MR LLOYD GEORGE

Otago Witness, Issue 3590, 2 January 1923, Page 22

MR LLOYD GEORGE

STORY OF HIS EARLIER DAYS. In the year 1863 a Welsh school master and his wife left their beloved motherland for England. Here in the same year was barn to them in Manchester a son, whom they named David Lloyd George, destined to become Prime Minister of Great Britain, and one of the greatest personalities of the age. One of the earliest influences in the life of Mr Lloyd George and his people was the Rev. Dr Martineau, manager of the Hope Street School, in Manchester, where the Prime Minister’s father was a master. The family still cherish several memorials of the great divine’s friendship. Two years later the Welsh school master died in Wales, leaving his wife, the daughter of a Welsh Baptist minister, to bring up the children. She was a fine character—" gentle, unselfish, and courageous.” Mr Lloyd George often eays, when speaking of his mother: ” She never complained of her struggles; it was not until long after that her children fully appreciated how much they owed her. and how fine her spirit had been in the hard task of bringing up her fatherless family. "She took little interest outside her family, knew nothing of polities, but was profoundly stirred by religious questions.” After her husband’s death Mrs Lloyd George went to the home of her brother at Llanystnmdwy, South Carnarvon. It was a typical Welsh village, set in an amphitheatre of hills and woods, with sea in the near distance —picturesque, beautiful, and inspiring. The Prime Minister cherishes mixed memories of the village church school, but it is still his pride that he was "especially strong” in the Church catechism, usually obtaining first place in this branch of the curriculum. “All right,” was the verdict on his own teacher, but the managers of the school “ varied according to temperament ” The promising young pupil indicated his future strength of character by organising a successful boycott of examination questions which were “ insulting to the religious faith of the parents of his school mates.” The school’s defects were remedied at the shoemaking shop of his uncle, who helped him to pursue Ills studies at home. This shop was the rendezvous for the village, the centre

of gossip, of disputation, of all the conflict of religious and political creeds. The shoemaker, a man of mild and broad temper, acted as mediator among the combatants when conflict grew too warm. He never married, and set himself the task of educating the children of his sister as a sacred and supreme duty. To that task he gave his time, his energy, and his money. Tile kindness of the little Welsh shoemaker often comes back to the mind of the British Prime Minister to-day, bringing whimsical memories of a home, “comfortable, yet thrifty and pinched, where the bread was home-made, fresh meat a rarity, and the greatest luxury the Sunday morning egg divided between two children.” "But it fairly succeeded,” is how Mr Lloyd George speaks gleefully of the method to-clay. At the age of 14 Mi Lloyd George began his meteoric career by passing the preliminary examination to enter a lawyer’s office, and at 16 he was articled in Portmadoc. COSTLY ROBES. It was no easy matter under the circum stances for him to thus start studying law. The £BO to £IOO he had to pay for his articles, the money for the Government stamps, the heavy price of law books, the expense of the journey to Liverpool for the preliminary examination, and the still greater cost of the journey to London for the final examination, mounted up to what was to him then a tremendous sum. His apprenticeship lasted five and a-half years, during which time he lived with a lonely old couple. A lawyer in Wales cannot “get audlience” unless he appear in robes. "These cost three guineas,” Mr Lloyd George is wont to observe ruefully, "a sum which I could only raise then after one or two cases.” It is interesting to note that after a complicated equity case—his first—- in which no fewer than 11 lawyers were employed, Mr Lloyd George had his office at Criccieth, then and now his home. His day began at 7.30 a.m. How often does fame hinge on what at first appears to be trifles! Had it not been for what was popularly known as the Llanfrothan burial case Mr Lloyd George might to-day—or at least, for many years—have been still a country lawyer. A quarryman, who was a Dissenter, made a dying request that he should be buried by the side of a much-loved daughter, but in a moment of pique the local vicar had the body interred in a spot “bleak and sinister, in which were buried the bodies of the unknown dlrowned that were washed up from the sea in this region of shipwrecks, of suicides, and of the few Jews who died in the district.” This deliberate flouting of the Burials Act, passed by the late Mr Osborne Morgan, excited public passion, and a strong protest was made. “Force the churchyard gates,” was the advice Mr Lloyd George gave to the indignant townsfolk, who promptly acted upon it. By the time the long litigation which followed had come to an end his name was known throughout the principality. This success led to his selection to contest the Carnarvon boroughs in 1889, and in April the following year he was returned for the first time.