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It was not typical of Lloyd George to take girls home the short way, but Mrs Owen was one step ahead of any glad-eyed youth, and was determined to make sure that her daughter got home promptly. By the time he had encountered Maggie Owen a few more times he noted that she ‘Seems to be a jollier girl as you get on with her.’
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Maggie Owen appeared not really to be the kind of girl to catch Lloyd George’s eye. She was not flirtatious or showy, but she had a grace and a quiet confidence that set her apart. She was pretty, with lively blue eyes, but was not considered a beauty so much as a good catch, and she had at least two other serious suitors in Criccieth. But she had been absent during Lloyd George’s adolescence, and was not as familiar to him as the girls he had grown up with. She now appeared in his life with all the allure of novelty just as he was getting over Lizzie Jones. As they wandered around Bardsey Island together, a mutual attraction grew between them.
On the face of it, there were major obstacles to a match between Lloyd George and Maggie Owen. For a start, she was far from ideal in Uncle Lloyd’s eyes for the simple reason that she was a Calvinistic Methodist. Indeed, Maggie’s family was almost as far removed from the Lloyds socially as was possible within the narrow confines of a small town like Criccieth. For their part, the Owens would have equally strong reasons to rule out Lloyd George as a potential match for their daughter.
Richard Owen, Maggie’s father, was a well-to-do farmer and a pillar of the Calvinistic Methodist community of Capel Mawr (Great Chapel) in Criccieth. As the prosperous proprietor of the hundred-acre Mynydd Ednyfed farm he was wealthy enough to invest some capital in the Porthmadoc fleet, to educate his daughter privately, and on his retirement in 1891 to build a pair of fine semi-detached stone houses looking out over Criccieth bay. He was not a member of the landowning class—he was a nonconformist, and he and his family spoke Welsh as their first language—but he was economically in a different class to the Lloyds, and indeed to most of the inhabitants of Criccieth. When he died he left an estate of £1,558.2s.6d (£131,000 in today’s currency) to his wife. Not without reason, Richard Owen and his wife considered themselves to be a cut above the Lloyds and the Georges.
Richard Owen could trace his ancestry back to Owen, the twelfthcentury Prince of Gwynedd. The power and the land belonging to this class had long since been superseded, but pride remained. Richard Owen might work for a living, but he took his place at the top of Criccieth society, with the natural authority of those born to rule. He was a strong, well-built man even by the standards of the mountain farmers of Llyŷn, and his reputation for physical feats was matched by respect for his sound judgement. He spoke slowly, was not easily roused to anger, and had deep-set eyes in a calm, serene face. His physical courage was legendary: he had once been charged by a bull, but had stopped it in its tracks by grasping it by the horns. This and other examples of his strength had earned him the respect of the whole community. He was often asked to adjudicate in disputes between his neighbours, some of whom had known him for decades yet still addressed him as ‘Mr Owen’. On market days he had his own wooden bench on the green in Criccieth that no one dared sit on unless by his invitation.
Richard’s local status was further enhanced by his election as head deacon of Capel Mawr, where he sat in authority next only to the Rev. Jones. The deacons together with the minister visited the sick, educated the young, and led and encouraged the faithful. They were also responsible for judging and punishing any member who strayed. Their ultimate sanction was to cast out a member from the congregation, and in so doing take away the sinner’s place in society. It followed that deacons were expected to lead exemplary lives themselves, and they carried great moral and social authority. As head deacon of Capel Mawr, Richard Owen would sit in judgement on any member of chapel who married out of the faith. For his own daughter to do so would humiliate him in the most public way possible.
Naturally enough, Richard had chosen his own bride from another ancient Welsh family: Mary Jones of Tyddyn Mawr could trace her ancestry to the tenth-century South Welsh King Hywel Dda, whose laws set the pattern of Welsh society for centuries. Mary Jones was typical of the strong-willed Welsh ‘mam’. She was a slightly-built woman whose husband towered over her, but she was as feisty as he was placid, and bustled from one task to the next with indefatigable energy. In her youth she was famous throughout the district as a fine horsewoman, and she was also renowned for her ferocious rages. When she was roused her diminutive frame would shake with anger and her flashing eyes would signal danger as she unleashed a ‘veritable Niagara of indomitable force’, according to her grandson Dick.
