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Indeed it had.
On 10 April 1890 the 4,000 voters in Caernarvon Boroughs went to the polls. Lloyd George spent the day with his supporters in Pwllheli before meeting up with Uncle Lloyd at Avonwen. The following day he made his way to the Guildhall in Caernarvon, where the votes were being counted. It was going to be a close-run thing. The votes piled up in two equal-looking heaps, and then Lloyd George was given the bad news: he had been defeated. But the returning officer had spoken prematurely. Lloyd George’s supporters had been primed to be on the lookout for any irregularity or skulduggery, since they (rightly) suspected that their opponents would do anything to secure victory. At the eleventh hour, Lloyd George’s electoral agent, J.T. Roberts, spotted a sheaf of twenty Liberal votes in the Conservative pile. He demanded a recount, and the result was overturned. By the skin of his teeth—only eighteen votes—Lloyd George had been elected to Parliament.
A large crowd was waiting as he emerged onto the balcony of the Guildhall, his brother at his side, and it greeted the new Member with half-crazed enthusiasm. After making a short speech in Welsh, Lloyd George travelled to Bangor, where he hailed the result as ‘a victory of democracy over the aristocracy’
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Uncle Lloyd was overjoyed. He was not an excitable man, nor one given to exaggeration, but he wrote in his diary that night that the result was ‘almost a miracle’
(#litres_trial_promo)—a word he did not use lightly. At 6 p.m. the newly elected Lloyd George returned to Criccieth, where he was greeted by crowds, bonfires and bunting—but no wife. Five months pregnant and with a fourteen-month-old baby to nurse, Maggie had decided that it was not sensible to leave Mynydd Ednyfed, despite her husband’s request. Lloyd George was rather prone to make unreasonable demands of her, ignoring her physical condition when she was pregnant and the practical difficulties of looking after young children. Although she occasionally ignored his pleas, it did not cause much friction between them, at this stage at least.
The celebrations in Criccieth lasted well into the night, and when, finally, Lloyd George was escorted home by an elated and noisy crowd he was met, not by an adoring and excited wife, but by a furious nursemaid charged with looking after the infant Dick. The new MP was brought quickly down to earth. He was subjected to a stern telling off, and his supporters were ordered to stop their shouting immediately for fear of waking the baby. It was a sharp reminder of his wife’s priorities.
* (#ulink_9276147a-d68a-5823-9aab-c06059bd99c8)The word ‘child’ was added as an afterthought by the expectant mother.
* (#ulink_c119fa95-1e2e-5f16-9ca7-b8a95e919ec8)Lloyd George’s brother William would be elected Chairman of Caernarvonshire County Council in 1911, and in 1917 he too was co-opted as Alderman, a position he held until his death in 1967.
7 Kitty Edwards (#ulink_cd6c00f3-49d4-55d7-91eb-774f72d3748a)
WHEN MARGARET HEARD THAT HER husband had been elected to Parliament, she wept. Lloyd George later recalled that they were ‘tears of regret for the ending of her hopes for a quiet, untroubled existence in the country’.
(#litres_trial_promo) However unrealistic her expectations of a quiet country life had been when she married, they were, it seems, genuine, and were now dashed to pieces.
The result of the Caernarvon Boroughs by-election attracted extensive coverage in the Welsh press and nationally. This was partly due to the name the successful candidate had already made for himself, but also because Lloyd George had overturned the Conservative majority of the previous general election, and, then as now, such upsets attracted a lot of comment. Lloyd George’s arrival at Westminster also received far more attention than it would have done if he had been elected amid a throng of others at a general election.
David Lloyd George MP took his seat on budget day, 17 April 1890, and his wife added the newspaper reports to her scrapbook:
It was a striking sight, the closely packed benches, the Chancellor of the Exchequer [George Goschen] with many little volumes of notes, bracing himself up for a grand effort; while immediately below the venerable figure of Lord Cottesloe stood the young M.P. for the Caernarvonshire Boroughs, nearly seventy years his junior, pale with excitement and the thoughts of the career opening before him.
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Maggie did not accompany her husband to London: amid the excitement following the election, Lloyd George had no time to find accommodation, and when he was in the capital he stayed with Criccieth friends or at the National Liberal Club, according to his circumstances. But she was not far from his thoughts, and he took the first possible opportunity to write to her, during the budget speech itself. His pride and sense of achievement in getting into Parliament, the ‘region of his future domain’, is tangible: ‘This is the first letter which I write as an introduced member of the House of Commons and I dedicate it to my little darling. I snatch a few minutes during the delivery of Goschen’s budget to write her. I was introduced amid very enthusiastic cheers on the Liberal side.’
(#litres_trial_promo) The next day, he wrote to his brother with the bemusement of a new Member of Parliament: ‘My first division last night. I voted against Bi-metallism, but I couldn’t tell you why.’
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As Lloyd George was finding his feet at Westminster, Maggie was wondering how they would manage now that her husband was an unsalaried MP with little or no time to spend on building his business. Unlike Lloyd George, who was not practical by nature, both she and William George could see the financial difficulty his election had placed them in as a family, and William’s diary betrays the sleepless nights the situation caused him: ‘For the village lad to have beaten the parish country squire is a (great) honour. Two practical questions present themselves: (a) How is D to live there? (b) How am I to live down here?’
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The law practice, now mainly run by William George, would have to provide for all: Lloyd George, Maggie and their growing family as well as Uncle Lloyd, Betsy and Polly. The firm was doing reasonably well as a result of some hard work by William, and had moved to premises in Porthmadoc. Uncle Lloyd helped out as an office clerk, but the family’s income would be spread thinly for some years to come. As late as 1894, William George recorded in his diary that his supper consisted of a cupful of hot water with some bread and butter. The first of many requests for financial help came from London when Maggie paid her husband a visit:
Dei wished me to ask you to send him £5 by return please. He has been using some of my money. If he doesn’t get it your dear sister can’t return home on Saturday without leaving her husband quite penniless in this great city…He also wants you to send him a few blank cheques. For goodness sake don’t send him many. They are such easy things to fill in and then the slashing signature of D. Lloyd George put to them—which I fear you would not be too glad to see.
