Gilbert Lloyd

“ Gilbert Lloyd's friends--by which expression is meant the men of the set in which he regularly lived--saw little of Mrs. Lloyd, who was popularly supposed by them to be next to a nonentity, Lloyd being a man who "always had his own way." And indeed, so far as those words were ordinarily understood, Gilbert Lloyd's acquaintances were right. For months and months his comings and goings, his long absences, his conduct while at home, had been uncommented upon by Gertrude, save in the expression of her face and in the tone of her voice. ”

“ Gilbert Lloyd was a man with whom fear had never had much chance; and if he had yielded somewhat to its influence in the separation from his wife, it was because that influence had been largely supported by long-smouldering discontent, ennui, a coincidence of convenience and opportunity, and a deserved conviction that the full potency or Gertrude's will was at work in the matter. ”

“ The white-faced young man, entering fully into his new occupation, speedily deserved the encomiastic remarks which had been lavished upon him by his principal, and in a short time Mr. Lloyd was furnished with full information as to the personal appearance of the various visitors at the Bayswater villa, and of the friends whom Miss Lambert was in the habit of meeting away from her home. In both these categories Gilbert Lloyd found, as he had expected to find, a very accurate representation of Miles Challoner. ”

“ Jobson, thank you; Mrs. Lloyd is alive and very well."
"That's good hearing, I'm sure; and grown into a fine woman, I've no doubt. Those slight slips of girls with plenty of bone, when they fill out, improve wonderful;" and then Mrs. Jobson changed the subject, and launched into questions of domestic economy into which it is not necessary to follow her.
And the next day Gilbert Lloyd prepared to play the last trump-card which he found in his hand when he so carefully examined it on the night he left Baden. ”

“ Jobson was much pleased to hear this, for, with all her practicality, she had that vague fear of sudden death, and its necessitated coroner's inquest, which is so often found among people of her class. After her fashion, too, she really liked her lodger, for Gilbert Lloyd had always been civil and agreeable--had given little trouble, and paid his way with consistent punctuality; so she was glad to find him looking something like himself, and lightly treating what she had at first imagined would be a very serious matter. ”

“ Meeting him one day in the Potterrow, my lord had stopped in front of him: “Gib, ye eediot,” he had said, “what’s this I hear of you? Poalitics, poalitics, poalitics, weaver’s poalitics, is the way of it, I hear. If ye arena a’thegither dozened with eediocy, ye’ll gang your ways back to Cauldstaneslap, and ca’ your loom, and ca’ your loom, man!” And Gilbert had taken him at the word and returned, with an expedition almost to be called flight, to the house of his father. The clearest of his inheritance was that family gift of prayer of which Kirstie had boasted ”

“ He lived sparely, dressed quaintly, and set no store by money. A keen opponent of slavery, he renounced some property left to him by slave-holding brothers in Jamaica, and in his Cowbridge shop advertised for sale ‘East India sugar, uncontaminated by human gore.’ He was a unitarian and in warm sympathy with the early revolutionary movement in France, and thus came into contact with Priestley, Gilbert Wakefield, and David Williams. ”

“ Feel thirty years younger. Am transported as by a magical Eastern carpet to times when Don José rushed about the country, fluttering his Unauthorised Programme, bearding barons in their dens, lashing out at landlords, and unceremoniously digging dukes in the ribs, what time a pack of scandalised Tories barked furiously at his heels. Lloyd George is an able man, courageous to boot, endowed with gift of turning out sentences that dwell in the memory, delighting some hearers, rankling in hearts of others. ”

“ THE DINING-ROOM—HASSENDEAN.
From a Photo by Elliot & Fry.
So we settled down for our talk—and the story of a career which has been one long ascent to the very top rung of the ladder was told very modestly, with a constant genuinely kindly reference to others running through the whole. There is nothing self-assertive about Mr. Lloyd—he remains steadily the same all the time; watching for opportunities to praise his brother and sister artists, though it be at his own expense. When he speaks of others he endeavours to impress upon you that he means it ”