(#litres_trial_promo) Even when she was calm, her pursed lips and sharp gaze warned anyone nearby not to cross her, and she was quick to judge those who failed to live up to her high standards. Mary too was conscious of the natural dignity of her ancestry, and despite the fact that lack of education meant that she was unable to write she was much in demand as chairman and secretary of local societies.
Mynydd Ednyfed occupied a hundred acres of land high on the mountain behind the town of Criccieth, and it was there, on 4 November 1866, that Richard and Mary’s only child was born. Richard was a loving, indulgent father who doted on Maggie from the very first. Mary too demanded only the best for her daughter. Country people know that the most valuable stock comes from pure bloodlines, and Richard and Mary Owen, both proud of their noble ancestry, passed a double dose of pride to their daughter. Indeed, ancestry left its physical mark on Maggie, who was born with ‘bys yr Eifion’ (Eifion’s finger)—a crooked little finger on her right hand that, tradition has it, marks those descended from a fourteenth-century knight called Hywel y Fwyall (Howell of the Axe), whose crooked finger gave him a strong grip which helped to make him the best axeman in Wales. At least one member of each generation of Richard Owen’s family bore the telltale finger, and Maggie delighted in bearing the physical mark of her nobility. She was as Welsh as the hills on which she was born.
Maggie had a happy, easy-going nature. She spent her childhood in and around Criccieth, and occasionally caught sight of the young Lloyd George, dressed in his knickerbockers, walking alongside Betsy and Uncle Lloyd on their frequent journeys to and from Capel Ucha.
Richard Owen, along with most of the Calvinistic Methodists, was a supporter of the Liberal Party, which had succeeded in becoming the party of the Welsh nonconformists in their battle for religious recognition (through disestablishment) and equality. Nonconformists had suffered considerable persecution by agents of Church and state in the previous century, and the widening social gap between rich landowners and struggling tenant farmers and miners increased the alienation between the wealthy English establishment and the Welsh dissenting middle and working classes. The spiritual gulf between Church and Chapel, and the cultural barrier between English—and Welsh-speakers, made any politician who challenged the Tory establishment a natural friend to the nonconformist.
1885 and 1886 were turbulent years politically. In 1885 the Liberal Prime Minister, William Gladstone, resigned after losing a crucial vote in the House of Commons. The Tory Lord Salisbury took over as caretaker PM, but after Parliament rose in August, electioneering began in earnest, and went on until an election was eventually called at the end of November. By then Lloyd George had stepped up his political activities, was becoming a regular speaker at political meetings, was even being hailed by some activists as a future MP. The election in November/December, which resulted in a minority Tory administration led by Salisbury, was followed by a split in the Liberal Party between supporters of Gladstone’s ‘Home Rule’ policy in Ireland and those of Joseph Chamberlain’s New Radical Union with its ‘unauthorised programme’ of federalism as the solution to the Irish problem. Wales remained staunchly behind Gladstone, who with his Welsh wife and family base in Hawarden in North Wales rightly considered the Principality to be a stronghold. Following the defeat of Gladstone’s Home Rule Bill in Parliament in June 1886, a second election followed in July, in which Gladstone won thirty out of the thirtyfour Welsh seats, although elsewhere he did not do so well. With the Liberal Party divided, Salisbury held on to office, shored up by an alliance with Chamberlain and the Irish national MPs. It was to be the beginning of a rift in the Liberal Party between the moderate mainstream and the radicals.
In Wales, moderate men like Richard Owen wanted religious freedom and the right to earn a fair living on the land. He was a mainstream Liberal, naturally conservative, and with no time for those on the more radical fringes of his party who talked of social reform, the separation of the Church in Wales from the state, and even of Home Rule for Wales. David Lloyd George was a natural radical who had expressed admiration for Chamberlain, but the prevailing political wind in Wales carried him into the Gladstonian camp.
Richard and Mary Owen wanted Maggie to marry a Calvinistic Methodist, preferably a Liberal with conventional views, who was well established in life and able to offer her a comfortable future. From the elevated perspective of Mynydd Ednyfed, Lloyd George’s prospects did not look good. Before he had even begun to court Maggie, Mr and Mrs Owen regarded him as socially inferior and wholly unsuitable: he was a Baptist, and a political radical who was not yet firmly established in his profession. Worse still, Mrs Owen had her ears pressed well to the ground and regarded him as ‘fast’, a flirt who ‘walked out’ with too many local girls. To the Owens, Lloyd George seemed neither reliable nor respectable. Maggie could not have chosen anyone from her limited circle of acquaintance more likely to raise objections from her parents, and in the summer of 1885 these seemed insuperable. Nevertheless, with the time-honoured inevitability of such situations, the attraction between Lloyd George and Maggie grew with each meeting.
