I think Edith should be proud that she kept her secret for more than two years.  When I say “kept her secret” I mean of course apart from her grandmother, her aunt, Mr. and Mrs. Schroeder, Mr. and Mrs. Drewe, and, at least so it appears, Mrs. Hughes.  I can think of English novels where secrets have been kept considerably longer (Middlemarch and Bleak House come to mind), but two years is nothing to sneeze at.  She is still keeping the secret from everyone else except her mother, but I feel that any entry into the record books for her effort beyond this point must be marked with an asterisk.

Edith’s secret will leak a bit further, I think.  That might be the point of having Anna witness the little Keystone Kops scene at the train station.  The spread may have halted for now thanks to a sharp word to Anna from Mrs. Hughes –does she know the secret, or did she figure it out independently?—but it does seem likely that the process will continue in inexorable Downton fashion.  In the meantime, Edith will be able to pursue a career in writing and publishing and will have the formidable Downton child care establishment at her disposal.  She’ll be able to have it all, give or take a murdered lover and a child out of wedlock.

It’s good to see that Mr. Mason has lost none of his capacity to dispense wisdom on a wide variety of subjects more or less on demand.  When his advice on education is called for, he can summon up a vision of the untold millions whose lives might have been improved by a bit of it.  Indeed, a person sitting at his very table is able to bear witness.  And when it turns out that Daisy’s desire to continue her studies is failing in sympathy with the declining fortunes of the Labor government, Mr. Mason suggests that in the future, a Labor government will seem quite ordinary.  Here again, he hits the mark.  There have indeed been several Labor governments since the 1920s and they have seemed quite ordinary.[1]

I was beginning to feel slightly relaxed about the chances that Mr. and Mrs. Bates might avoid further legal entanglements but I was alarmed that they themselves have begun to feel that the worst was behind them.  This is a dangerous attitude and I fear that they were unwise to tempt fate by giving it voice.

The treatment of British anti-Semitism in this story reminds me of the treatment of Jim Crow in The Secret Life of Bees (I saw the movie, don’t plan to try the book).  We know the bad thing is out there, but it’s something that only bad people engage in.  In the Bees movie, Jim Crow does not come into focus until a couple of pre-teens of different races try to hold hands in the section of a movie theater “reserved” for African Americans.  In Downton the only overtly negative statement about Jews is made by the most ill-mannered upper class character to have appeared in the five seasons the show has aired.

The reality would have been more complex, more subtle, I think.  For example, it’s interesting that Cora’s ancestry has been mentioned only recently.  Occasionally, the sharper-tongued members of the family – Violet and Mary – will throw her American heritage at her, but no one ever mentions her ancestry.  I can think of three reasons.  The Crawleys may be above common name calling.  Or, Cora deserves a break because she has performed her job admirably.  Her parents’ money saved the Abbey, she has supplied the line with three daughters – sons would have been nice, but remember that it is Robert who has the Y chromosomes – and she has been a suitable mistress of a stately home.  Or – and this is the one I would like to explore a bit – the Crawleys and the rest of their class don’t think of Cora as Jewish.  Her father, yes, but it seems not Cora herself.

Under traditional Jewish law, and modern Israeli positive law, a person’s status as a Jew is determined by the status of that person’s mother.  If the Israeli test looks to one immediate ancestor, the test of the infamous Nuremberg laws, adopted by Germany in 1935, looked farther back.  They counted grandparents.  Three or four Jewish grandparents meant you were Jewish.  Four “Aryan” grandparents meant you were German.  One or two Jewish grandparents meant that you were “mixed”.  Different rules applied to people with zero, one, two, or more Jewish grandparents, and to people married to them.  So, Cora, Mary, Edith, and Sibyl would have been “mixed” to one degree or another, but little Siby, George, and Marigold would have been in the clear.  This would have mattered later had things gone differently in the 1940s.

