It becomes clear that his vanity has also been wounded:
Another thing—you well know how you lecture me about my lack of self respect. Well how is it you conduce to this quality to me? By showing me the utmost disrespect. You stick me for half an hour in a conspicuous spot to wait for you & having made an exhibition to all passers by, you coolly send word that it is your mother’s pleasure I should go home to avoid another disappointment.
Having engaged her sympathy and made her feel that she is in the wrong, he turns up the heat and forces her to make a decision:
Now once for ever let us have an end of this long standing wrangle. It comes to this. My supreme idea is to get on. To this idea I shall sacrifice everything—except I trust honesty. I am prepared to thrust even love itself under the wheels of my Juggernaut, if it obstructs the way, that is if love is so much trumpery child’s play as your mother deems courtship to be. I have told you over and over that I consider you to be my good angel—my guiding star. Do you not really desire my success? If you do, will you suggest some course least objectionable to you out of our difficulty? I am prepared to do anything reasonable & fair you may require of me. I can not—earnestly—carry on as present. Believe me—& may Heaven attest the truth of my statement—my love for you is sincere & strong. In this I never waver. But I must not forget that I have a purpose in life. And however painful the sacrifice I may have to make to attain this ambition I must not flinch—otherwise success will be remote indeed…
Write me your views candidly & in as good & honest a spirit as I impart mine to you.
With fondest love
From your sweetheart D. Ll.G.26
This is an extraordinary letter, and is highly revealing as to the psychology of both author and recipient. It is a lawyer’s, not a lover’s letter. Love is secondary to business—no suitor ever made that clearer. Lloyd George will ‘thrust even love itself under the wheels of [his] Juggernaut’ if necessary to advance his career. It is in order to ‘get on’ that he needs Maggie by his side, and yet even in this frank letter he refrains from spelling out for her that he is referring to his political ambitions, not simply to his career as a rural attorney. Although the language he uses betrays the scale of his ambition, he draws back from telling her directly that he intends to make his mark on the national stage: that would have to wait until she was fully committed. His career would always come first, but he softens the blow a little by calling her his ‘guiding angel’. She is necessary to him, if only to achieve his ambitions.
There is no doubt that Lloyd George wrote sincerely and from the heart, but the letter is also a clever attempt to bend Maggie to his will. He appeals to her deep-rooted sense of duty, and the work ethic that was both a feature of her faith and a strong characteristic of her family. Maggie was raised to believe in hard work and obligation. Lloyd George knew this well, since it was her unyielding sense of duty to her parents that had frustrated him for so long. Appealing to her emotions would be like trying to persuade a river to leave its course: she would always place her duty first. In writing this letter he showed how well he understood her character, and how readily he would use that knowledge to manipulate her. His skill was to make it seem as if she had an equal duty to help him in his career. It was his strongest card, and he played it supremely well.
The letter must have given Maggie considerable food for thought, and while she was digesting it her concerns about his breach of promise case grew stronger. Unable to persuade him to drop the case, she wrote to him to air her views—it is one of the first letters from her that he kept.
My dear Mr George,
I have begged them to let me come to Portmadoc this evening, but father has utterly refused to let me go. I am sure I don’t know why, therefore I must submit to his will and stay at home…I am returning you the girl’s letter. After reflecting upon what you told me yesterday I must tell you that I should much prefer your leaving it to some one else to take up; not because of your relationship to the man nor to let him go unpunished by any means for he really deserves it, but for your own sake. All the old stories will be renewed again. I know there are relatives of mine at Criccieth, and other people as well, who will be glad to have anything more to say to my people about you, to set them against you and that will put me in an awkward position. I know this much, I shall not be at my ease while the thing is on, if you will be taking it up. If she were a stranger to you, and you took her case, people would wonder why on earth you took it against your cousin, knowing that your relations were against your doing so; but now they will draw different conclusions—that you are on friendly terms with these people while your duty is to do all that is in your power to make them forget that you ever were on friendly terms with them & taking up this case will not help you in the least to do it.
Let some one else do it. You can get plenty of excuses; one that your people are against you doing it and recommend some other lawyer. Should your reputation depend on it, as you said, that would only be from a professional point of view, not from any other point of view, I can assure you.
Yours faithfully,
M. Owen.27
The formal way in which she addresses him and the plaintive tone of the letter betray her anguish at the thought of the renewed contact between Lloyd George and Lizzie Jones. But even faced with this highly convincing case, Lloyd George bafflingly dug in his heels, choosing to face the opposition of his family and his sweetheart and to risk his personal reputation by prosecuting his cousin on behalf of his former love’s sister. He does not explain his reasons in his diary, nor in any letter that survives, but financial considerations must have been among them, as well as sheer stubbornness and perhaps a desire not to allow Maggie to dictate to him which cases he should take and which drop.
When Maggie tried again to persuade him not to take the case, with a threat to end their engagement, he came out fighting. He wrote her a second carefully crafted letter designed to make her accept him on his own terms, using every means at his disposal to end her indecision once and for all:
My dearest Maggie,
Your ultimatum to hand & here I launch my protocol in reply.
What I wish to make clear is this. That whatever course you may think fit in your unfettered discretion to adopt has not been necessitated or even occasioned by any dishonourable or disgraceful proceeding on my part.
What is the gravamen of your charge? Simply this—that I have deigned to permit myself to be entertained with a little harmless music by a couple of girls whom a bevy of dried-up dessicated [sic] & blighted old maids object to. I am not sure whether their objection is not a recommendation. And can you give me anyone whom they don’t object to? Miss R: Bronygadair objected even to you. I might plead guilty if I only knew the charge. My calls upon the girl were of a purely professional character—as witness the fact that prior to this breach of promise affair I was not on speaking letting alone visiting terms with her.
Again, his tone is legal: he is writing a protocol, an early version of a treaty between them. In other words, he is setting out his terms, which Maggie must