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Monday 1 December 2008

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

Goats and donkeys

Sam Leith on the new book from Ffion Hague

He made this aspect of his character — with candour that would be admirable had it not an edge of bullying — plain to Maggie even during their courtship. ‘My supreme idea is to get on,’ he wrote to her. ‘To this idea I shall sacrifice everything — except I trust honesty. I am prepared to thrust even love itself under the wheels of my Juggernaut, if it obstructs the way.’

Hague writes elsewhere: ‘Even in the first ardent throes of love, Lloyd George was adamant that no statesman had a right to sacrifice a great cause for his private happiness.’ Where the noble altruism of setting a ‘great cause’ over your private happiness shades into the selfishness of setting personal ambition over your duty to your family is a matter for debate. Hague inclines to the kinder interpretation.

It is clear that both Frances and Maggie were loved sincerely by Lloyd George, and that both served his ambition. But Hague’s book reflects what was evidently Lloyd George’s own outlook — that the women were merely planets circling a star. Truly bizarre, and indicative, was the suttee-style pact he struck with Frances, making her promise to kill herself when he died. (The pact was not reciprocal, naturally, and Frances fortunately thought better of it when it came to the crunch.)

What was in it for these two women? They luxuriated in the megawatt beam of his charisma. They contributed to his extraordinary political achievements and both enjoyed considerable social recognition (one in Wales, one in London’s high society). They were both barraged with wonderfully affectionate correspondence — to Maggie at Criccieth: ‘Actually left the house at 9:30 — do you think that would have happened had my round little Margaret been by my side to tumble and towzle about?’

Then, more prosaic, there’s the always-lively A. J. Sylvester’s diary entry after seeing Lloyd George get out of the bath:

There he stood as naked as when he was born with the biggest organ I have ever seen. It resembles a donkey’s more than anything else. It must be a sight for the God’s [sic] — or the women — in erection! No wonder they are always after him; and he after them!