So, we finally get to meet these Russian émigrés that Rose ministers to.  The fellow sitting near the pillar certainly seems cheerful enough as he reads his paper and declines an offer of tea.  But the other one!  Such a brooding, introspective, morose looking chap.  If you were going to create a stereotype of a displaced, embittered Russian nobleman, you could use this fellow as a model!

So many story lines intersected this week that it’s difficult to know which ones to focus on.  It’s obvious that Mary, having taken batting practice with Lord Gillingham, is not going to invite him for another tryout.  We can leave them alone until Mr. or possibly Lord Right shows up.  But before Mary designates Lord Gillingham for assignment (to stretch the baseball metaphor for the last time) she gets a good talking to from Violet about the importance of preserving one’s virtue.  Violet is pushing her bountiful luck.  Such aggressive moralizing is sure to backfire eventually.

It also seems clear that Anna and Bates will have to put up with further police inquiries.  As Mrs. Hughes points out, the constable presently assigned to the case is not a master of detection, but the possibility that a more inquisitive detective will investigate must be budgeted for.  We await further developments with more patience than do the Bateses.  I cannot believe that the writers will allow a selfless, noble character such as Mr. Bates to go to prison for a crime he actually committed.  Also, let’s remember that Mrs. Hughes and Mary are accomplices because they helped to destroy the stub of the rail ticket that puts Mr. Bates in London on the day of Mr. Green’s unfortunate encounter with a bus.  Getting through this will help bring them closer together.  I expect that each of them will have something to say about it to the other and to Anna and Bates as this plot element unwinds, don’t you?

The banality of the Baxter story grows as the facts come out.  She is a good person who was led astray by a rogue footman.  Under his malign influence, she became bad herself, stole the jewels, and then saw how things stood when he double-crossed her and ran off with the swag.  She went to prison and now she is good again.  I don’t think the story could have been made less interesting or less believable.  The story satisfies Cora, and Baxter keeps her job.  As long as Baxter stays away from manipulative fellow servants who pull her into their conspiracies, she’ll be fine.  Fortunately, no one who fits that description can be found below Downton’s stairs, so we can all relax.  Or, perhaps Baxter will be given an opportunity to demonstrate just how good she has become and has remained.

Rose did a lovely job of organizing the visit of the Russians, but the event was very nearly ruined by Miss Bunting, whose ill manners are becoming a real concern.  Tea in the drawing room is going along as planned when Bunting starts her engine.  It is true that from her point of view these displaced aristocrats are her class enemies.  However, they are no longer in a position to do any harm to anyone, particularly the downtrodden of Russia (who, seven years into Communist rule, had plenty of their own troubles to deal with).  On top of that, they are completely down on their luck, without resources.  And finally, Bunting is in someone else’s house, where she is expected to treat her fellow guests with civility.  Besides, where is her English sense of fair play, of not hitting a fellow when he’s down?

None of that matters to her.  Bunting began lighting into the Russians so that even the mild fellow who turned down Rose’s tea was in a rage.  Fortunately, Cora is able to settle things down, gracious hostess that she is, and to gently guide the émigrés into the library to view the Czarist memorabilia acquired during Violet’s visit to Russia with her husband in 1874.  Of course, foreigners are notoriously emotional (as Mrs. Hughes notes), but Russians are high-strung even by those standards, so they naturally expressed their joy through sobs and tears.  The nostalgia was nearing full flow as the fan on the display table sent Violet back half a century.  The room had been so warm that day back in 1874, but a charming young man, a prince, gave her that fan to ward off the heat.  If a man gives a lady a fan in these circumstances, it is a serious gesture.  It is not simply a question of ventilation.  But when the man is a Russian and a prince, and a broody, introspective one at that, well, it will take more than an ornate fan to dissipate the heat of that encounter.

And then, just as Violet is about to allow her mind to wander away from that encounter fifty years earlier and return to the present, who should step out of the shadows – obviously a skill that he has developed with considerable practice – but Prince Kuragin, the man with the fan, the intense brooding Byronic Russian who created such a strong impression on Rose and on the audience earlier in the episode.