The British attitude was less definitive, as it is on most things.  Consider the career of the politician Benjamin Disraeli.  He was a larger-than-life figure who lived from 1804 to 1881.  He served as Prime Minister twice.  His parents were Sephardic Jews who emigrated from Italy to Britain before he was born.  His father had a falling out with the congregation of his local synagogue.[2]  Rather than find a new congregation, he converted to the Church of England and had Benjamin baptized at the age of 12.  In 1837, in his early 30s, Disraeli was elected to Parliament.  However, British law prohibited Jews from sitting in Parliament at that time; the ban was not lifted until 1858.  Yet Disraeli was in no way disqualified from taking his seat.  My point is that the British attitude at that time, at least as far as the law was concerned, did not consider a person’s ancestry but rather his or her professed religion in determining whether he could sit in Parliament.  Disraeli had a character of Shakespearean complexity and drew political enemies from every corner.  His rivals often went after his Jewish ancestry as well as his politics; the fact of his baptism did not immunize him from being attacked as a Jew.  Yet, Queen Victoria, that most serene and reserved British monarch, far preferred the company of Disraeli to that of his lifelong political rival William Gladstone, who was English to the marrow, a graduate of Christ College, Oxford, and a High Church Anglican.  When Disraeli and the Conservatives lost power after the election of 1880, Victoria is said to have looked for a way to prevent Gladstone from taking office as prime minister.  That plan would have required the suspension of the British constitution, but that is a measure of how much she enjoyed Disraeli’s company and tried to avoid that of the stuffy, holier-than-thou Gladstone.

So, if the guests at the Crawley dinner table had been asked whether Benjamin Disraeli was a Jew, how would each of them have answered?  It wouldn’t be a simple question for some of them.  It would be better to ask this before Larry began insulting the Crawley family because of their rag-tag collection of in-laws, including as they do a middle class solicitor, an Irish chauffer, and – coming soon – a Jewish banker.

One other point on this subject.  In Anthony Trollope’s novel The Way We Live Now, the relations between Britain’s upper classes and British Jews are explored in considerable depth.  The principal character – a Mr. Auguste Melmotte – is “ambiguously Jewish” (that is, he is clearly Jewish but never identified as such by the author or overtly by any of the characters) and is as thoroughly unpleasant a character as one would hope to encounter in or out of the pages of a book.  He is a bully, a liar, and an accomplished swindler who raises fantastic sums through the issuance of fraudulent shares.  At the same time, the novel’s most benign, almost saintly, character, a Mr. Brehgert, upstanding, honest, thoughtful, well-spoken, is “unambiguously Jewish” (that is, the author so identifies him and everyone in the story knows that he is a Jew).  Brehgert, a middle-aged widower, is at one point engaged to be married to a Miss Georgiana Longestaffe, who is some thirty years his junior and the daughter of a family of high rank but low funds.  Her parents are wildly opposed and her friends refuse to have anything to do with her.  Ultimately he (not she) breaks off the engagement.  But what I find most interesting is a related story that is only referred to in the novel by some of the characters, not narrated independently by the author.  Mr. Brehgert has a partner by the name of Goldschein.  We are told that a young woman of a high-ranking family, named Lady Julia Start, eloped with Lionel Goldschein, the partner’s son.  The story is that her family is just fine with the arrangement and “everyone” visits them.  The secret seems to be that young Lionel is thoroughly anglicized (e.g., he is described as being an excellent shot), he has lost the ethnic markers that identify the members of his father’s generation as “unambiguous” and no doubt most importantly he has plenty of money.  Just like Atticus Aldridge.  He is dripping with wealth and his family lost the ethnic markers several generations ago.  For example, if you asked Pop Aldridge, or rather Lord Sinderby, “How’s business?” I bet he wouldn’t say “Please, don’t ask.”  So, I think things between Atticus and Rose are going to be all right.  Love conquers darned near all, and money takes care of the rest.

