*In 1895 he wrote to Maggie: ‘Ellis Griffith [MP for Anglesey] & I were comparing notes the other day & we both said that if we were asked on a future great occasion in what capacity we would like to be tried before the Judgement seat we would answer As a husband if you don’t mind. We both thought we would fare pretty well if we had to stand or fall by our merits or demerits as husbands.’
*This was intended to signal to William that the note was for his eyes only, not to be read to the rest of the family.
VISITING THE HOMES OF Welsh friends was a normal Sunday-afternoon activity for the Lloyd Georges in London. When Dick was about eight years old, he and his father went to pay a social call in Putney, finding the lady of the house alone. Returning home, Dick ran to find his mother and excitedly told her of his adventures. He had seen Tada (Father) and the lady playing a game. ‘He was eating her hand,’ he said.1 Maggie knew what that meant: Lloyd George was having an affair with Elizabeth, wife of his friend Timothy Davies. A row followed, the first of many over ‘Mrs Tim’.
Elizabeth Davies was twenty-six in 1897, fourteen years younger than her husband. She lived in Oakhill Road, Putney, in a house named Pantycelyn,* within walking distance of the Lloyd Georges. Her life was comfortable if not exciting, with a rather dull husband and three children. Timothy Davies was a solid member of the London Welsh community, who Lloyd George rather unkindly held up to Maggie as a kind of ‘insipid, wishy washy fellow’.2 On his letterhead he styled himself a ‘General Draper, Silk Mercer, Ladies Outfitter, Carpet and a furnishing warehouseman’, and he owned a number of premises in Walham Green in Fulham. He was President of the Welsh Presbyterian Association and a Liberal who shared the same radical views as Lloyd George. He married Elizabeth (known as ‘Lizzie’ to her husband, ‘Mrs Tim’ to the Lloyd George family) in 1893. She became an accomplished hostess, popular among the London Welsh, and Tim soon began to bring Lloyd George home. After making a success of his commercial ventures, Davies concentrated on politics, serving on London County Council, becoming Mayor of Fulham in 1901 and, with Lloyd George’s active support, Liberal MP for Fulham from 1906 to 1910 and for Louth from 1910 to 1920. Before then, his home had become a refuge for the lonely young Lloyd George, a haven of good meals, blazing fires and political conversation.
The two men struck up a friendship, travelling abroad together at least twice without their wives—to Rome in December 1897 and on a cruise at the end of 1898. Perhaps Timothy Davies was oblivious to the growing attraction between Lloyd George and Lizzie, or perhaps he decided to follow the lead of the Prince of Wales’ set and ignore the relationship. Either way, as Mrs Tim embarked on an affair with Lloyd George that was to last many years, her husband looked the other way.
Dick described Mrs Tim as ‘a lively, attractive creature, rather loquacious, very stylish, perhaps a little flamboyant’.3 She wore a scent that reminded him of a basket of carnations, and she went out of her way to charm the little boy. As for his father, Mrs Tim became the first woman to occupy a regular place in Lloyd George’s life since his marriage to Maggie.
It was inevitable that this relationship would hurt Maggie. She could be certain that Lloyd George would not risk the major scandal of divorce, but it irked her that he should spend his time with another woman, especially a woman she considered inferior to herself in all but housekeeping ability. This tension shows in her letters. In May 1897 she upbraided Lloyd George for giving Mrs Tim a ticket for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee festivities, instead of the more worthy Davies family he had stayed with in Acton as a new MP. In reply, he came out fighting:
What a jealous little wife I have got to be sure! Now let me prove to her how groundless her suspicions are—as usual. So much was I in agreement with her as to the prior claims of the [Acton] Davies’s, that I offered them my extra seat last night—but they had already received as many as eight seats elsewhere. I then told the Morgans, having got the Davies’s out of the way, that I had an available seat—but they also had ‘excellent seats’ in another quarter. So poor Mrs Tim only comes third or even fourth. But still I don’t wish her to occupy even that back seat if you object. Is there anyone else you would like me to hand my seat to?4
Lloyd George believed in brazening out any embarrassing situations, both in politics and in his personal life. His mistress, unlike Kitty Edwards, was not the type to risk her own comfortable situation, and Lloyd George trusted her not to expose their affair or to make excessive demands on him. Far from trying to keep the families apart, Lloyd George encouraged social contact between them. As the relationship between him and Mrs Tim flourished, his whole family was drawn into their social arrangements. Dick recalls being taken often to Pantycelyn, and going for long walks on which he and the Davies children would be sent ahead, allowing his father and Mrs Tim to have a leisurely tête-à-tête. Finally the penny dropped that this woman was making his mother unhappy, and although Mrs Tim was friendly and generous towards him, Dick turned against her with a fierce ‘childish hostility’.*
Other members of the family also realised that there was more to their father’s visits to Putney than social duty, including Olwen, who already had a reputation for being outspoken. She recalls playing a guessing game with her father, her siblings and Maggie, who had made her husband a present of a pen. Lloyd George held the pen aloft and invited his children to guess who had given it to him. ‘Is it a lady?’ he was asked. ‘Oh yes!’ ‘Is it someone you kiss?’ asked Dick. ‘Well, yes!’ came the reply. Then, in her innocence, Olwen dropped the bombshell. ‘Is it Mrs Timothy Davies?’ The embarrassed silence that followed opened her eyes for the first time to her father’s infidelity.5
In the spring and summer of 1897, tension simmered between Maggie and Lloyd George. Maggie was jealous of Mrs Tim, and they were both feeling lonely as they continued to spend long periods apart. At the end of May, Maggie wrote from Criccieth chiding her husband once more for not spending enough time with his family. He, always on the lookout for ways of increasing his income, was about to start up a law practice in London, at 13 Walbrook in the heart of the City. His partner, the Anglesey lawyer Arthur Rhys Roberts, was expected to do the work, while Lloyd George, with his store of London contacts, provided the clients. Money, he replied to Maggie, was the reason he needed to stay in London. Her dismissive response provoked him to set out a few home truths:
You say you would rather have less money and live in a healthy place. Well, hen gariad [little love], you will not forget that you were as keen about my starting as I was myself. Then you must bear in mind that we are spending more than we earn. I draw far more than my share of the profits [of the North Wales practice] though I don’t attend to 1/10th of the work. This is neither fair nor honourable & feel sure you do not wish it to continue.
For all their sakes, he argued, it was time for his family to join him on a permanent basis:
Now you can’t make omelettes without breaking eggs & unless I retire from politics altogether & content myself with returning to the position of a country attorney, we must give up the comforts of Criccieth for life in England. As to attending to the business during sessions & running away from it afterwards your good sense will show you on reflection that it is impossible. No business could be conducted successfully on those terms. You are not right, however, that this presupposes living entirely in London. If you prefer,