January 9, 2014

What a delight to return to the manicured grounds of Downton Abbey!  For those of us who vaguely remember attending law school, this first episode of Season Four held special charms as one legal issue after another was unfolded, but perhaps we should come back to those gems later and focus on the developments that didn’t require the audience to blow dust off law books.

My first question is: What happened to Isis the dog?  We have grown accustomed to entering the life of the Abbey by walking behind Lord Grantham’s best friend (although many might have agreed with me that it would have been just as pleasant had the camera been held slightly higher off the ground).  The dog did not appear during the episode and I fear the worst.

And O’Brien is gone, too!  It was good to see that her departure did not work corruption of the blood of her nephew Alfred, who was under a cloud only for the briefest moment until the good nature and good sense of the staff put him in the clear.  It helped that he threw his aunt under the omnibus by referring to her as a “dark horse” but I’m sure that only speeded the process.  He would have been fine either way.

As long as we are reacquainting ourselves with our friends below stairs, I myself was glad to see the lovely Edna return, although I know that she is going to be nothing but trouble.  She acquired her new post as a lady’s maid under false pretenses (if she has an aunt at all, I doubt they are on speaking terms) and she quickly got in with the wrong crowd downstairs.  (Must we call him Barrow?  Just Thomas used to be good enough.)  Well, as long as she doesn’t try to seduce poor Tom (or Branson, if you prefer).

And speaking of Mr. Barrow (one almost chokes on the words), he is immediately up to his old scheming ways.  We have barely adjusted the volume on our TVs before he is scheming to get rid of Nanny West, but this time he strikes gold!  Nanny West is indeed guilty of the charge that Thomas invented.  Lady Cora herself catches Nanny West mistreating little Sibyl and referring to the child as a “half-breed” (and is this because her father is Irish or Catholic or of non-upper class origin?).  Write down the date, because this is the first time that Lady Cora has caught a staff member misbehaving or displaying bad faith of any kind, although she is surrounded by these events.  And of course the consequence for Mr. Barrow is that he has now gained Lady C’s trust, which he proceeds to abuse through another accusation, this time a false one against dear Anna.  And remember that in Season Three, Mr. Bates was in a position to wreck Thomas and chose not to do it.  Really Thomas’s perfidy cannot be fathomed.

As someone who has made a number of firm predictions about the world outside of Downton that turned out wrong (the details I am sure don’t matter), I am perhaps overly proud that one prediction I made in Season One has finally panned out.  You recall that Charlie Griggs showed up at the Abbey midway through Season One with the apparent purpose of blackmailing or at least embarrassing Mr. Carson.  Lord Grantham entered the scene, immediately determined that the man was contemptible, nay beneath contempt,  (the cut of his clothes, and the aggressive checked pattern of his coat gave him away before he uttered a word), gave him some money – did he toss banknotes onto the carpet? – and sent the man on his way.

I firmly predicted that Charlie would return.  It is a commonplace in stories of this kind and I felt sure that Mr. Fellowes would stick to the pattern.  I thought that Charlie would return in Season Two as a war profiteer, but he remained below the radar (perhaps because it hadn’t been invented yet).  He remained hidden throughout the turmoil of Season Three.  But as we rounded the bend to start Season Four, there he was!  I was certainly happier to see him than was Mr. Carson, until the melodramatic end, of course, complete with Mr. Carson emerging through the steam of a resting locomotive.

Poor Mr. Carson.  He kept that photo of Alice all those years, the face that, if it did not launch a thousand ships, nevertheless sundered a pair of Charlies.  Well, as the train pulled away that chapter of Mr. Carson’s life finally closed  – and by the way, how long do trains stop at minor country stations?  There was no one getting off and only Charlie Griggs getting on, but the train stayed in the station long enough for Mr. Carson to emerge through the steam, tip his hat to the three worthies accompanying Mr. Griggs, catch up on some thirty years of developments with his fellow Charlie, and then shake his hand and wish him well.  As do we all.  May the stage door of the Cardiff Music Hall be kept long and well by Mr. Griggs.

As we touch a handkerchief to the corner of our eyes, perhaps it is time to turn our attention to the good people above stairs.  I don’t mean to be too solemn, but consider these lines from Shakespeare’s King John:

Grief fills the room up of my absent child ,
Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me,
Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words,
Remembers me of all his gracious parts,
Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form;
Then, have I reason to be fond of grief?

As usual, Mr. S conveys in half a dozen lines more than anyone else could hope to do in 600.  (Put aside the fact that the child of the woman who speaks these lines has been captured and marked for death, but is still alive.  And while you’re putting things aside, add the fact that she predeceases him, although not by much.)  The point is, grief as profound as that experienced by Mary and Isobel is so consuming, so overwhelming, so seductive in its power that it takes the determined energy of those around the sufferer as well as her own strong efforts to overcome it.

It’s traditional for three attempts to be required before a quest can be fulfilled, and so it is here.  Tom makes the first effort to pull Mary from the clutches of her grief, followed by Grannie (I would never refer to her this way outside of these pages), and then by Mr. Carson.  Isobel (who has given up social work for the duration) is asked to help with Project Moseley and then twice with Project Griggs, to make up the three efforts on her behalf.  Of course, the final item to bring them out of the pit of grief is the discovery of the will, which prompts me to take a slight detour into the legal world of Downton Abbey.

