine Edwards, do solemnly confess that I have on 4th of February, 1896, committed adultery with Lloyd George MP, and that the said Lloyd George is the father of the child, and that I have on a previous occasion committed adultery with the above Lloyd George.29

Dr Edwards denied using violence against his wife, but he did throw her out of the house, and just over a week later she gave birth to a child at a temperance hotel called The Tower in Penygroes, near Caernarvon. At the time it was claimed that the baby was born near its full term, but the date of the confessed adultery, together with Dr Edwards’ ignorance of his wife’s condition until August, lend credence to a later doctor’s report that the child was born substantially premature, weak and sickly at just over four pounds. The child did not survive to adulthood.

Naturally, within a small community, news like this could not be kept quiet, and Lloyd George’s political enemies made sure that the gossip persisted. While Lloyd George was abroad the rumours reached the ears of his brother William. To his credit, William never entertained the notion that his brother could be guilty as charged, but he recognised the gravity of the situation, recording gloomily in his diary: ‘The event that has overshadowed everything else in my little world during the last two days is the charge which is being made against D in connection with Mrs Dr Edwards…I hope to God that neither Uncle nor Maggie will hear anything of this slander until D returns when, of course, he will be in a position to deal with the “affair” effectively.’30