The Welsh Wizard

MY FATHER, LLOYD GEORGE (248 pp.)--Richard Lloyd George--Crown--($4).

Lloyd George, knew my father

Father knew Lloyd George

Lloyd George knew my father

Father knew Lloyd George

This haunting political anthem, whose lyrics are meant to be repeated interminably to the tune of Onward, Christian Soldiers, is a tribute to the blazing fame of Britain's World War I Prime Minister. To the public and the London press, he was "The Man Who Won the War," "The Welsh Wizard" and "The Prime Minister of Europe." In the hymn-singing valleys of his homeland, his prestige was greater than that of the Prince of Wales (whom he taught Welsh), and no one could aspire to electoral office without the blessing of David Lloyd George. Hence the song, devised as a political parody by a new generation of Labor militants to ridicule those riding his coattails.

Few Americans under their middle 50s can have any direct memory of Lloyd George in his heyday; curiosity about his character and career are minimal. Nevertheless, from the most unlikely source, Lloyd George has been accorded a highly engaging biography. Richard Lloyd George, Earl of Dwyfor, 72, has succeeded in a most difficult biographical enterprise --to write of a famous father without being a bore, a dupe of his fame or indulging in Oedipal iconoclasm. Part memoir, part history and part character study, the book is written with a_ wry acceptance of the comedy inherent in all consanguinity. Clearly, Richard Lloyd George was that rare wise child who knows his own father. F.D.R. and Churchill will be lucky indeed if they are as well served from within their families.

A Pasha in Surrey. Yet the book makes clear that Lloyd George, besides being a great man, also lived up to the English legend--that the Welsh are lechers and Bible bashers, musicians and bards, and, from Henry Tudor to Aneurin Bevan, have had a capacity for stirring up trouble. Lloyd George was a humbug ("a Bible-thumping pagan," is his son's phrase), something very close to a crook (the question of a political fund, most of which may have stuck in his own pocket, was never cleared up), and a sedulous seducer on a scale "unprecedented" in the history of British statesmanship.

When Lloyd George's career faded in the '20s, it was not just that history had passed him by in the mass move of the discontented vote from liberal radicalism to trade union socialism: Lloyd George was too busy being a pasha to be a pundit or a prophet. Fame, money, wit, his bounderish bounce and white-maned, apple-cheeked handsomeness proved catnip to women, and he maintained what his son calls a "modern seraglio" at Churt, his princely estate in Surrey. On one of his increasingly rare visits to the old man's home Richard answered the phone; the caller' wanted to speak to the mistress of the house. "Which one?" asked Richard.

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.

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