Betsy established an unvarying routine: Monday was washing day, Thursday was baking day. Chores and social obligations filled the other four working days of the week. Sunday was reserved for three chapel services, with a three-mile round trip to each one. This might have seemed like an additional chore to a less devout person, but it was Betsy’s main comfort in a life of unrelenting hard work. She gave no sign that she ever considered remarrying. Perhaps the strength of her feelings for her late husband prohibited it. In any case, there were not many eligible men in the village at a time when ambitious young men headed for towns or ports to earn a living.
Betsy spent her forties raising three children, keeping house for her brother, and thanking God that she was not completely alone in the world. She had matured into a kind, sympathetic and attractive woman, rather small, according to her elder son, but with a good figure and a soft, sweet voice.2 ‘She was a fine character,’ he wrote in a memoir, ‘—gentle, unselfish and courageous. She never complained and never spoke of her struggles. It was not till long after that her children fully appreciated how much they owed to her, and how fine her spirit had been in the hard task of bringing up her fatherless family.’3 Her widowhood had left its mark, and although Betsy could sometimes enjoy a joke, she was a serious woman. She was also proud, refusing to let her sons join their friends in weed-picking for sixpence a time. Rebecca had taught her to be a disciplined housekeeper, a ‘mistress of method’ in the home, a good cook and generous in giving hospitality.4 She allowed herself few pleasures, but one exception was her fondness for flowers. She grew a rose vine to cover the front of the house. Its flowers bloomed in a splendid display through the summer months, and it was not unusual for the family to overhear strangers on the road outside exclaiming at their beauty.
Betsy inherited Rebecca’s independence of spirit, if not her strength of character, and her gentle demeanour masked a strong adherence to her parents’ beliefs and values. She was proud to be part of the same Welsh-speaking, chapel-going class. The ladies of Trefan, the nearby estate, were often driven past Betsy’s door by their uniformed coachman, but Betsy did not envy them, nor did she feel inferior, and she made sure that her children took pride in their position in life too. When they were older, David and William were both offered positions as pupil-teachers in their school, one of the few ways a bright village lad could get on in the world and escape a life of manual labour. But the offer carried a sting in its tail. Because the school was sponsored by the Anglican Church, pupil-teachers were required to join the Church and renounce their nonconformism, a condition that most, willingly or under duress, fulfilled. When the idea was discussed in Highgate, Betsy exclaimed that she would rather see her boys growing up to break stones on the roadside than turn their backs on the little chapel at Pen-y-Maes. The issue was never broached again.
In common with other nonconformists of the period Betsy was a firm follower of the temperance movement, and regarded alcoholic drink as an evil influence on society. Richard Lloyd was of the same view, although, with characteristic modesty, he rarely spoke his mind on the matter or criticised others. His influence locally was such, however, that many years later, when he was helping out at his nephews’ law practice in Criccieth, the firm’s landlady was obliged to evict them. She reluctantly revealed that the public house opposite had complained that thirsty customers were afraid to enter by the front door in case Richard Lloyd spied them through the window of his office. Betsy and Richard’s influence was so strong on Lloyd George that he never set foot in a public house until adulthood, and although he drank wine and whisky in moderation in later life, he hated drunkenness, and regarded with contempt anyone who drank to excess. With Betsy though, principle would not stand in the way of kindness, and she would invite the village drunk, William Griffith, into the house to sober up by the fire before sending him home.
The shoemaking business and Betsy’s savings provided enough of an income for the family to live on. They were certainly not well off, but the children did not want for anything either. ‘Comfortable, but thrifty and pinched’ was Lloyd George’s description of Highgate.5 The children never had both butter and jam on their bread—it was one or the other—and the great treat on Sundays was half an egg each at breakfast. The family only felt the sting of real hardship after moving to Criccieth in 1880, when Richard had to give up the shoemaking business and the financial demands of giving the boys a good start in the world increased. At Highgate, Betsy’s careful husbandry made sure that there was enough to go around. She would spend hours mending the children’s clothes or altering her elder son’s cast-offs for William. Her pride demanded that her children were well dressed, and she was rewarded when Mrs Evans, the well-born wife of the local schoolmaster, remarked that ‘William George and his brother are the best-dressed children in school.’6
Even in these years, however, the family encountered hard times when Betsy’s investment income fluctuated or the shoemaking business dipped. These difficulties were enough to drive the already highlystrung Betsy to despair. Her asthmatic attacks were often severe, terrifying her young children, who watched helplessly as their mother struggled for breath. Richard knelt by her side rubbing her hand and muttering soothing words, but comfort came only in the form of religion. Once, Betsy was in tears after failing to make ends meet, when she caught sight of an article in a periodical. The transformation that came over her face was so striking that more than half a century later, William set out to see what it contained. The article, by one D. Morris, was headed ‘The Bible, the Destitute and the Widow’, and listed thirty passages from the Bible offering hope and comfort to those in Betsy’s situation. Her faith had come to her rescue yet again.
Betsy’s strength and vitality were slowly sapped by years of raising children under the constant shadow of financial hardship. She was never a strong woman, and her health held out just long enough for her to see her family grow to maturity. The children were in their teens before she became too ill to carry on. From then on the main responsibility for guiding her children was passed to Richard Lloyd, who, fortunately, was temperamentally and intellectually ideally suited to the task. Richard Lloyd was a stern taskmaster who earned his nephews’ obedience and respect, but like many men of the time, he left the task of disciplining the children to Betsy. She could never bring herself to punish David Lloyd. She spoiled him: he was never made to dress himself or even find his own socks, something that had ‘a marked effect’ on him in later life, according to his mistress.7 He grew to rely on his mother’s approval and unconditional love, and took an interest in every detail of her daily life even when he was married and living largely in London. Lloyd George’s last letter to her, two days before she died in 1896, reveals his anxious concern:
My dearest Mother,
…What you ought to do as long as the heat lasts is to take absolute rest…You must not try to be housekeeper, housemaid, cook and maid of all work in one. Just you sit down in the coolest room of the house and boss the lot of them. Give orders. I know they will all be pleased to obey and if they do not just you give them that tongue a bit of which your eldest son has inherited from you…Go out in the cool of the evening but don’t walk in this hot weather. It is more than anyone can do with any comfort. Let them get you a bathchair with Woodhart or someone else to wheel it. The approach to [the house] is so steep that it is most tiring for anyone, even in the best of weathers to walk it. You should not do so on any account as long as this terrible heat lasts. I am sure William will see to that…
It is a good