Last time, I expressed the fear that after the crime against Anna Downton Abbey would lose its way and would become a story of crime and punishment with tony accents.  I did not budget for Mr. Fellowes’s stratagem of diverting our attention by opening the Abbey’s gates to a Dionysian riot.  It is late winter 1922 in our story, but to the folks at Downton, June is busting out all over.

I thought I was paying attention last week, but judging from the conversation between Tom Branson and the lovely Edna, there were some things that I missed.  I still cannot figure out where or when they managed it, but manage it they did.  Edna’s intentions are fully honorable by her lights.  She intends to marry Tom and make something of him.  Fortunately, Tom is not insane when sober and immediately realizes that whatever the eventual solution to his problem may be, making Edna the second Mrs. Branson is not on the board.  If only he could find someone to talk to, to advise him . . . .

Walk into any room in Downton Abbey and you are likely to find couples pitching woo, or planning to, or talking about it.  Just ask Alfred.  Daisy knew that Jimmy and Ivy were having a moment in a quiet store room.  When Alfred asked where Ivy was, Daisy sent him to the store room where he finally got the message that he was not going to win Ivy’s heart.  Now he’ll pursue a career in fine food, and Daisy has had another encounter with the law of unintended consequences.  To finish off the sequence, Mrs. Patmore was able to dispense some solid advice about matters of the heart, from the store of wisdom she has acquired by spending thirty years producing roasts and pies.

Leaving our friends below stairs for a moment, we find that the good people above stairs are equally engaged in clinching.  Rose is going through admirers at the rate of two per episode.  We bustle Mary, Tom, and Rose off to London on a rather skimpy excuse (the tax people had a cancellation) so that Mary and Lord Gillingham can be reunited at Aunt Rosalind’s house.  This gives Rose another evening with the upper class admirer she met in the last episode (didn’t catch his name) as our party of six makes its way to what must seem to them an outpost of the avant garde, complete with American jazz.  Rose’s beau cannot carry as much champagne as he consumed and when he has to rush off to call Ralph on the big white phone, two interesting things happen in rapid sequence.  First, the jazz singer makes the smoothest move ever seen on network TV.  Rose’s beau has not taken two steps toward the Gents when the singer is off the stage and dancing with Rose, who doesn’t miss a beat.  Second, the others in the party simply abandon the fellow in the Gents and instantly close ranks to get Rose off the dance floor and out of the club.

I speculated last week that Rose might for once cross the class boundary, and judging from the way she made eyes with the jazz singer as she was being led away, I think she plans to do this in a big way, crossing lines not only of class but of occupation (if world-famous Nellie Melba is meant to take her meals in her room, where do you suppose a jazz singer ranks?) and race as well.  For myself, I am tired of Rose just talking a good game.  It’s time for some action.

The Mary-Gillingham story confused me.  He proposes to her and tells her to take her time to answer.  He’s not really engaged to the heiress and he will end the relationship.  Next thing we know, he is back at Downton telling Mary that he has to have an answer now.  He can’t be unfair to the heiress (of course that’s it), so if Mary’s answer is going to be No, let’s hear it now, have a passionate kiss , and be on our separate ways.  Cue the violins.  Of course, Mary says No.  She has barely come back to the living.  How can she possibly launch herself into a new lifetime commitment at this point?  Having said No, she immediately shows signs of doubt and as the episode ends, she tells Tom that she will probably regret her decision (without telling him what it was) for the rest of her life.  Could it be that Lord Gillingham may still have a role to play in this story?

And we are not done with scenes of raw passion!  For the first time in her life, Edith has to sneak into a house after a night out on the town (you know what I mean).  A rank beginner at this kind of thing, she is instantly discovered by her aunt’s maid who rats her out without batting an eye.  My impression had been that Aunt Rosalind was a freer spirit than the rest of the family, but her behavior at the night club and her reaction to Edith’s night out suggest that she has become (as P.G. Wodehouse said) the Aunt, the whole Aunt, and nothing but the Aunt.  The conscience of Queen Victoria rules from the grave in the person of Aunt Rosalind.  To Edith’s credit, I don’t think she was deterred by anything Aunt Rosalind had to say.  One does hope that the aunt will be proven wrong and that Edith will not live to regret this lapse from an otherwise unblotted copybook.  If Edith should prove to be with child, I have no doubt Mr. Gregson will do the right thing (once his German divorce goes through), but I fear that all the credit with Lord Grantham that he earned at the poker table will be used up.