At the beginning of the episode, Robert mentions that, because Matthew died without a will, his widow Mary receives a life interest in one-third of Matthew’s real property and receives one-third of his personal property outright.  My ears immediately pricked up.  Here we have the common law estate of dower!  I remember that from the first year of law school! [1]

And to make the legal problem even more interesting, Mary might have received more if Matthew had left it to her in a will, and sure enough a will is found!  Or is it a will?  Again, we ancient law students remember from second year of law school the concept of a “holographic” will – a document entirely handwritten and intended by the writer to be his or her will.  Is that what we have here?  (And what is the over/under on how many more surprise wills are going to find their way into this story?)

What a lovely tangle.  Except, how much sense does any of this make within the context of the “in-universe” legal world created by the script?  Remember that in Season One it was established that the land, the stately home, and Cora’s money are subject to an “entail” established by Robert’s father.  It all passes from the current male holder (Robert of course) to the next most closely related male descendant of the original grantor (Robert’s dad).  When the Titanic went down, taking Robert’s first cousin and his son with it, the next man in was Matthew, the son of Robert’s third cousin.  If the problems of 1922 can be solved by having Matthew leave his share to Mary by will, the same solution would have been available to Robert in 1912.  Why not avoid the problem of an inconvenient male heir – a working solicitor of all things – by leaving Downton to a daughter (or all three) by will?  It wouldn’t have worked.  He couldn’t leave Downton to his daughters by will because of the entail, and Matthew cannot leave his “share” to his widow.  Matthew does not have a share of the Abbey.  He would have owned it absolutely one day (with careful driving), subject always to the rules of the entail, but not until Robert dies.  (To be clear, I am not trying to predict how any of this would come out under English law then or now.  I don’t pretend to have any knowledge about that.  I am talking about the supposed legal rules that the story tells us are in effect.)

Remember that in Season Three, Robert, wonderful manager as he is of affairs financial, medical, and emotional, has put a large dent in the family fortune by taking a plunge in Canadian railway shares.  The whole show is going to come unstuck and the actors forced to find other jobs when out of the blue Mr. Swires conveniently dies and even more conveniently leaves all of his money to Matthew.  At that point, Matthew and Robert came to some kind of arrangement, with Matthew supplying the Swire funds and Robert ceding managerial control to Matthew.  I don’t believe we know more than that.  Presumably Matthew did not actually hand any funds to Robert (who, you may recall, has heard wonderful things about this chap Ponzi who is achieving spectacular returns in New York).  If Matthew kept the Swires funds, Mary now owns them, but to repeat, she does not own or control the land or stately home.  Robert can do what he likes with the land, but he lacks the funds (other than what is left of Cora’s original contribution), so that is where Mary’s ability to control the situation comes from.  My point is that she would either have owned the money outright (under the will) or would have been appointed trustee of her child’s property (the Swires money) if Matthew had indeed not left a will.  So, the will really ought not to have made a difference to the legal/financial situation, given the rules of the story.

But of course it made a huge emotional difference to Mary to hear from Matthew from the other side of the grass and to Isobel to know that Matthew was the careful thorough conscientious considerate chap that she raised him to be.

The other emotional issue with significant legal entanglements involves Lady Edith and her Editor (forgot his name, sorry).  Is it seriously his plan to leave England, move to Germany, become a German citizen (check list: learn German, find job editing Die Zeitung von Hamburg, find cricket club, learn how to bring beer to room temperature), obtain a divorce in Germany from his mentally incompetent English wife who will not appear in the proceedings and could not understand what was going on if she did appear, marry Edith in Germany, move back to England, and resume his old life?  Do you think it likely that an English court would recognize a divorce obtained in this way?  And what will become of the mentally ill wife?  Will she be moved to a Dickensian madhouse somewhere, while Edith and the Editor sip sherry and gaze into each other’s eyes?  Edith is so much in love that none of this will bother her?  I ask you.

That leaves us with only Rose to consider.  She certainly loves to have her bit of fun, but attracted one member of the working class too many, turning a Thé dansant into a Thé combattant.  But she turns out to have a heart of gold when the more worthy of the two fighting Yorkshiremen comes to the back door to talk to the under-house-parlor maid by the name of Rose.  It’s interesting that Rose, for all the trouble she is prepared to cause, does not allow herself any entanglements outside her social class.  She quickly hops into a servant’s uniform (there is always one that fits perfectly hanging on a peg somewhere near the back door) and lets the young man down gently, giving him a nice pep talk and a chaste kiss for his trouble.  Her cousin Sibyl might have pursued the relationship.  Dare we think that Rose’s days of causing trouble are over?  Is she prepared to settle down and assume her rightful place in the drawing room (where we hope she will learn to arrive on time)?  Forgive me if I have my doubts.  (And why did Mr. Fellowes so obviously manipulate the plot to get Jimmy, Rose, and Anna to the same spot in York at the same time, and why does Jimmy come to the back door of the house at just the moment to observe Rose in her maid’s costume?  Perhaps Rose is going to cross the class boundary after all.)

Well, Episode One was full of action, a Top Gun among Downton episodes.  Will Mr. Fellowes be able to top this one?  We will know on Sunday.