David Lloyd George MP took his seat on budget day, 17 April 1890, and his wife added the newspaper reports to her scrapbook:
It was a striking sight, the closely packed benches, the Chancellor of the Exchequer [George Goschen] with many little volumes of notes, bracing himself up for a grand effort; while immediately below the venerable figure of Lord Cottesloe stood the young M.P. for the Caernarvonshire Boroughs, nearly seventy years his junior, pale with excitement and the thoughts of the career opening before him.2
Maggie did not accompany her husband to London: amid the excitement following the election, Lloyd George had no time to find accommodation, and when he was in the capital he stayed with Criccieth friends or at the National Liberal Club, according to his circumstances. But she was not far from his thoughts, and he took the first possible opportunity to write to her, during the budget speech itself. His pride and sense of achievement in getting into Parliament, the ‘region of his future domain’, is tangible: ‘This is the first letter which I write as an introduced member of the House of Commons and I dedicate it to my little darling. I snatch a few minutes during the delivery of Goschen’s budget to write her. I was introduced amid very enthusiastic cheers on the Liberal side.’3 The next day, he wrote to his brother with the bemusement of a new Member of Parliament: ‘My first division last night. I voted against Bi-metallism, but I couldn’t tell you why.’4
As Lloyd George was finding his feet at Westminster, Maggie was wondering how they would manage now that her husband was an unsalaried MP with little or no time to spend on building his business. Unlike Lloyd George, who was not practical by nature, both she and William George could see the financial difficulty his election had placed them in as a family, and William’s diary betrays the sleepless nights the situation caused him: ‘For the village lad to have beaten the parish country squire is a (great) honour. Two practical questions present themselves: (a) How is D to live there? (b) How am I to live down here?’5
The law practice, now mainly run by William George, would have to provide for all: Lloyd George, Maggie and their growing family as well as Uncle Lloyd, Betsy and Polly. The firm was doing reasonably well as a result of some hard work by William, and had moved to premises in Porthmadoc. Uncle Lloyd helped out as an office clerk, but the family’s income would be spread thinly for some years to come. As late as 1894, William George recorded in his diary that his supper consisted of a cupful of hot water with some bread and butter. The first of many requests for financial help came from London when Maggie paid her husband a visit:
Dei wished me to ask you to send him £5 by return please. He has been using some of my money. If he doesn’t get it your dear sister can’t return home on Saturday without leaving her husband quite penniless in this great city…He also wants you to send him a few blank cheques. For goodness sake don’t send him many. They are such easy things to fill in and then the slashing signature of D. Lloyd George put to them—which I fear you would not be too glad to see.6
Maggie was as careful with money as Lloyd George was extravagant. Every penny was precious, and she formed money-saving habits that remained with her for life. Unfairly perhaps, they gave her a reputation for being tight-fisted. In her defence, she never enjoyed spending money on herself, but even Polly, who was perfectly aware of their financial situation, commented on her meanness to William George while on a visit to London in 1891:
You will be anxious perhaps to know whether your P.O’s came to hand safely. I may say that they are in the strictest sense of the word. Mag pounced upon them directly &no one has seen a scrap of them since or ever will…A rare one for keeping money is my little sister-in-law. She is a very kind little hostess and we get on very nicely together, it is when it comes to spending that she shows her miserliness, she will borrow a penny to pay the tram sooner than pay for you herself.7
During the first few weeks after his election, Lloyd George immersed himself in national politics and London life. He was anxious to find a place to live so that Maggie could join him, and did not seem to see the impracticality of this plan. In June 1890 he entreated her to make the eighteen-hour round trip from Criccieth by train so that they could spend Sunday house-hunting—not a prospect that would entice many women who were seven months pregnant.8 His pleading was all the more extraordinary because Maggie’s second pregnancy had not been straightforward. Her letters to Lloyd George, though trying to reassure him, are full of fear that she might lose the baby: ‘This afternoon we are going to Dwyfor Villa to tea, the walk will do me good if I do it slowly &rest at Criccieth. I’m going and coming back. Much more good than a drive that shakes me so much.’ And again: ‘I don’t feel very well today don’t be alarmed if you find an unease in the family when you come down. I am in good spirits. Mag.’9
Lloyd George was worried, and despite his efforts to cheer her up, Maggie was clearly having a hard time. She wrote:
I am longing dreadfully after you today. After being home for a flying visit you seem to have gone from my sight without hardly having seen you, &it may seem very silly on my part but I go to every room in the house today to find a trace of your having been occupying it, &I find but little traces of you, but when I do I relieve myself in tears, but I shall be alright when I get a letter tomorrow morning.
…send me a loving letter tomorrow &I shall be happy &make haste home on Saturday if you cant come before. I feel that I must see you once more before I am taken ill.10
There was great joy when Mair Eluned Lloyd George was born without complication on 2 August 1890, although the proud father was not at home to witness the event. He was told of the birth of his first daughter by his brother in a telegram, and caught the mail train to Criccieth for a flying visit before returning to London.
Lloyd George naturally wanted to participate in full in his first parliamentary session, but when the House rose in mid-August his family expected him to return to Criccieth to nurture his constituency, to help his brother with the law practice, and to spend time with his wife and new baby. Maggie was clearly looking forward to having her husband back, but he had other ideas: to Lloyd George politics was a full-time occupation, and when Parliament was not sitting he gave speeches across the country and travelled abroad with his political friends, a fact that his wife and brother eventually had to accept.
This was hard for Maggie. She could not see the attraction of London for her husband, and resented the time he spent there when he could be with his family. On one occasion soon after Mair’s birth Lloyd George announced that he was staying in London for the weekend to prepare a speech instead of coming home. Maggie had been looking forward to a visit, and her disappointment was sharpened when he mentioned casually that he had been distracted from his work by his friend and fellow Welsh Liberal MP, S.T. Evans, who she felt was a bad influence on him. On the Sunday, the two had taken a bus to Kew Gardens and had failed to attend chapel. Maggie was incensed:
Well I don’t approve of the way you spent your Sunday &I am sure by the way my old Dafydd put it that he knows I don’t. Thanks to you all the same for being honest in telling your Maggie. Tell her everything will you always never keep anything from her. If you were at home now &wanted to make a speech &your old Mag asked you to come with her to Chapel for 2 hours you would at once say well I can’t come I can’t go to such