And speaking of poker, should Lord Grantham need another champion to make up his losses (while Mr. Gregson is absent in Germany), I would recommend Mrs. Hughes for the job.  We learned that in addition to her many fine qualities she has the soul and the nerve of a riverboat gambler.  Tom was so wise to turn to her for advice.  She called Edna in, immediately went all in by reconstructing Edna’s plan to her face, and coldly called Edna’s bluff when Edna made an effort at denial.  The result is that Tom is off the hook (not that he was a complete by-stander in these events, let’s remember) and Edna is back on the road.  Have we seen the last of her, I wonder?  Say hi to your aunt for us, Edna.

The final passionate affair that draws our attention is one whose flames were banked many decades ago, but which still generates heat.  I refer of course to Mr. Carson’s long-ago dalliance with the fair Alice.  Here again, Mrs. Hughes plays a constructive role, having purchased a beautiful frame for Alice’s photograph so that Mr. Carson may place it on his desk instead of in a drawer and so that the rest of the staff will every now and again think of Mr. Carson as human.  Mr. Carson philosophically notes that all we have in the end are memories, although Mr. Carson seems to have taken a shortcut by not first having the experiences to generate the memories.  He’s happy with the photo, a bit like Eeyore with his burst balloon, but let us leave him in peace until the next episode.  The poor man has been through enough.

However, all this frivolity and passion cannot hide for long the real agony that Anna is going through.  I imagine that the default attitude at the time would have been that the victim of a sexual assault bore considerable blame, and it is heartbreaking to see that Anna has completely internalized this irrational idea.  Here the benevolence and good sense of Mrs. Hughes are of no help.  She suggests that Anna “take a break” from dwelling on the assault, which is clearly not possible.  She offers the possibility of going to the police, but Anna rejects that idea.  (And she might feel much worse about the situation than she does already if the police were to doubt her, which might have been the expected reaction at the time.)  And to make matters worse, Anna is withdrawing from Mr. Bates to the point of moving out of their cottage back to the Abbey.  Anna blames herself and feels she is no longer worthy of Mr. Bates.  Mr. Bates in turn assumes that the troubles in their relationship must be due to something he has done, because in his view Anna is completely without fault, indeed incapable of fault, of any kind.  She plans never to tell him the truth, so it is hard to see where this leads except to more heartbreak, confusion, and despair.  The only way this could become worse would be for Anna to be with child.

I have been critical of Mr. Fellowes in the past on a number of points, but I thought he did an admirable job of keeping the tale on an even keel after he injected the horrible events of last week into his story.  I do continue to think, however, that the challenges I mentioned last week continue to present risks to the story at large and I await with interest Mr. Fellowes’s response to those risks.

Thanks to a reader for pointing out that in previous posts I had referred to Robert Crawley as “Lord Crawley”.  His correct title is of course Lord Grantham.  I have corrected the error.  I have never really understood how British titles work.  In the 1980s, I traveled frequently to London on business.  At the time, a member of the royal family with the title Princess Michael of Kent was prominent in the news.  I asked an English acquaintance how it was possible for someone named Michael to be a princess.  I guess I failed to communicate the force of the paradox because the deadpan answer that came back was “Because she’s a woman.”  There is not enough time in life to unravel every mystery one encounters, and I decided to leave the mystery of the British system of titles alone.

On a final note, the song April Showers was published in the United States in 1921, so it would likely have made its first appearances in England at about the time of the story.  Part of the melody is remarkably similar to a tune in Vivaldi’s Four Seasons (in the middle movement of “Winter”) and I have wondered if this is a coincidence or a borrowing.  Another unsolved mystery.  Until next time.