“ The monotony of the motion and the balm of the day began to intoxicate Gilbert. It is not easy to feel that fate is against one when the sun shines, the sky smiles, and the air is quivering with light and dancing shadow; harder still in the face of the blue, endless sea-spaces of the horizon; hard indeed when the horse before you conveys subtly to your hand that he is prepared to transport you, behind the beating pulse of his trot, to Eldorado—to the Isles of the Blessed—anywhere. ”

“ Gilbert, 'Woe to him that buildeth his house by iniquity, and his chambers by wrong. Shalt thou live because thou closest thyself in cedar?' And it went into my ears like fire, Mr. Gilbert, and into my heart like lead; and when the parson went on, 'Did not thy father eat and drink, and do judgment and justice? Then it was well with him,' I thought of good old Captain Will; and—I tell you, Mr. Gilbert, those negroes are on my soul from morning until night! We are all mighty grand now, and money comes in fast; but the Lord will require the blood of them at our hands yet. He will! ”

“ Lloyd, on Pemberton’s Hill, nearly opposite Concert Hall, and, subsequently, in Green Street, might be recognized, by the broad top of his chaise, and the unvarying moderation of the pace, at which he drove. He was tall and thin. His features were perfectly Brunonian. There seemed to be nothing antiphlogistic about him. When pleased, he was very gentlemanly, in his manner and carriage. He ever placed himself, with remarkable exactitude, in the very centre of his vehicle, bolt upright ”

“ He could not retort, in sheer humanity he could not flame out in petulance at the man whose life was to be placed in most hideous jeopardy in half an hour, balanced on the flicker of an eyelash, lost in a momentary quiver of the nerves. But Lloyd truly felt that his trials increased in a regular ratio with the demonstration of his capacity to sustain them. Sometimes he thought that a sudden sarcasm, an outbreak of the vexation that stirred him might over-awe Haxon, elicit his self-control, and serve really to steady his nerves. ”

“ Like a flash it came to Lloyd that he was free. Free to go “over the top” with his Company. Free to die like a true Briton fighting for his King and Country. A great gladness and warmth came over him. Carefully stepping over the body of the sentry, he started on a mad race down the ruined street of the village, amid the bursting shells, minding them not, dodging through or around hurrying platoons on their way to also go “over the top.” Coming to a communication trench he could not get through. It was blocked with laughing, cheering, and cursing soldiers. ”

“ The son of a country gentleman, well connected through his father’s three marriages with families of prominence, and taking young to adventure, he was early concerned in lively affairs. He was born about the year 1552, at Hayes, near Budlegh Salterton, South Devonshire, the second son of his father’s third wife, who was the widow of Otho Gilbert and the mother of Sir Humphrey Gilbert. Through his father’s first wife, who was Joan Drake, he was related to Sir Francis Drake. His own brother was Sir Carew Raleigh, who was concerned with him in Gilbert’s first expedition of 1578. ”

“ Disposing not only of his patrimony but also of the estates in Kent which he had through his wife, daughter of John Aucher of Ollerden, he fitted out an expedition which left Dartmouth on the 23rd of September 1578, and returned in May 1579, having accomplished nothing. In 1579 Gilbert aided the government in Ireland; and in 1583, after many struggles—illustrated by his appeal to Walsingham on the 11th of July 1582, for the payment of moneys due to him from government, and by his agreement with the Southampton venturers—he succeeded in equipping another fleet for “Western Planting.” ”

“ Gilbert remained silent and moody, a heavy frown wrinkling his brow.
“Perhaps all thoughts of poesy has left him since he has been among strangers,” continued the mother thoughtfully. “Ye ken he has been doin’ right weel in Irvine; and it’s only because the flax dresser’s shop has burned to the ground, and he canna work any more, that he decides to come hame to help us noo. Ye ken that, Gilbert.” She laid her hand in tender pleading on his sunburnt arm.
“He always shirked his work before,” replied Gilbert bitterly, “and nae doot he will again. ”

