Whenever he was in conflict with Socialists he would say to them, "Why don't you buy me out and run the mines yourselves?
You have plenty of money in your unions, and I am quite willing to sell." There were several strange and interesting movements in his otherwise quite simple and boyish nature.

For example, he had no religious faith worth speaking about, certainly no dogmatic faith of any kind; but he always said his prayers.

Then he held the theory that old age was a form of disease, and so avoided, as much as possible, the society of old people, fearing contagion; the young people with whom he loved to surround himself, and on whom he delighted to play many practical jokes, he called his "young germs." He was entirely free from all forms of snobbishness, and would make fun of titles and honours and ridicule aristocratic pretensions; yet he went somewhat painfully out of his way to get a title from his Party when he retired from the House of Commons, and was justly indignant at the way this bargain was broken by the Liberal leaders of that day.

I think he wanted a title at that time chiefly to prove to his constituents that he had faithfully done his duty by them.
He seldom read a book of any account after he came down from Cambridge, but hardly a day of his life passed that he did not learn by heart a number of fine sayings which appealed to him in a book of quotations.
These quotations he would fire off at his family till they cried for mercy, or another set.
He was far happier among his Herefords at Llanwern than in London or in Cardiff, but he was for ever postponing the day of his retirement from public life.

He kept all his boy's love for birds and animals, and had real feeling for beautiful things in nature; but the game of life drew him always towards the city.
At one time he smoked a prodigious number of cigars and drank a bottle of port every night, but about twenty years before his death he gave up both habits on the challenge of a friend and never reverted to them again.