Twenty-nine years later (1917) a daughter of these simple spousals was married with the same simplicity in a little Baptist chapel in London. Only the welling, pressing crowd outside the chapel showed that the man who stood by the pulpit giving away his daughter was Prime Minister of England. One wedding was as simple as the other.
When they returned to Criccieth from their brief honeymoon, Mr. and Mrs. Lloyd George settled down at first at Mynydd Ednyfed, in the farmhouse of the Owens, and there they spent a few happy years under her parents’ roof. There the elder children were born.
It was soon clear that the marriage was not going to bring any abatement of courageous action on the part of the young husband. Mrs. Lloyd George was not the sort of wife who encourages her husband to uxorious ease. She was, and always has been, on the side of daring. She faces danger with a simplicity which is disarming.
One night, for instance, there was to be held at Criccieth a meeting of the kind known as “Church Defence”; a species of gathering not free from offence to the people of Wales. David was suffering from a mild attack of tonsillitis. There seemed every reason why he should not go to the meeting.
But the people of Carnarvonshire had had to stand a good deal of this sort of thing; and David’s blood was up. He wanted to go. Would his young wife mind? She? “Why not go?” she said.
So he went off, closely muffled up by a wife who was tender as well as brave.
He stepped into the meeting with one definite object. It was his deliberate intention to stop a practice that was growing into a scandal. It had become a habit in these gatherings to fend off the eager questionings of militant Nonconformity by disingenuous postponement. It is a method well known to the tricksters of public life. “Questions? Oh! yes, as many as you like! Only it is more convenient to answer them at the close of the meeting!” Then at the close—“So sorry! But our friend here has to catch a train—his invaluable time—” We all know this sort of thing.
But at the opening of this particular meeting—an important meeting, to be addressed by a very special Church advocate—there arose the young David Lloyd George, muffled but insistent. Yes, he wanted to ask some questions. No, he would rather ask them now. In fact, he intended to ask them now. So he stood, pale to the lips, but unyielding.