During the weeks following the Bardsey Island trip, Lloyd George took every opportunity to put himself in front of Maggie and her family. He had few excuses to visit Mynydd Ednyfed, but he made use of what little connection he had with Richard Owen’s political activities. At first, Mr Owen accepted Lloyd George’s sudden interest in establishing a Liberal club in Criccieth at face value, but he was no fool and he soon realised that the young man’s visits had more to do with Maggie than with politics. Lloyd George was promptly banned from Mynydd Ednyfed and told, firmly, to leave Miss Owen alone. This served only to increase his interest, but, temporarily defeated, he retired from the field to consider his tactics.
Mr Owen was seriously alarmed: not only did he and his wife disapprove of Lloyd George, they also had the ideal husband for their beloved child already picked out. His name was John Thomas Jones, and he was a deacon at Capel Mawr. To add to his qualifications the thirty-four-year-old Jones was financially well-off, having made a small fortune in Australian goldmines before returning to his native North Wales. He lived in a newly-built, substantial house overlooking Criccieth, and he was the very opposite of ‘fast’. He was rather uncouth and brusque of manner, but that was a minor disadvantage compared to the facts that he was the right denomination and had excellent prospects. The Owens were delighted when he started courting their daughter, but Maggie was not impressed. She resisted all attempts by her parents to persuade her to accept his proposals, and did not even mention his existence to his younger rival until well into their relationship.
Meanwhile, Lloyd George decided that if he could not court Maggie openly, he would take every opportunity of doing so covertly instead. He wrote to her frequently, and they conspired to meet at local social events. The first note from Lloyd George that Maggie kept is dated 30 December 1885, and was addressed respectfully to ‘Dear Miss Owen’:
I enclose tickets for our Societys entertainment. The meeting commences at 7.30 p.m. punctual.
Young ladies need not arrange for any escort home after the meeting, as the Society provides efficient protection for them in that respect!
Kindly recollect this so as to avoid troubling anyone to wait for you from the meeting.
Yours sincerely
D. Lloyd George
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The formal tone of the note was perhaps intended to be proof against prying eyes, and belies the clear understanding between them that security on the way home would be provided by one D. Lloyd George, personally.
A week later, Lloyd George’s diary records that he lay in wait for Maggie, hoping for a private meeting: ‘Very glad I waylaid Maggie Owen; induced her to abstain from going to the Seiat [evening service] by showing her by my erratic watch that she was too late, then for a stroll with her up LÔn Fêl.’
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Maggie fell for these none-too-subtle tactics several times over the next few weeks, and in turn her quiet charms grew steadily on him:
4 Feb. At 6 p.m. met Maggie Owen by appointment on the Marine Parade. With her until 7. I am getting to be very fond of the girl. There is a combination of good nature, humour and affection about her.
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Three days later, Lloyd George confessed to his brother his growing interest in Maggie, with an acknowledgement of the difficulty of courting a Calvinistic Methodist against the wishes of her parents: ‘After dinner with W.G. along Abereistedd and thence to chapel. Mentioned my predicament with regard to love affairs. He does not disapprove.’
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With characteristic speed, Lloyd George was falling in love:
9 Feb. At 5.45 attended Burial Board meeting, thence to an appointed rendezvous by 6.30 at Bryn Hir gate to meet Maggie Owen; took her home by round-about way, enjoyed the stroll immensely and made another appointment. It looks as if I were rapidly placing myself in an irretrievable position. Doesn’t matter. I don’t see that any harm will ensue. Left her at 7.45.
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He paused to throw a backward glance at the memory of Lizzie Jones only to reassure himself of the superior qualities of his new love:
15 Feb. (After concert) I then waylaid Maggie Owen to take her home. Never felt more acutely than to-night that I am really in deep love with girl. Felt sorry to have to leave her. I have I know gradually got to like her more and more. There’s another thing I have observed in connection with this, that my intercourse with L. rather tended to demoralize my taste; my fresh acquaintance has an entirely different influence. She firmly checks all ribaldry or tendency thereto on my part.
