The Prime Minister. Harold Spender
George who suddenly breaks the silence with a strident “I believe,” and all but two or three “infant” Die-hards join in the recital that followed. The schoolmaster turns to the class with a flush of pleasure; the rector smiles—“good boys”—the squire nods approvingly; and the scene ends as suddenly as it began.
So much for the Catechism revolt. The second revolt arose over the Church’s claim to “confirm.”[12]
It was little William Williams, one of David’s intimates, who had been selected as a capture for the Bishop. His father, a Calvinistic Methodist, but with a kindly heart for the great, had surrendered the lad to the rector. William had been duly prepared and instructed. Confirmation day had arrived. William Williams, shining with soap, smart in his best clothes, was already on the road—walking to school to join the church boys. There the little catechumens, all duly marshalled, were waiting to be marched off to the church.
But on the way to school it was fated that William Williams should meet David Lloyd George. Seeing his friend so smart, David naturally asked what he was going to do. Williams told him. David’s eyes flashed; his voice rang out. He argued; he persuaded; he urged. Not that! Not that! His winged words went home. In a few moments William Williams, aged fourteen, felt thoroughly ashamed of himself. His best clothes and his clean collar became garments of shame. He was willing to follow David anywhere.
The two boys managed to get out into the school-yard; and there, in the twinkling of an eye, they were over the wall. They hid behind the hedge. In a few moments out came the schoolmaster, hurried and eager; he could see no one in sight. He blew his whistle once, twice, and yet again. There was no reply. Time pressed. The Bishop could not be kept waiting. There was nothing for it but to go back and fetch the others.
So David and William Williams stood and watched while the little procession of children, with their nicely washed faces, walked across the school-yard to the church.
Then, when all had passed by, out came the two rebels. Without a pause they jumped over the wall, leapt into the road, and made for Richard Lloyd’s workshop. Instantly, when he had heard their story, the bootmaker dropped his last and patted the boys on the back. “Well done, my boys!” he cried; “well done!”
I will suggest to any Anglican reader that he should, for the moment, try to look at the situation from the point of view of his Nonconformist neighbour. Suppose that he, an Anglican parent, were obliged by law to send his boy to a Baptist School because no other school existed in his village. Suppose then that the Baptist minister took advantage of this situation to baptize the boy up to the neck in the village stream. What would the Anglican parent do? Why, probably something much more violent than either uncle Lloyd or nephew David.
Yet the spirit of rebellion is rare, and the act is slow. Doubtless there were other boys in that school whose hearts waxed hot within them, and other parents whose blood boiled. But they did nothing. Where David Lloyd George differed from the other boys, and his uncle from the other parents and guardians, was just here—that they acted while the others merely raged. That is the startling difference.
They possessed that particular quality which explodes in deeds. There it was already—this care thing called courage, which was, in process of time, to become the driving-wheel of the whole machine.
It is not to be thought that a boy thus endowed was to prove a pattern boy in all directions. David was sound enough at heart; but he was certainly not a saint. He was not born with a halo round his curly head. In that little village he was often the leader of enterprises of pith and moment. He was not without suspicions of piracy. “It’s that David Lloyd George,” was the sure comment of the village mother when she found her fences down. Wherever those two ribbons were seen flying in the wind, you might be sure that the other boys were not far behind. You would scent mischief in the tainted breeze. There was indeed much to be done. There were fish to be caught; rabbits to be snared; dogs to be trained. There was even—alas!—at one time a privy “cache” in the woods where pipes and tobacco were stored to be fearfully tested on uncertain stomachs.
No, certainly David was no model of the boyish proprieties; no candidate for a stucco niche. He was already a Robin Hood of the woods, an adventurer of that winding, brawling stream. He led others into the adventures with him; for he was already gregarious to the finger-tips. He would draw along with him his more cautious brother; and, somehow, it always seemed to be the brother who bore the weight of the trouble that followed.
Not that David ever shirked the penalties of his youthful sins. He was ever ready to “face the music.” He would bravely stand before his uncle in his sterner moods; and many an explosive of argument and reproof had to be expended on his well-entrenched defences.
Not that his uncle ever took up that relentless attitude which drives so many children faster on the downward path. He remembered the text—“Whom He loveth He chasteneth,” or, as it has been rewritten, “lick ’im and love ’im.” But Richard Lloyd never let the stripes blot out the love. He always believed in this boy David. That was the real secret of the uncle’s influence. Beneath the rough, dusty ore he already saw the gleaming gold.
There were indeed some rare features about this boy’s character. His early companions testify to some features that still shine in memory. “He was the most kind-hearted boy I ever met,” said one who was an inseparable. “If he ever got a penny he would buy his sweets, and then divide up the whole among the other boys.” He was very fond of animals—a glorious virtue in the young. There was always a dog in his train—and a dog, being ever young, loves youth and mischief. Then David was ever full of pity for the weak. Pity and audacity met in his nature. They made him at school, as in after-life, a terror to the bully and a trial to the boaster.
His youthful companions cannot remember that he was notably ambitious. But he was from early days a lover of books; and that often held in leash his passion for adventure. He rarely, for instance, played truant from school. There is one historic dawn, still standing out in red letters in the memory of his friends. On that morning the school-bell sounded to deaf ears; all that day those spirits from prison scampered by the river-side testing a new dog.[13] The deed was never repeated. That day of glowing delight was probably burnt into his memory by one of those reprimands from an uncle whose words cut deeper than another’s whips.
There is, indeed, an epic story of a holiday hunt of a hare down in the Aberkin farm between the village and the sea. The boys followed the dogs and the dogs went through the river, but an old ganger on the railway refused to allow the boys to cross the bridge. But David was not to be daunted. “Come on, boys!” he cried; and straight through the river he went almost up to his shoulders!
As the years went on he became more serious. He conceived the idea of going to see the world. He spent weeks with maps and made a plan of a journey. Boys will do such things, and the difficulty generally comes when the tickets have to be bought. That was where David Lloyd George’s plan broke down. But if he could not wander in the body, he could at any rate travel in the spirit. He read more and more as the years went on. After twelve, remaining on at school after his friends, he became rather a lonely boy. At that time he would often go off with a book into the woods; and he acquired the habit of climbing a tree and there reading for hours in some kindly fork of the branches far away from his romping friends.
There, alone in the woods, his mind formed; and the shadowy whims of youth—perhaps influenced, like Wordsworth’s, by the surrounding mountains and sea—steeled into firmer stuff. When he was a very small boy he would say, boy-like, to his uncle, “I am going to be a giant, like that tree.” This infantile yearning after something larger than his natal fate seemed to grow upon him. A sense of power seemed to be working within him. Strange, when you consider the cramping conditions of his life. Here was a boy living in a little cottage in a remote Welsh village; talking a despised language; an obscure member of a race scoffed at by the powerful of this earth. He had already proclaimed himself faithful to a religion contemned by all who wished to rise in life. He was surrounded by a peasantry