The Pain and the Privilege: The Women in Lloyd George’s Life. Ffion Hague

given away the fact that she was jealous of the time he spent with his former girlfriend. Knowing that her love for him was strong, he chose not to promise an end to such behaviour. Instead, he decided again to appeal to her sense of duty by arguing, not entirely successfully, that his professional duty required him to socialise with clients:

      —Now I could give you good reasons for my not objecting to a little music to finish up the consultation. I aim to please all my clients & thus make them as much as possible personal friends & were an Italian organ grinder to put anything in my way I would probably endeavour to please him at the risk of a little personal discomfort by asking him to display the musical qualities of his infernal machine. Now Miss Jones is to me a really good client—for if her case is fought out as it may (& as it would but for my regard to your anxiety for a settlement) my bill of costs would be a matter of between £50 and £100. There is moreover the notoriety of advertisement involved in the case which is in actual fact more valuable to me. Well such a client, to begin with, is worth trying to please. Moreover whilst music is as innocent a recreation as you could possibly indulge in it always affords me unlimited pleasure.

      Then, with breathtaking nerve, he justifies his behaviour on religious grounds, and accuses Maggie of snobbery in her disapproval of the Jones sisters:

      Furthermore the girls are members of the same chapel as I am and one of the few religious dogmas of our creed I believe in is—fraternity with which you may couple equality. My God never decreed that farmers & their race should be esteemed beyond the progeny of a fishmonger & strange to say Christ—the founder of our creed—selected the missionaries of his noble teaching from amongst fishmongers. Do you really think that the Christ who honoured & made friendship with Zebedee the fishmonger’s son would disdain the acquaintance of a poor toiling fishmonger’s daughter…To tell you plain truth I thought there was more humanity in you than to be led away by such silly notions.

      My preference for you rather than for those girls arises not from any social distinctions—these I have the utmost contempt for—but it arises entirely from your superiority in many endearing qualities.

      He goes on to criticise her debating tactics, demolishing her arguments as if he was facing a particularly inept prosecutor in court:

      And now, honestly, don’t you think you have chosen the most inopportune moment for your outburst…even if it were a very improper &wicked thing to listen to the song of a fishmonger’s daughter—it is now about a month since I heard the chime of her voice—except in chapel. You are like Blucher of Waterloo—you only appear on the field when the enemy has fled…I will admit your letter is a clever piece of special pleading. You have picked up disjointed tit-bits from one story and shown that in conjunction with a rag from another story it bears such &such a colour. You have been mixing colours &then accuse me with being responsible for the hideousness of the resulting picture. Very clever you know but scarcely candid.

      Then comes the most crucial passage in all the letters of Lloyd George and Maggie’s long courtship. He lays out in an entirely unambiguous way what he expects of her as his wife, the terms on which their future lives are to be lived, and his ambition as both lawyer and politician:

      You very fiercely suggest that possibly I have committed a blunder in my selection. Well, I do make mistakes often, but as a rule it does not take me two years to find them out. And besides…my ideas as to the qualifications of a wife do not coincide with yours. You seem to think that the supreme function of a wife is to amuse her husband—to be to him a kind of toy or plaything to enable him to while away with enjoyment his leisure hour. Frankly, that is simply prostituting marriage. My ideas are very different—if not superior—to yours. I am of opinion that woman’s function is to soothe &sympathise &not to amuse. Men’s lives are a perpetual conflict. The life I have mapped out will be so especially—as lawyer &politician. Woman’s function is to pour oil on the wounds—to heal bruises of spirit received in past conflicts &to stimulate to renewed exertion. Am I not right? If I am then you are pre-eminently the girl for me. I have a thorough belief in your kindliness and affection.

      With stunning clarity and disarming honesty, Lloyd George outlines his firm, lifelong philosophy for Maggie to accept or reject: her role would be to ‘soothe and sympathise’, to be the companion of his hearth and to heal his wounds after each battle. She need not worry about amusing him: his words contain just a hint of a suggestion that he could—and would—find his playthings elsewhere.

      With all the facts laid out, he challenges Maggie to make her decision:

      As to setting you free, that is a matter for your choice &not mine. I have many times impressed upon you that the only bond by which I have any desire to hold you is that of love. If that be lost then I would snap any other bond with my own hand. Hitherto my feelings are those of unflinching love for you &that feeling is a growing one.

      You ask me to choose—I have made my choice deliberately &solemnly. I must now ask you to make your choice. I know my slanderers—those whom you allow to poison your mind against me. Choose between them &me—there can be no other alternative.

      He concludes his case with the confidence of an advocate whose victory is assured, but his anxiety as to her answer shows, if only in the pleading postscript:

      May I see you at 7 tomorrow? Drop me a note will you. I would like to have a thorough talk with you. We must settle this miserable squabble once &for all.²⁸

      This time, after deploying all his courtroom eloquence, the field was his, and Maggie finally accepted a diamond cluster ring as a formal token of their betrothal.

      When she allowed Lloyd George to place the ring upon her finger she accepted more than just his word that he was faithful to her: she accepted his definition of her role as his wife. This was to be a defining moment in Maggie’s life, but it is far from clear how well she understood the deal she was accepting. She can have been in no doubt as to the strength of Lloyd George’s ambition, for he literally spelled it out for her, but even so, did she really understand how far he wanted to go, and in which direction? In later life she was to acknowledge her naïvety in this respect in an interview: ‘I thought I was marrying a Caernarvonshire lawyer. Some people even then said he was sure to get on, but it was success as a lawyer that they had in mind. I am sure neither of us guessed then what lay before us.’²⁹

      Most commentators have interpreted her words as retrospective selfjustification for her refusal to leave Criccieth for London—if she did not know at the outset that he was set on becoming a politician, she could not be accused of subsequent unreasonableness or lack of support for her husband. But in view of the rift that beset their marriage later, it is worth pausing to consider exactly what future Maggie thought she was accepting.

      Maggie must have known of Lloyd George’s ambition to become a Member of Parliament, for as we have seen, he briefly considered becoming a candidate in the 1886 election. This does not necessarily mean, though, that she understood what being the wife of an MP involved. Maggie Owen led a sheltered life at Mynydd Ednyfed, and her knowledge of politics was filtered through either her father or her fiancé, neither of whom was very keen to talk to her about such matters. She could not have known much about what being married to an MP was like. Furthermore, the nature of the job itself was changing at that very point in history, with MPs who regarded their parliamentary roles as status-enhancing, albeit unpaid, sinecures giving way to a more professional political class.

      In 1887 that change was only beginning to show in North Wales, and local MPs had hitherto managed to keep a fairly constant presence in Caernarvonshire as well as to carry out their parliamentary duties. Surely it was reasonable for Maggie Owen to assume that she would continue to live in Criccieth while her husband pursued his ambition and ‘got on’ in Westminster? There is no evidence in their letters that they ever discussed the details of their future life, or that she ever gave him an undertaking that she would leave Criccieth for London. Also, if Maggie failed to anticipate how high her husband would climb, she was not alone, since his eventual success was unprecedented. If in the full flush of her first serious love affair