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Lloyd George was getting serious. Maggie Owen was in a different class to the girls he had flirted with in the past. It was not only her background—Lizzie, for example, was the daughter of the local fishmonger—but also her character. From the outset Maggie set high standards of behaviour, and without making herself a killjoy, seemed to make him behave better in return. She was not a girl to be toyed with or treated badly. Her natural dignity and fixed moral compass demanded respect. In the young Maggie Owen’s ‘checking’ effect on the flirtatious Lloyd George we see the essence of their mature relationship. It was her strength of character too that was in due course to inspire admiration and love throughout Wales and beyond.
By late spring 1886 Lloyd George was committed, announcing in his diary that he had made his choice, but all the evidence suggests that Maggie felt less sure. While she was happy to slip out from Mynydd Ednyfed to meet him in the early days of their courtship, when he pressed his case in earnest she began to have doubts. He continued to waylay her at every opportunity, but he waited nearly a year after the Bardsey Island trip before daring to use an endearment for the first time:
27 June. After making a feint of running for the train, envelope in hand, started via sea-wall and Turnpike, Criccieth, for the hills. M. expecting me. M. asked me what I would tell them at home if they wanted to know where I’d been. I replied: ‘I’d say I’d been to see my sweetheart.’ This is the second time I’ve called her so. She likes it. I am now quite committed.
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Matters came to a head in July when he confided in Polly: ‘Told my sister M.E.G. to-night about M. She is well-pleased and thinks a lot of her, says I may mention the matter [of marriage] to M. shortly but that it would not do to marry for about five years at least.’
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Polly could see that a long engagement was the only sensible way forward, given the fact that Lloyd George was far from established in his career, and that his family could not give him any financial help. She would not have been blind to the other obstacles in the way of the young couple, and her advice was perhaps also coloured by the fact that Lloyd George would have to convince not one but two families to agree to the match.
This raises the question, why did Lloyd George’s devout Baptist siblings approve of the interdenominational match? The answer surely lies in the fact that they could see the advantages to their brother. Polly knew Maggie very well, and respected the strength of her character. Lloyd George would need a strong woman as a wife, both to support his limitless ambitions and to keep him in check, and Maggie appeared more than equal to the task. There were clear social advantages to the match: Lloyd George would benefit from his association with the well-to-do Owen family, which might be useful to him in building his law practice. Politically too, Lloyd George could not make a better match. A Baptist politician lacked a natural power base, since there were comparatively few Baptists in the area. A Baptist with no other recommendation would be seen as an outsider by both the church-going Tory voters and by the dominant nonconformist group, the Calvinistic Methodists. By marrying into a prominent Calvinistic Methodist family like the Owens, Lloyd George the future political candidate would be gaining a significant advantage.
Maggie was the catch of the district, and Lloyd George always deserved—and got—the best. It was true that there were issues to resolve before the marriage could take place, but Polly knew her brother supremely well, and never underestimated his determination to get what he wanted. She gently supported his campaign, speaking well of Maggie to those whose objections needed neutralising, encouraging Lloyd George to think of marriage, and keeping Uncle Lloyd out of his way. On the Owens’ side, however, there were no apparent advantages to a relationship between their daughter and Lloyd George. He was not marriage material in their eyes, and they doubted his ability either to support Maggie or to make her happy. On both counts they were eventually to be proved right.
Despite the dark stormclouds on the horizon, Lloyd George felt that all was well as he prepared to take a short trip to London over the August bank holiday weekend in 1886. His absence gave Maggie time to think, and she confided to a friend that she feared Lloyd George would let her down if she gave him her heart, although she confessed that she was very fond of him.
(#litres_trial_promo) With typical self-confidence, when this reached his ears Lloyd George rejoiced in the second admission without dwelling too much on the first. He regarded Maggie’s fears as a challenge, and he was sure enough of her affection to take the next step, and to propose to her.
Lloyd George chose his moment with care. Maggie had relatives living at Bodfan in Llanwnda, fourteen miles from Criccieth, and at the end of August she went to stay there for a few days. Lloyd George guessed that this would be his best chance of catching her alone, away from the baleful influence of her mother, and he followed with his plan of action worked out. His diary gives the story in detail:
25 Aug. Left Caernarfon per 4.40 train—dropped down at Llanwnda. Wrote at the Inn at Llanwnda a note for her…marched right up to the door [where she was staying], asked if Miss Owen was in, told the girl at the door that I was desired by her father Richard Owen to give her a note in passing! Eventually I saw her. It appears Miss Jones had read the note, M. being too excited to open it. She had to go to a party that evening, but promised to try and return by 8, and to meet me by the gate; I gave her a bouquet I had brought with me…I returned at 8 to Bodfan—but had to wait until 9.45 until the girls returned.
