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Lloyd George was something of a genius, a fact he first discovered as a school boy reading Euclid all by himself at the top of a great oak tree. The foster son of a pious Welsh shoemaker, he made himself a lawyer by heroic work, married the daughter of a local bigwig, and with gall and a pair of leather lungs, got himself elected to Parliament. On his road to success he took with him the fortunes, or at least the hopes, of the British lower middle classes. He buried the old aristocratic Whig liberalism that had lasted from Pitt to Jefferson to Asquith. His is the story familiar from the Gracchi to that of any modern demagogue who claims to emancipate a class and succeeds in emancipating himself, and if the oppressed get a few fringe benefits along the triumphal path, they are lucky.
In the case of Lloyd George, the fringe benefits were considerable; his pre-World War I National Insurance Bill was a keystone of the modern welfare state. He led the opposition to Britain's last modern war to which popular opposition was possible—and escaped with his life, disguised as a policeman, from a chauvinist mob in Manchester anxious to lynch the "pro-Boer." But he lived to lead Britain in the first great war of the masses, when not only the cause but also the leaders had to be popular.
Ironic Reproach. Neither Asquith nor Earl Grey could have handled a non-gentleman's war. Lloyd George could bet 100,000 lives on a shift in Cabinet strategy! For this sort of thing, a man needs toughness of mind and, perhaps, the cynicism that is the inevitable price of perjured idealism. Unquoted by his son is Lloyd George's masterpiece of political cynicism. Reproached for his part in the Versailles Treaty, Lloyd George made the memorable riposte: "I think I did as well as might be expected—seated as I was between Jesus Christ [Wilson] and Napoleon Bonaparte [Clemenceau]."
There is no bitterness in this biography, but there are some little ironies: "My father's menage was unusual by the standards of Western civilization," or "those who wish for happiness would be well advised not to choose a genius for a male parent." But it is clear that Richard richly enjoyed the experience of having Lloyd George for a father. He cannot be blamed if he took his father's pleasures rather sadly; he inclined to the Bible-reading rather than Bible-thumping strain in the family, and besides there was Mother to think of. On his last visit to Churt he asked his father whether he thought it right to make love to the wife of a cripple—Viscount Snowden, one of Father's ' parliamentary pals. Old Lloyd George started up to strike Richard with a stick but held back; father and son made their separate ways to the house and never met again. When Mother died, Lloyd George, at 80. married one of his rather dowdy ladies. None of the family attended the ceremony.