Maggie chose to believe that Lloyd George was a reluctant participant in the day trip, and blamed his friend for the episode:
I can’t bring myself to like S T Evans after what you told me. He is not teetotller (I am sure that is not spelt properly) for one thing &other things [i.e. his flirting] that you’ve told me, which I always dislike in men, that he must be rather fast. Perhaps I am mistaken. Tom Ellis [nonconformist MP for Merioneth] would be the man I should like to see you friendly with. I don’t think there would be any danger of your being any the worse for being in his company. I am not so sure about STE.
Her idea of a well-spent Sunday was not at all the kind that appealed to Lloyd George: ‘Buasai yn llawer gwell i ti fod yn Grassgarth hefo Davies yn cadw cwmpeini iddo fe. Gallset neud dy speech tra buasai Davies yn y capel ond iti fynd yno hefo fo unwaith’ (It would be far better for you to be at Grassgarth with Davies* keeping him company. You could prepare your speech while Davies was in Chapel, if you only went with him once).11 Maggie’s outburst did not change her husband’s behaviour, but it did make him more careful to conceal his pleasure trips from her.
Lloyd George’s entry into the world of national politics took place during a period of great change. Irish Home Rule was dominating the political headlines, supporters of female suffrage were beginning to attract attention to their cause, and demographic and social changes in densely populated industrial areas were leading inexorably to the formation of a new political force as the Independent Labour Party was formed in 1893 under the chairmanship of Keir Hardie. Simultaneously, the dominance of the landed gentry in Parliament was giving way to men with ‘new’ money or from the professions, although in 1890 the average Conservative MP still had roughly twice the personal income of the average Liberal Member. The House of Commons reflected the habits and lifestyle of the aristocracy, creating a potentially hostile and threatening atmosphere to a working-class MP. But it was not intimidating to Lloyd George. He soon grasped the ways of the House, taking to it as naturally as if he had been born to it.
The change of character in the membership of the House meant that in the general election of 1892, Lloyd George was joined by more men of similar backgrounds. He himself increased his majority from the wafer-thin eighteen votes of the by-election two years previously to 196, despite facing the well-liked Tory candidate Sir John Puleston, Constable of Caernarvon Castle and veteran of the American Civil War. Of the thirty-four Welsh Members returned, thirty-one were Liberals, and over twenty were Welsh-born. Significantly, the group contained six village-school-educated men, fourteen lawyers, fourteen businessmen and twenty-two nonconformists. The Liberals, led by Gladstone, were not so successful elsewhere, and with a reduced Liberal majority of only forty, if they banded together as a group the Welsh Members to some extent held the balance of power. They were not slow to take advantage of the fact. Courted by the government, the Welsh MPs were determined to secure the great prize: a Bill for the disestablishment of the Welsh Church which would end the state-maintained dominance of the Anglican Church in Wales and give religious equality—at last—to nonconformists.
Maggie was not politically aware when she married, but she could see that these were important battles, and that her husband’s participation in Westminster politics at this time was crucial to the future of her own country, denomination and way of life. She could not see though why he had to be away from her when Parliament was not in session. He in turn could not understand why she did not want to follow him to London to look after him there.
Lloyd George wanted his family with him in London—‘I don’t know what I would give now for an hour of your company. It would scatter all the gloom &make all the room so cheerful,’ he wrote in June 189012—but the unpleasant reality was that he could not afford to set up a second household on his income. At first he stayed in Acton with the Davies family, who became close friends and welcomed Maggie whenever she could visit London. But she now had two children under two years old to take care of, and also had plenty to occupy her at home, packing up at Mynydd Ednyfed and preparing to move to the new house in December 1890. It would have been difficult for her to spend more time in London even if the succession of temporary digs had been satisfactory, and they clearly were not.
The Lloyd Georges’ first home in London was a set of rooms in Verulam Buildings, Gray’s Inn, which they took on a lease of £70 (£6,147 at today’s values) a year early in 1891. The rooms were serviced, and there was a porter at the gate and two housekeepers on the premises, but the lease was surrendered at the end of the 1892 parliamentary session. That winter they took a six-month lease on a set of rooms at 5 Essex Court in the Temple, and in late autumn 1893 Lloyd George took a flat, No. 30 Palace Mansions in Addison Road, Kensington, for £90 a year which was to be their London home for six years. For the most part, however, Maggie stayed in Criccieth, resigning herself to the long absences that came to characterise her relationship with her husband at this time.
There has been much speculation about Maggie’s attitude towards living in London. Her visits there were so infrequent during 1894, when she was expecting their fourth child, that Lloyd George arranged for the flat to be let for six months, and it was again sub-let in 1896, when she was pregnant a fifth time (the pregnancy ended in a miscarriage). It does not appear that she was in London very often during the remainder of 1896, in 1897 (although she was there when she suffered another miscarriage in the spring) or 1898, until, finally, with the marriage at crisis point, she consented to let their Criccieth home and move to a family house near Wandsworth Common. Even then she delayed making the move for as long as possible.
The overwhelming consensus among Lloyd George’s biographers is that Maggie simply preferred Criccieth to London. In this way, the blame for the difficulties in their marriage has been divided between the philandering husband and the absent wife. The evidence, though, strongly suggests that, her preference apart, Maggie’s decision not to join Lloyd George in London at the beginning of his parliamentary career was based on practical considerations. After all, when the children were older she did—albeit reluctantly—move to London, and she was mostly at her husband’s side through his years as Chancellor and Prime Minister.
The conventional view is largely based on Lloyd George’s pleas in his letters home for Maggie to join him, although the possibility exists that he was exaggerating his loneliness to divert attention from his active socialising in her absence. Nevertheless, the love between him and Maggie was strong, and he was clearly anxious to have his family with him more often during these early years. This was the first time in his life that he had had to fend for himself without women to take care of his needs, and he did not enjoy it. He was not temperamentally equipped to look after himself. He had been spoiled as a child by the devoted Betsy and Polly, and cared for latterly by the servants at Mynydd Ednyfed. For the pampered young man, who to the end of his life was never able to tie his own shoelaces, it was a shock to the system to come home to an empty room with no food to eat and no clean collars for his shirts. In some ways, as we shall see, his solitary existence in London suited him, and he made the most of the opportunity to enjoy his new social circle, but the loneliness was not entirely faked, and his domestic helplessness was a real problem.
Lloyd George was not a systematic man, especially when it came to correspondence. Despite writing regularly and frequently to Maggie, William George and Uncle Lloyd, he never kept track of the letters he received, and the majority of theirs to him have been lost. Consequently, Maggie’s views on living in London and her reasons for her undisguised preference for Criccieth have not received similar attention.
There are many facts that would have affected her decision. Travel between Criccieth and London involved an uncomfortable and expensive nine-hour train journey via Bangor, Shrewsbury and Crewe. Money was desperately short, and when Lloyd George was elected, the twenty-three-year-old Maggie had a baby of fourteen months with another on the way. When Mair Eluned was born the practical difficulties doubled. It was far from