We can imagine his agony of suspense as he waited an hour and three quarters for his sweetheart to appear, but Maggie did finally arrive: ‘M came with me for a long drive in carriage (I had brought from Llanwnda). Here I proposed to her. She wanted time to consider, but admitted her regard for me. Although, when I write this, I have not been formally accepted, I am positive that everything is all right so far as the girl is concerned. I left her about mid-night. M. has some of the “coquette” about her—she did not like to appear to jump at my offer.’
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His confidence in Maggie’s regard was unshakeable, but he was mistaken in interpreting her genuine hesitation as mere coquetry. The truth was that she was disturbed by the gossip her mother and friends had passed on to her about Lloyd George’s reputation as a ladies’ man, and was not about to jump into a hasty engagement. She was also close to her parents, and was reluctant to go against their wishes.
Lloyd George knew when to press his advantage, and followed his appearance at Llanwnda with a letter on 28 August. ‘…Write me your answer to the question I gave you on Wednesday evening (or Thursday morning—I am not sure which it was!). Do, that’s a good girl. I want to get your own decision up on the matter. The reason I have already given you. I wish the choice you make—whatever it be—to be really yours & not anyone else’s.’
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Maggie’s religion had been the subject of gentle teasing between the lovers from the beginning, with Lloyd George trying to distract her from her regular attendances at Capel Mawr and avoiding his own duties at Capel Ucha as often as possible. The fact that Maggie did not object, and in fact seems to have enjoyed the fun as much as he, strongly belies the theory put forward by William George in later life that her hesitation was due to the religious difference between them. In October, after keeping Lloyd George waiting nearly six weeks for an answer, Maggie finally explained why she continued to hold back. He recorded the conversation in his diary:
1 Oct. To Mynydd Ednyfed & Mr and Mrs Owen having gone to Ty Mawr. I remained until 1 a.m. I pressed M. to come to a point as to what I had been speaking to her about [his proposal of marriage]. She at last admitted that her hesitation was entirely due to her not being able implicitly to trust me. She then asked me solemnly whether I was really in earnest—I assured her with equal solemnity that I was as there is a God in Heaven. ‘Well then,’ she said, ‘if you will be as true and faithful to me as I am to you, it will be allright.’ She said nothing about her Mother’s frivolous objection to my being a Baptist nor as to her own objection to my sceptical vagaries—for I told her emphatically the other day that I could not even to win her give them up & I would not pretend I had—they were my firm convictions.
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It seems that their different denominations were not an insurmountable difficulty for Maggie. Neither did she mind Lloyd George’s ‘sceptical vagaries’, his radical political convictions—in which case she would have done well to note that his courageous defence of them contained a warning: he would not give up his beliefs—or his political ambitions—for her or for anyone else. In this, he was to remain constant until the day he died.
While Maggie was considering whether or not to accept Lloyd George as a husband, her doubts with regard to his fidelity cropped up repeatedly, but she had no doubts at all about his professional success. Lloyd George was a man who would ‘get on’. What was not specifically discussed between them though was the future career he had in mind. Lloyd George was beginning to make a name for himself locally as a promising young lawyer, but he was also getting more and more involved in politics.
The swift changes of government in 1885-86 made for exciting times for the political activist in Morvin House. Most Liberals in Caernarvon Boroughs were Gladstonians. There is some evidence that Lloyd George’s natural political sympathy lay with Chamberlain, and but for a mixup with the dates of a crucial meeting in Birmingham he might have openly declared his support for Gladstone’s rival. It was politically canny, though, given the views of Welsh Liberals, for him to present himself as a Gladstonian, which is what he did.
Lloyd George’s political reputation had grown so rapidly by 1886 that he was shortlisted as the Liberal candidate for that year’s general election in the neighbouring constituency of Merioneth, but he soon regretted his candidacy. He withdrew, ostensibly to allow his friend T.E. Ellis to gain the Liberal nomination, but his diary reveals that he had been carried away by the enthusiasm of his supporters, and soon realised that he had neither the financial means nor the political experience to make a success of becoming an MP at such an early age: ‘When alone and calculating the possible consequences…I would not be in nearly as good a position as regards pecuniary, oratorical or intellectual capacity to go to Parliament now as in say 5 years hence. Now I would put myself in endless pecuniary difficulties—an object of contempt in a House of snobs.’