Fortunately for Mary, she inherited her wits from Violet and not from either of her parents, who had little to spare, and as a result she figures out Violet’s history in about the same time that it took Violet to figure out Edith’s story last season.  But we have only the merest outline, a hint of what the true tale may be.  I expect that in classic Downton fashion, we will learn of it one morsel at a time.

Robert is entering one of his insufferable periods.  Lady Cora drops hints far and wide to tell him that she wants something substantive in which to take an interest.  She is not nostalgic for the war, naturally, but for the sense of purpose that war work gave her.  Robert dismisses this as nonsense, along with every one of her efforts to learn more about the workings of the massive Downton commercial enterprise (pigs, wheat, real estate development, etc.) that operates outside the domestic sphere to which Cora is confined.  The conflict comes to a head when Cora goes to London and spends an afternoon, and then an evening, with Mr. Bricker.  In the meantime Robert has traveled to London to surprise Cora and is annoyed when she is not there to enjoy the evening that he had planned.[1]

Poor Robert has allowed himself to become jealous of Mr. Bricker.  But is there any reason to be?  Mr. Bricker is a man of perhaps 50, unmarried, is devoted to the world of painting, and has so far conducted himself with restraint that even those keepers of the public morals Mr. Carson or Violet’s butler Mr. Spratt would have to approve.  I expect that Mr. Bricker is more taken with Cora’s interest in art, her conversation, her elegant manners and dress than he is with her other attractions.  I would not be shocked to learn that Mr. Bricker and Cora play for different teams.

Nevertheless, Robert tears into Cora, suggesting that Bricker’s interest in art is just a ruse to allow him to chase her skirt (gown, whatever).  Cora is rightly offended and we can only hope that Robert gets the message in time that Cora is going to need something substantial to keep herself occupied for the next four or five decades of married life.

Incidentally, I think there is a discrepancy between Cora’s tale (to Bricker) about how she was courted by Robert and Robert’s own telling of this same tale to Mathew (may he rest in peace) a couple of seasons ago.  I recall that Robert told Mathew that Robert’s dad took him to America to find an heiress at a time when the Abbey was desperately short of funds.  In Season Five, the story is that Cora’s mother (Shirley MacLaine), who had recently buried her Jewish husband, brought Cora over to London to find a husband, thinking that the London marriage market was more promising than New York for an attractive young woman whose money was plentiful but new.  I doubt that anything turns on the discrepancy, but I find these little cross-currents interesting.

The one other plot element that has me a bit worried involves Thomas.  He has phoned about an ad that he saw in the London Magazine under the heading “Choose Your Own Path.”  This was mysterious, and made more so by his sudden rush to visit a dying father who then conveniently rallied.  But my level of concern was raised after seeing the preview of the next episode.  It looked like Thomas was planning to inject himself or at least use a medical device of some kind, and I confess that I am worried.  He’s caused more than his share of trouble, but let’s not wish him any ill.  (We have higher standards than a certain school teacher I could name.)  I wonder whether this is a situation in which Baxter will have an opportunity to demonstrate the depth of her restored goodness.  We shall see.

If I knew any less about art, I would know nothing, so I had to check to make sure that Piero della Francesca was a real person.  As probably everyone but me knows, there was a respected 15^th century Tuscan painter by that name and some of his work is indeed held by the National Gallery in London.

I was also curious to learn about Elinor Glyn, a novelist mentioned by Tom and obviously familiar to both him and Mary.  I had to look her up, too.  She was a writer of romance novels and screenplays in the early 20^th century, and her open treatment of sex was something new at the time.  What I find most interesting about her, though, was the photo that you will find if you go to the Wikipedia article under her name.  I think that is what Mary will look like in about 20 years.  Incidentally, Ms. Glyn’s sister (famous in her own right as a fashion designer) and brother-in-law were both passengers on the Titanic and both survived.  Who knows, they might have dined with the two Crawley cousins as the ship sped through the icy waters of the North Atlantic just before the start of the first episode five seasons ago.

[1] This reminds me of the story of the linguist who was having an intense sexual affair with his wife’s maid.  One afternoon, the wife came home unexpectedly, opened the door to the maid’s room, and found husband and maid in a most compromising position.  She said, “Well, I am surprised!” Her husband corrected her.  “No, my dear, you are astonished.  We are surprised.”