“ I'm just picturing two grown men, frowning in earnest concentration, their ears separated by a few inches of plastic, and it's funny."
"Not if you're correct, it isn't," said Lloyd, and Andra stopped smiling. "As soon as he hears you, the jig's up."
"Maybe—" She leaned forward with eager hope. "Maybe it would be a good thing, Lloyd. He's a powerful man in the Hive. If he knew your problem, he could use his influence to do something, couldn't he?"
"My father loves me, sure," said Lloyd, with a wry quirk to his lips. "But I don't think he loves anything so much as his position in our society. ”

“ There is another person who frequently completes the family circle at 11 Downing Street. It is Richard Lloyd, the old shoemaker who forty years ago risked his little all to educate his orphan nephew. It was one of the pleasurable anticipations of Lloyd George, when he was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer with the privileges of this historic residence, that Richard Lloyd would be able to come and stay there. "My dear old uncle," he said, "will be so proud to come and stay at the house in which Gladstone, his great hero, at one time lived." ”

“ To me he will remain one of the most interesting men I have ever seen. Richard Lloyd read his sister's letter and formed his resolution. He decided to go to her help. And thus it was he journeyed to South Wales and brought the widow and her two little boys up north to Llanystumdwy, where he lived. He installed them in his cottage, a little two-story residence with a tiny workshop abutting from it at the side where he carried on his shoe-mending. ”

“ Francis Eversleigh was a tall, stout, florid, handsome man; genial, easy-going, unsuspicious, self-indulgent—not a typical solicitor in appearance or character. Inheriting early in life a fine business, he had gradually allowed himself to give way to a constitutional indolence, a fatality of temperament which Gilbert happily had escaped. Gilbert was tall and fair and good-looking, but he was more slimly made than his father, and was charged with far more vitality and force. ”

“ It is indeed hard for them to realize his position in the outside world, though they are so proud of it. To Criccieth and Llanystumdwy he is not so much the prominent statesman of the United Kingdom as just Lloyd George, the friend who grew up with them. He will never be anything else to them. It is all quite delightful and, one may add, quite bewildering to his enemies, who cannot understand that such unconcealed and regardless simplicity is an integral part of the nature of him whom they regard as a malignant. ”

“ Sir Gilbert pulled out his bag and counted the money to me. "'Slife," says he, with a frown, "'tis like the thirty pieces," and then he shrugged his shoulders.
I took 'em up one by one, and with the very movement in which the last was taken to my pouch out slipped my sword, and,—
"Defend ye, defend ye," said I, "or I will run ye through. D'ye think to get even with Dick Ryder, you fool, you?"
[24]
Sir Gilbert started back and lugged out his iron, and Master Nick leaped forward.
"Let be, Nick, let be," says t'other. "The fellow shall have his way, devil take him! ”

“ He was elected an honorary member of the Royal Agricultural Society of England in 1883, and like Sir John Lawes he was an honorary member of many foreign agricultural and scientific societies. In February, 1894, the Prince of Wales at Marlborough House presented both to Sir Henry Gilbert and to Sir John Lawes the Albert Gold Medal awarded them by the Society of Arts "for their joint services to scientific agriculture, and notably for the researches which, throughout a period of 50 years, have been carried on by them at the experimental farm, Rothamsted." ”

“ As a matter of fact, there is a saying that the oldest inhabitant always dies first at Llanyglo, and the others follow in order of age, which would be a poor look-out for anybody setting up in the Insurance business here.... So if by and by Gilbert signs a statement to this general effect, you can hardly blame him. He has his way to make, and he is a wise man who allows the galleons of the Gardens of the world to give his skiff a tow.
The others? Well, Edward Garden's a cleverer man than I, and you can hardly expect me to explain the workings of his mind to you in detail. ”

“ I went to Paris to see one old friend, to Indiana to see others, met for the first time in lengthy talk Maurice Baring, H. G. Wells and Bernard Shaw; went to Kingsland to see Mr. Belloc; gathered Gilbert's boyhood friends of the Junior Debating Club in London and visited "Father Brown" among his Yorkshire moors.
Armed with a notebook, I tried to miss none who had known Gilbert well, especially in his youth: E. C. Bentley, Lucian Oldershaw, Lawrence Solomon, Edward Fordham. I had ten long letters from Annie Firmin, my most valuable witness as to Gilbert's childhood. ”