A Year in the Life of Downton Abbey: Seasonal Celebrations, Traditions, and Recipes by Jessica Fellowes Page B
Authors: Jessica Fellowes
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change).
The difficulty for many of the girls was that despite the fact that the intention was to find a husband, it was nigh on impossible for anything romantic to happen under the beady eyes of the mothers and chaperones sitting round the edges of the dances. The actress Joyce Grenfell wrote that even in 1928, if her parents were not also going to a dance she had been invited to, she would be escorted by the family maid.
Why were the women so keen to collude with this set-up? Largely because, for the upper-class young girl, marriage was her escape route out of the family home; her means of independence and the chance to build a power base of her own. Choosing a husband from the men presented to her during the balls and parties of the season meant she was more likely to fall in love with ‘the right sort’ than not. It wasn’t that marriages were arranged so much as it was hoped that if you put your daughter in the right circles, you stood a better chance of gaining a son-in-law with a title and money. But whereas upper-class girls before the First World War were very sheltered from boys before they came out and were likely to marry the first man they kissed, by the 1920s, spending time together was miles easier. It was becoming more accepted that a girl might pick and choose whom she liked and maybe even spend time with a possible suitor before making a decision But even this level of daring did not go much beyond the holding of hands and a stolen kiss or two.
MARY:
‘The older I get, the more I feel we do these things very oddly. Even now we must decide whether to share our lives with someone without spending any real time with them. Let alone … you know.’
MARY:
‘Obviously it’s very shocking to someone of your generation.’
VIOLET:
‘Don’t let’s hide behind the changing times, my dear. This is shocking to most people in 1924.’
Mary’s reputation, of course, almost foundered to the point of rendering her unmarriageable after she succumbed to a seduction by the devastatingly handsome Kemal Pamuk that ended tragically (he died in her bed, in the first series). Perhaps she didn’t really understand what she was letting herself in for when she admitted him into her bedroom; perhaps she thought she could keep it a secret. She wouldn’t have been the first – it is based on a true story, told to Julian years before he even thought of
Downton Abbey
– and it was bad luck that it ended the way it did. But although men and women of the world would have known such things went on (that is, sexual relations outside of marriage), they would have found it profoundly shocking in an earl’s unmarried daughter.
Remarkably, it was almost entirely the opposite for the working classes. When the governess, Lettuce [
sic
], confesses to the nanny, Emily, in
Tea by the Nursery Fire,
that she is illegitimate, the nanny’s biographer writes: ‘Emily thought nothing of that. In Easden [the village where she grew up] any girl who walked out regularly with a boy took it for granted he would only marry her last minute. No bride ever reached the altar without obviously carrying her groom’s baby.’ Confirming this view is Edwin Lee, the butler at Cliveden, who came from a farming family and remembered that no man would risk a barren wife. He tells the tale of two village women gossiping sometime in the late nineteenth century.
‘I hear Hilda Brown is getting married.’
‘Is she? I didn’t know she was pregnant.’
‘She isn’t, bloody snob.’
Cora and Lady Rose ascend the stairs to the throne room.
Creating the episode for Rose’s coming out was no mean feat. Lancaster House in London was chosen as the location for Buckingham Palace. It was once London’s most expensive private house, with an interior that set the fashion for the city’s smartest drawing rooms: Queen Victoria was alleged to have said to the Duchess of Sutherland, ‘I have come from my house to your palace.’ It is now a government
The difficulty for many of the girls was that despite the fact that the intention was to find a husband, it was nigh on impossible for anything romantic to happen under the beady eyes of the mothers and chaperones sitting round the edges of the dances. The actress Joyce Grenfell wrote that even in 1928, if her parents were not also going to a dance she had been invited to, she would be escorted by the family maid.
Why were the women so keen to collude with this set-up? Largely because, for the upper-class young girl, marriage was her escape route out of the family home; her means of independence and the chance to build a power base of her own. Choosing a husband from the men presented to her during the balls and parties of the season meant she was more likely to fall in love with ‘the right sort’ than not. It wasn’t that marriages were arranged so much as it was hoped that if you put your daughter in the right circles, you stood a better chance of gaining a son-in-law with a title and money. But whereas upper-class girls before the First World War were very sheltered from boys before they came out and were likely to marry the first man they kissed, by the 1920s, spending time together was miles easier. It was becoming more accepted that a girl might pick and choose whom she liked and maybe even spend time with a possible suitor before making a decision But even this level of daring did not go much beyond the holding of hands and a stolen kiss or two.
MARY:
‘The older I get, the more I feel we do these things very oddly. Even now we must decide whether to share our lives with someone without spending any real time with them. Let alone … you know.’
MARY:
‘Obviously it’s very shocking to someone of your generation.’
VIOLET:
‘Don’t let’s hide behind the changing times, my dear. This is shocking to most people in 1924.’
Mary’s reputation, of course, almost foundered to the point of rendering her unmarriageable after she succumbed to a seduction by the devastatingly handsome Kemal Pamuk that ended tragically (he died in her bed, in the first series). Perhaps she didn’t really understand what she was letting herself in for when she admitted him into her bedroom; perhaps she thought she could keep it a secret. She wouldn’t have been the first – it is based on a true story, told to Julian years before he even thought of
Downton Abbey
– and it was bad luck that it ended the way it did. But although men and women of the world would have known such things went on (that is, sexual relations outside of marriage), they would have found it profoundly shocking in an earl’s unmarried daughter.
Remarkably, it was almost entirely the opposite for the working classes. When the governess, Lettuce [
sic
], confesses to the nanny, Emily, in
Tea by the Nursery Fire,
that she is illegitimate, the nanny’s biographer writes: ‘Emily thought nothing of that. In Easden [the village where she grew up] any girl who walked out regularly with a boy took it for granted he would only marry her last minute. No bride ever reached the altar without obviously carrying her groom’s baby.’ Confirming this view is Edwin Lee, the butler at Cliveden, who came from a farming family and remembered that no man would risk a barren wife. He tells the tale of two village women gossiping sometime in the late nineteenth century.
‘I hear Hilda Brown is getting married.’
‘Is she? I didn’t know she was pregnant.’
‘She isn’t, bloody snob.’
Cora and Lady Rose ascend the stairs to the throne room.
Creating the episode for Rose’s coming out was no mean feat. Lancaster House in London was chosen as the location for Buckingham Palace. It was once London’s most expensive private house, with an interior that set the fashion for the city’s smartest drawing rooms: Queen Victoria was alleged to have said to the Duchess of Sutherland, ‘I have come from my house to your palace.’ It is now a government
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