Maggie would not budge, and by August Lloyd George’s sympathy was wearing a little thin: ‘How infinite your self-pity is! Poor lonely wife. You are surrounded by all who love you best—father, mother, children, Uncle Lloyd & all. But can’t you spare some sympathy & compassion for the poor lonely husband who is surrounded on all hands by wolves who would tear him—did they not fear his claw?’7
A few days later he wrote Maggie a loving letter, but the teasing, affectionate tone of the correspondence between them was about to be rudely interrupted. They were still under pressure from the Edwards divorce case, but the incident that sparked their most serious quarrel yet was Maggie’s decision not to accompany her husband on a trip to Llangadog in Carmarthenshire, presumably on political business. On 13 August Uncle Lloyd recorded in his diary that both Maggie and William George had received strong letters from Lloyd George: ‘Mag heard from D.Ll.G—fully expecting her to go to Llangadock. Pity he made his mind so—as she is unable to go. W.G. had letter today also, it seems.’8 His tone is sympathetic towards Maggie—at least, he does not seem to blame her for not going. He and William George often thought Maggie’s decision to stay in Criccieth far more reasonable than Lloyd George allowed. They were in a position to see the practical difficulties of moving a young family between Criccieth and London, and tended to take Maggie’s side.
Not so Lloyd George. His letter to William was angry and vengeful. He decided to force Maggie to join him in London permanently by giving up their house in Criccieth:
My wife declines to go out of her way to spend Sunday with me at Llangadock. She makes the kids an excuse. Becca [Owen, a cousin] would be only too glad to take up her quarters at Bryn Awel* for a few days to look after them. I have made up my mind to give up the Criccieth house altogether. M. is giving notice today. She has failed to let it furnished, and even if she succeeded I shall want the furniture for a house up here [in London]. I mean to let the flat and take a small house in the suburbs. You can’t keep kids in a flat. Can’t you let Bryn Awel for me unfurnished?9
Lloyd George’s peremptory tone and unilateral decision-making might have brought some wives to heel, but not Maggie. It was one thing for him to ask her to join him in London, quite another for him to give up the house her father had built for their use without her agreement. Maggie wrote a furious and destructive letter threatening her husband with a public scandal. It has not survived, and we do not know if she was alluding to his relationship with Mrs Tim, some other personal matter, or, since Lloyd George was under pressure from his constituents because of the infrequency of his visits, a political exposure. The gist of her threats can be deduced from Lloyd George’s reply. In a cold, cruel letter he hit back, targeting her own weak spot: her failure as a wife:
When next you discuss your relations with your husband with the servants you may tell Jane—since you quote her views as having so much weight—that the marriage vow was not one-sided. You have worried me to distraction about my share of it. What about yours? You have wilfully disobeyed your husband—in a matter he was entitled to obedience—yes in a matter any other wife would have been only too delighted to obey him in.
You threaten me with a public scandal. Alright—expose me if that suits you. One scandal the more will but kill me the earlier. But you will not alter my resolution to have neither correspondence nor communication of any sort with you until it is more clearly understood how you purpose to guide your course for the future. I have borne it for years & have suffered in health & character. I’ll stand it no longer come what may.10
He does not deny that Maggie has the ammunition to cause a scandal. Instead he argues that it is all her fault. Her neglect is responsible for his defects of both ‘health’ and ‘character’. Instead of reassurance, she received an ultimatum: he would not write or talk to her again until she agreed to join him in London. Her reply, unfortunately, is also lost and the trail of letters is difficult to follow, since in the heat of the argument they wrote to each other more than once a day,* but it seems that it was an angry one. This drew a curt and equally unconciliatory letter back from Lloyd George: ‘What colleague do you allude to? You are still at your old trick of innuendo. You say this business is childish. You may yet find it is more serious than child’s play.’11
Maggie must have sent another letter the same day containing an apology, for Lloyd George wrote again later in a softened tone, and although he returned to the ongoing quarrel, he also sent a gift of fruit: ‘I would much rather see you express sorrow for your refusal to comply with your husband’s earnest desire to see you than defend yourself as you do. It was a wilful act of disobedience. Of course I did not command. That is what no husband cares to do to his wife but I did entreat—for the last time.’12
Maggie, though, was not quite ready to let the matter rest. It seems she sent another intemperate letter—or perhaps their letters crossed—followed immediately by an apologetic and capitulatory telegram. Sensing victory, Lloyd George wrote back pressing his advantage to secure his goal of getting Maggie to agree to move to London:
My sweet but stupid Maggie
That telegram just saved you. Your letter this morning made me wild—there was the same self-complacent self-satisfied Pharisaism about it as ever. You had done no wrong. Even now there is a phrase in it that I cannot pass by unnoticed. When did I ever suggest in the faintest measure that you were a burden to me? Have I not always complained rather that you ‘burdened’ me too little with your society? You have no right to make these charges. What I have said I neither withdraw nor modify how grave soever the implication may be—nor do I wish to retract a syllable of what I told you in London about my being even happier when you & the kids are around me. A wise woman who loved her husband well & who knew herself well-beloved by him, would not write foolish letters arguing out the matter with him & doing that badly—she would rather put these things together, ponder them well & resolve at all costs to redeem the past.
He then goes for the kill.
Be candid with yourself. Drop that infernal Methodism which is the curse of your bitter nature & reflect whether you have not rather neglected your husband. I have more than once gone without breakfast. I have scores of times come home in the dead of night to a cold dark & comfortless flat without a soul to greet me. When you were surrounded by your pets.
Next comes the nearest thing to a confession Lloyd George ever made:
I am not the nature either physically or morally that ought to have been left thus. I decline to argue & you will mortally offend me if you attempt it. I simply ask you in all sincerity of soul—yes, & as a message of true love I supplicate you to give heed to what I am telling you now—not for the first time. I shall then ask you how you would like to meet your Judge if all this neglect led me astray. You have been a good mother. You have not—& I say this now not in anger—not always been a good wife. I can point you even amongst those whom you affect to look down upon—much better wives. You may be a blessing to your children. Oh Maggie annwyl [darling] beware lest you be a curse to your husband. My soul as well as my body has been committed to your charge & in many respects I am as helpless as a child.13
As an argument of defence, the letter is masterful. It would not sound out of place as a sermon, delivered in solemn tones from the pulpit of Seion. How well Lloyd George knew his wife. In asking her to abandon her Methodism he plays on it for all he is worth, conjuring