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Maggie was as careful with money as Lloyd George was extravagant. Every penny was precious, and she formed money-saving habits that remained with her for life. Unfairly perhaps, they gave her a reputation for being tight-fisted. In her defence, she never enjoyed spending money on herself, but even Polly, who was perfectly aware of their financial situation, commented on her meanness to William George while on a visit to London in 1891:
You will be anxious perhaps to know whether your P.O’s came to hand safely. I may say that they are in the strictest sense of the word. Mag pounced upon them directly &no one has seen a scrap of them since or ever will…A rare one for keeping money is my little sister-in-law. She is a very kind little hostess and we get on very nicely together, it is when it comes to spending that she shows her miserliness, she will borrow a penny to pay the tram sooner than pay for you herself.
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During the first few weeks after his election, Lloyd George immersed himself in national politics and London life. He was anxious to find a place to live so that Maggie could join him, and did not seem to see the impracticality of this plan. In June 1890 he entreated her to make the eighteen-hour round trip from Criccieth by train so that they could spend Sunday house-hunting—not a prospect that would entice many women who were seven months pregnant.
(#litres_trial_promo) His pleading was all the more extraordinary because Maggie’s second pregnancy had not been straightforward. Her letters to Lloyd George, though trying to reassure him, are full of fear that she might lose the baby: ‘This afternoon we are going to Dwyfor Villa to tea, the walk will do me good if I do it slowly &rest at Criccieth. I’m going and coming back. Much more good than a drive that shakes me so much.’ And again: ‘I don’t feel very well today don’t be alarmed if you find an unease in the family when you come down. I am in good spirits. Mag.’
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Lloyd George was worried, and despite his efforts to cheer her up, Maggie was clearly having a hard time. She wrote:
I am longing dreadfully after you today. After being home for a flying visit you seem to have gone from my sight without hardly having seen you, &it may seem very silly on my part but I go to every room in the house today to find a trace of your having been occupying it, &I find but little traces of you, but when I do I relieve myself in tears, but I shall be alright when I get a letter tomorrow morning.
…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.
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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* (#ulink_92483590-9891-5f9b-856f-458b98e0aec2) keeping him company. You could prepare your speech while Davies was in Chapel, if you only went with him once).
(#litres_trial_promo) 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
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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.
There has been much speculation about Maggie’s attitude towards living in London. Her visits there were so infrequent during 1894, when she was expecting their fourth child, that Lloyd George arranged for the flat to be let for six months, and it was again sub-let in 1896, when she was pregnant a fifth time (the pregnancy ended in a miscarriage). It does not appear that she was in London very often during the remainder of 1896, in 1897 (although she was there when she suffered another miscarriage in the spring) or 1898, until, finally, with the marriage at crisis point, she consented to let their Criccieth home and move to a family house near Wandsworth Common. Even then she delayed making the move for as long as possible.
The overwhelming consensus among Lloyd George’s biographers is that Maggie simply preferred Criccieth to London. In this way, the blame for the difficulties in their marriage has been divided between the philandering husband and the absent wife. The evidence, though, strongly suggests that, her preference apart, Maggie’s decision not to join Lloyd George in London at the beginning of his parliamentary career was based on practical considerations. After all, when the children were older she did—albeit reluctantly—move to London, and she was mostly at her husband’s side through his years as Chancellor and Prime Minister.
The conventional view is largely based on Lloyd George’s pleas in his letters home for Maggie to join him, although the possibility exists that he was exaggerating his loneliness to divert attention from his active socialising in her absence. Nevertheless, the love between him and Maggie was strong, and he was clearly anxious to have his family with him more often during these early years. This was the first time in his life that he had had to fend for himself without women to take care of his needs, and he did not enjoy it. He was not temperamentally equipped to look after himself. He had been spoiled as a child by the devoted Betsy and Polly, and cared for latterly by the servants at Mynydd Ednyfed. For the pampered young man, who to the end of his life was never able to tie his own shoelaces, it was a shock to the system to come home to an empty room with no food to eat and no clean collars for his shirts. In some ways, as we shall see, his solitary existence in London suited him, and he made the most of the opportunity to enjoy his new social circle, but the loneliness was not entirely faked, and his domestic helplessness was a real problem.
Lloyd George was not a systematic man, especially when it came to correspondence. Despite writing regularly and frequently to Maggie, William George and Uncle Lloyd, he never kept track of the letters he received, and the majority of theirs to him have been lost. Consequently, Maggie’s views on living in London and her reasons for her undisguised preference for Criccieth have not received similar attention.
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].
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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.’
(#litres_trial_promo) 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,* (#ulink_ae3bf68e-a3b6-5206-ae73-eff2fe723829) 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.’
(#litres_trial_promo) 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.’
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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.’
(#litres_trial_promo) 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.’
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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.’
(#litres_trial_promo) 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.’
(#litres_trial_promo) And from Rome, where he was holidaying with two colleagues, he addresses a letter to ‘My dear suspicious old Maggie’:* (#ulink_afb92adc-329e-59da-a99d-5ccfa4aaeb06) ‘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.’
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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.’
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Lloyd George genuinely considered himself to be a good husband and family man.* (#ulink_79b93bda-2ede-58b6-8a92-f23ca4819c40) 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
RFL
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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,
Kate
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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? K
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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…’
(#litres_trial_promo) 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.
