The Prime Minister. Harold Spender
neighbours, returned on December 8th with the first flush of achievement on his cheek.
Nowhere was there a happier Christmas in that year of 1877 than at “Highgate.”
There was only one man as happy as the uncle and the mother—and that was the village schoolmaster. It was a proud day when he could solemnly record the fact of David’s passing in the Log Book of the Llanystumdwy National School.
[12] Implying a belief in Infant Baptism, “Confirmation” is regarded as inconsistent with the creed of the Baptists.
[13] “Bismarck”—a dog snatched from the streets of Hamburg and brought home by a sailor from the village—a bold and unscrupulous poacher.
CHAPTER III
YOUTH
“Who, with a natural instinct to discern
What knowledge can perform, is diligent to learn;”
Wordsworth’s The Happy Warrior.
Portmadoc is a little provincial business town lying on the coast some five miles to the west of Criccieth in the very heart of Cardigan Bay. It stands at the mouth of the Glaslyn, one of those little mountain rivers which flow southward through wild valleys from the Snowdon range. The river broadens to a port at its mouth and the town spreads on both banks. A hundred years ago the land here was below high-water mark. It was redeemed by an enterprising man who has given his name to the town and the estate.[14] The old high-water mark can be seen far up the valley, and it is an actual fact that every building in Portmadoc itself stands on land snatched from the sea.
Here in Portmadoc, just east of the Town Hall, stood the office of Messrs. Breese, Jones, and Casson, the firm to which David Lloyd George was articled after he had passed his Preliminary Law Examination. There the square-built, airy chambers still stand. Here, in this building, young David Lloyd George, aged sixteen, took his seat at the window on one of those high stools where the clerks of to-day still sit; and doubtless the young David’s eyes sometimes glanced anxiously at the same old clock that still measures out the limits of work and play. The preliminaries of this articling took some time; but within six months—at the opening of 1879—David had been fully articled by his uncle as clerk to Mr. Casson, the junior partner.
Portmadoc itself stands in prim straight rows of slate-roofed houses built at right-angles to the long main street. The great thing about the town is that from every corner of its streets you can see the mighty mountains of Snowdon on the horizon. It was still under those Eagle Rocks that David’s life-work was to be carried on for the next few years.
It was no longer possible for him to live in the little cottage at Llanystumdwy, which was over seven miles from Portmadoc and two miles from Criccieth railway-station.
So it was arranged that the lad should spend the week at Portmadoc and go back to his uncle’s home at week-ends.
During the week he lodged with some good people whose children had gone out into the world[15] and who looked after him for several years as if he had been their own child. Like many another young Welshman he was also taken into the kindly fraternity of the chapel folk, who looked after him on behalf of his uncle. He soon began to find friends. On Wednesdays he would attend the little chapel; and he was especially fond of frequenting the little candle-making workshop behind the main street, where the workmen can still be seen ingeniously contriving the special illuminant candles for the slate quarries of North Wales. There, as in the smithy at Llanystumdwy, he found much congenial company for discussion and debate; for it was a significant fact that in youth David Lloyd George was always drawn to the places where men assemble and discuss their affairs.
Here was a youth at the age of sixteen taken out of his village and thrown into the larger turmoil of the world’s affairs. The solicitors’ firm to which he was articled was an important legal centre in Carnarvonshire. The solicitors were Clerks to the Petty Sessional Division, and Mr. Breese was also Clerk to the Lieutenant of the County, besides being the Liberal agent for Merionethshire. Finding that the youth was handy and smart, they soon began to use him as deputy in their various functions. So David found himself immersed into all the affairs of a great county, besides being in constant touch with the stirring life of a little port. The ships and sailors were ever coming and going, and all the murmur of larger interests flowed in from outside. There, in that little corner of Wales, they could constantly hear “the great wave which echoes round the world.”
From the vantage-post of his firm the boy could gradually gain an insight into the whole machinery of county administration.
In law, as in journalism, provincial experience is a far better school for a young man than that of London; for in the provinces work is less specialised, and the young clerk in a busy lawyer’s office has a chance of such varied work as his powers show him capable of. David Lloyd George, for instance, now found himself often called upon to undertake responsible tasks; to watch the interests of his firm in the Police Court or in the Quarter Session; to collect rates and taxes; to find his way through that complicated network of wire entanglements which British wisdom had thrown around the exercise of the suffrage. The canvassing work which he did for his firm in their capacity as Liberal agents stood him in very good stead later on which he had to do the same work for himself. It was during this period that he acquired, too, that intimate mastery of the details of rural rating with which he afterwards astonished the House of Commons. During the same years he achieved an insight into the surprising affairs of many county families. There is no surer way of finding out the secrets of the English land system than to look at them through the peep-holes of a good lawyer’s office.
No doubt the young Lloyd George lost much by being plunged so early in life into the urgencies of practical work. But he also gained. For it would have been difficult to devise a training more suitable for a coming statesman.
For a time the young man was absorbed by his new work; and, indeed, it was enough to take up his energy. David Lloyd George was from the beginning a keen lawyer. He was not content with practical experience; he read hard at the law; but in his case law did not take form in his mind as a fixed dead thing, but as a vital function of growth, with possibilities of perpetual change and reform.
Thus his apprenticeship began to feed and stimulate his instinctive interest in public affairs. His daily experience led him back at every turn into larger public interests and speculations. He had his week evenings free; and so gradually among the young men of Portmadoc he was led into that life of debate which has always been his very life-blood.
In 1880 his uncle, his mother, his brother, and his sister gave up the little cottage at Llanystumdwy and moved to “Morvin House” in Criccieth. Richard Lloyd and Mrs. William George, their mother, had now saved enough to enable Uncle Lloyd to give up the bootmaking; and his interest was now so much centred round David that he decided to make a move that would enable the youth to live at home. The little house where David was to live for the next ten years was just beneath the walls of that shattered Norman castle which crowns a precipitous cliff on the very edge of the sea. Now battered and worn by the assaults of man and the ravages of the ocean, that castle was once a strong link in that scheme of blockhouse fortresses which the Normans built to keep down North Wales. The ruins typify to-day the valour of this land of bards, and prove the power of a little nation over a mighty conqueror. At its strongest, the rule of the Normans extended very few feet beyond those castle walls. Now this fortress is in ruins;