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During the election the Liberal candidate in Caernarvon Boroughs, Love Jones-Parry, made a mess of his campaign, first alienating his supporters by denouncing Home Rule, and then having a last-minute change of mind. He was defeated by his Conservative rival Edmund Swetenham. Nationally, support for Gladstone was not as strong as it was in Wales, and Salisbury returned to power with a majority of over a hundred seats.
Lloyd George was heavily involved in the local campaign despite the fact that he had decided not to stand for Parliament himself. His political activities could not have escaped the notice of his sweetheart. Indeed, it was during the years of their courtship that he became seriously committed to a political career and began to plan his way out of the law. His attitude towards his profession changed subtly: what was previously a source of pride became more a means to an end, a way of earning a living while developing his reputation as a political activist and speaker.
As Maggie wondered whether she could trust her young lover, did she fully understand what future life he was offering? Lloyd George’s diary records that their conversations were mainly about things they had in common: chapel, Criccieth society, her family’s disapproval, his legal clients. He did not seem to talk to her much about politics: she was not interested in the subject at this stage of her life, and he possibly regarded it as his own domain, and not a subject for feminine conversation. He would also have wanted to emphasise his professional successes to Maggie and her family, to prove that he could support a wife and family. His involvement in local politics would not necessarily have signalled his wider ambitions to Maggie. After all, her father was a leading local Liberal too, but he did not have any ambitions to enter politics professionally. Also, while with hindsight Lloyd George’s progress in politics seems the most significant development during this period, at the time much more attention was paid to his growing reputation as a lawyer. This may explain why Maggie was able later to claim that she did not regard his political career as a certainty when she was considering whether to marry him, despite all the evidence to the contrary.
Throughout the rest of 1886, Maggie was losing her heart, if not her head, to her insistent suitor, and on 11 November Lloyd George triumphantly records: ‘Never on better terms. First time she ever gave me a kiss. She gave it in exchange for a story I promised to tell her.’
(#litres_trial_promo) Lloyd George and Maggie had been courting for over a year, and had been discussing marriage since August, but Maggie had been brought up as a respectable chapel girl, and did not even kiss her lover until November. The increased intimacy was cautiously acknowledged by Lloyd George as he addressed letters thereafter to ‘My dearest Miss Owen’, rather than the simple ‘My dear Miss Owen’ he had previously been using. He did not yet dare use her Christian name.
Maggie’s reluctance to commit herself was understandable, for the rumours of Lloyd George’s flirting were not all in the past. Only two days after their kiss, he records in his diary: ‘Rather strong rebuke from M. for having condescended to gabble at all with Plas Wilbraham girls. I foolishly let out somehow that I had done so—she let me off—dismissed me—in disgrace.’
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Given her mother’s views, Maggie was very sensitive to suggestions that Lloyd George was flirting with other girls, and he would have been well advised to steer clear of any potential or former girlfriends while he was waiting for her answer. This was to prove quite beyond him, and he saw no reason to mend his ways either before or after his engagement, trusting in his wits and in the strength of Maggie’s feelings to get him out of trouble. Both were to be tested to breaking point in the weeks leading up to their engagement as his old flame Lizzie Jones made her final destructive appearance in his life, and his determination to ignore the local rumour mill very nearly derailed his new relationship.
Regarding himself as engaged—unofficially at least—Lloyd George had been pressing Maggie to face up to her parents. They were still so opposed to the relationship that the lovers had to communicate secretly, leaving letters in a niche in the stone wall on the lane near Mynydd Ednyfed, which they referred to as ‘the post office’. They met behind the Owens’ back whenever Maggie could sneak away, but Lloyd George upbraided Maggie constantly in his letters for keeping him waiting, or for letting him down. He had obviously reached the end of his tether by November 1886. On Friday the nineteenth, he signed his letter to Maggie ‘Yours (hyd y ffrae nesa’ ac wedyn) D Lloyd George’ [Yours (until the next quarrel, and beyond) D Lloyd George]
(#litres_trial_promo)—and four days later he wrote an angry missive in a furious scrawl following yet another disappointment:
Wednesday morning,
Thanks for another sell—with regard to what you suggest about this evening I am not inclined to abandon my work at Porthmadoc any more upon the mere chance (as you term it) of your being able successfully to cheat your mother. You failed to do so last night & you may fail tonight. Letting alone every question of candour & duty it would be far more expedient in my humble opinion to tell your mother where you want to go. You have more than once vetoed the project of my discussing matters with her. However one of us will have to do it. As I told you before I disdain the idea of lurking like a burglar about premises when I merely seek to obtain an honest interview with my sweetheart & I have the same contempt for myself when I have been kicking my heels on the highway & lying in ambuscade like a footpad for half an hour more or less vainly expecting the performance of a definite promise of a stroll with my girl.
