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]20—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.21
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,
Maggie22
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-George23
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.* 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.24
Yet Maggie was not ready to accept his ring in defiance of her parents’ wishes, emeralds and diamonds notwithstanding. A quarrel followed, and Lloyd George’s next letter to her refers to ‘the heat of last night’s rancoure [sic]’, and is signed rather brusquely, ‘Yours D Ll G’, with a curt postscript: ‘It is time you should cast off your swaddling clothes.’25
A second remonstration proved necessary as Maggie continued to prevaricate and to cancel meetings. This second letter is an extraordinary testament to his view of the world, and shows how clearly Lloyd George saw the path ahead, even at the age of twenty-four. Using all his powers of advocacy, he expresses his impatience with the slow progress of their courtship, and spells out the priority his work has in his life and will always have in future. He begins by berating her for keeping him waiting in vain—not because he missed her company, but because it inconvenienced him in his business dealings:
My dearest Miss Owen,
Without any preamble or beating about the bush, let’s straight to the topic. Here I am under the very disagreeable necessity—through no fault of my own you must admit—of addressing you for the hundredth time during a not very protracted courtship in a remonstrative spirit. Appealing to the love I have for you or that you have professed for me seems to be but vanity itself in your sight. I am now going to appeal to your sense of fairness & commiseration. I have repeatedly told you how I am steeped to the lips in an accumulation of work—that I am quite entangled & confounded by my office arrears—that I have to work late every evening & then get up early the following morning to effect some measure