If you can meet me for a certainty at the usual time & place on Thursday evening (5.30 by Parkia Gate) kindly drop me a note at the post office today so that I may get it tomorrow. But should you propose making your promise contingent upon your mother’s passing humour then the project had better be deferred until you have been more thoroughly steeled.
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He had made his point, and Maggie wrote immediately to soothe him with the promise of a meeting by Criccieth cemetery, a secluded spot on the lane between Criccieth and Mynydd Ednyfed:
Dearest Lloyd George,
I will be by the cemetery this evening at 7 p.m. without fail.
Yours with love,
Maggie
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More significant than the message was the way in which she signed her Christian name and wrote her love. It was a capitulation.
The following month, Lloyd George persuaded Maggie to confront her mother over her continuing refusal to allow him to visit Mynydd Ednyfed, and followed up his argument with a letter:
I trust you will have something to report to me tomorrow of the result of an interview with your mother. As I have already intimated to you it is but of trivial consequence to me what your mother’s views of me may be—so long of course as they do not affect yours. All I wish for is a clear understanding so that we may afterwards see for ourselves how we stand.
You will appreciate my anxiety to bring the matter to an issue with your mother. I somehow feel deeply that it is unmanly to take by stealth & fraud what I am honestly entitled to. It has a tinge of the ridiculous in it, moreover.
This being done, you will not be troubled with any more lectures & I am confident I shall be thereby encouraged to act in such a way as will ensure your requited Confidence.
Yours in good faith,
D Lloyd-George
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The pattern of their relationship was set: Lloyd George would coax, persuade and tease Maggie to take the next step along the road to marriage. She would resist, caught between the twin forces of her mother and her suitor until he lost his temper. Forced to choose, she would give in, and so their relationship progressed, step by step. Lloyd George’s next goal was to become officially engaged, which meant getting Maggie to accept a ring. As she hesitated, unable to conquer her misgivings about his fidelity, matters took a turn for the worse.
By the start of 1887, despite Maggie’s parents’ opposition and Lloyd George’s mother and uncle’s ignorance of the situation, the couple were acknowledged sweethearts, even if they could not yet be openly betrothed. Maggie was still conscious of her lover’s bad reputation, and acutely aware of the damage a scandal could cause. In other words, this was not a good time for Lloyd George to be associating publicly with Criccieth girls who had caused tongues to wag in the past, since it would only reinforce Mrs Owen’s objections. He, as usual, felt immune from danger. As 1886 drew to a close, he was asked to act in a professional capacity in a breach of promise case. These suits, usually brought by a jilted fiancêe whose reputation had been compromised by her lover’s change of heart, were commonplace, and Lloyd George had already handled several. This time, though, the parties were known to him, for the claimant was Ann Jones, sister of his former girlfriend Lizzie.
As fellow members of Capel Ucha, it was natural for Ann and Lizzie to turn to Lloyd George when Ann sued her former fiancé, John Jones of Caerdyni Farm—or it would have been, if Jones was not Lloyd George’s friend and first cousin.* (#ulink_30cd8dce-f95b-5620-9f15-d6d8da2afe93) Given the delicate condition of his courtship of Maggie Owen, not to mention the family relationship involved, it would have been prudent for Lloyd George to refuse the case, but he did no such thing. Perhaps he preferred to face down his critics, or perhaps it went against the grain to refuse any case when his family needed the money so badly.
Oblivious to danger, Lloyd George seemed sure that his engagement was imminent, writing confidently to Mr R. Bonner Thomas, a Porthmadoc jeweller, on 26 January 1887 to order a ring for Maggie:
I enclose your finger card—the size of the rings I require is no. 7 on the card—I have matched it—send off for a few today without fail—I want them by Friday.
The prices might range between 7 & 15 guineas—get one or two with emeralds in as well as diamonds—but the majority I would prefer to be with diamonds alone.
(#litres_trial_promo)