Unfortunately, the person most immediately affected by Larry’s rudeness is dear Isobel.  The rest of the Crawleys will run into Larry and his less rude but equally unpleasant brother only rarely, but Isobel will see them constantly.  And all the people who were on friendly terms with the Merton boys’ late mother are likely to view Isobel with skepticism if not hostility.  And where would she be able to turn for help and support?  Violet would be willing, possibly, but she can’t spend half her time running over to Merton Hall or whatever the Merton version of Downton Abbey is called.  I wonder if Lord Merton would consider living somewhere more modest?  Let’s leave Isobel to turn this problem over.  Perhaps she will give us her answer before the season ends.

Meanwhile, the Blake Plan was fulfilled, but not without some additional difficulty.  The only way to get Gillingham to take no for an answer from Mary is for him to witness her kissing another man, such as Blake to take a random example.  And what better place to stage this scene than the lobby of a movie theater?[3]  Gillingham appreciates instantly that the whole thing was staged, but realizes that he can now fold and file the walking papers that Mary handed him episodes ago.  I assume that Mr. Blake and Mary will eventually marry, but in the meantime he is going to Poland as part of a trade mission.  The Polish economy was an absolute shambles at the time.  The Polish state, which had ceased to exist in the 1790s, had been re-established in 1918 out of leftover pieces of Germany, Russia, Austria, and Lithuania.  The country did not even have a single national currency until 1924, so it’s not clear what Britain might hope to sell to Poland or what Poland might be able to buy from Britain.  But, you never know if you don’t try, so off goes Mr. Blake for as much as a year.  No doubt we will see him again next season if not before.

It remains to discuss briefly our dear friend Isis, whose tush has guided our path to the Abbey for almost every episode so far.  Will Isis be there next week to get the opening credits rolling when the melodramatic music starts?  Why was this little piece of bathos necessary?  If the writers felt that Robert had to be distracted by something when the plan to install Marigold was being discussed, why couldn’t it have been some crisis with the war memorial?  Was it necessary to sacrifice the dog for their convenience?  Or, did the dog snap at one of the writing staff – was this another case of petty revenge, like the way they killed Sibyl?  Or perhaps this episode aired on Christmas Day in the U.K. and they were worried that somewhere, someone would be able to enjoy Christmas dinner for once.  Whatever the reason, it seemed gratuitous.  My heartstrings are tuned just the way I like them.  I don’t need people pulling at them.

Finally, I would like to commend Thomas for his new-found kindness to his fellow servants.  Any of us can become irritable and difficult to live with when we have an abscess caused by repeated injections with an unsterile hypodermic needle.  But it’s not every day that the patient, once recovered, becomes a model of good cheer and helpful advice.  (“Doctor, will I be able to play the violin after the operation?” “Yes, of course.”  “That’s funny.  I can’t play it now.”)  There’s just something in the air of Downton Abbey.  You live there long enough, you become a better person.  Maybe they should invite Larry back.  I bet even he would come round, eventually.

I wonder whether the next episode will wrap this season up.

[1] MacDonald’s troubles mounted and he was forced to call an election in November 1924.  The Tories re-took power and remained in office for five years.  MacDonald returned as Prime Minister when Labor emerged from the general election of 1929 as the largest party, although still short of a majority.  He headed a Labor government into 1931 and then a coalition government to 1935.  So, kidding aside, Mr. Mason was right in the long run.

[2] My Uncle Joe was a superb raconteur and loved to tell the story about the Jewish sailor who was shipwrecked for twenty years on a remote Pacific island.  One day, a passing ship found him.  He asked the captain to join him on a tour of the island before taking his leave forever.  When they had finished, the captain was very impressed.  “You have built a beautiful house, a substantial barn, a granary, a storehouse.  But tell me, why did you build two synagogues?”  The answer: “This one over here I attend, and the other one, I wouldn’t be caught dead in.”

[3] The British prefer the word “cinema” but did you notice that Blake calls it the “kinema”?  I learned that kinema is an acceptable although unusual British spelling and pronunciation.  The word cinema entered English from French, and the French spell it sensibly with a “c”.  But the French word was a conscious invention and derives from the Greek word for movement which transliterates to “kinema”.  Yes, it’s true that the Greeks would have called it “kinema” if they had named it, but it was two French brothers who coined the term, so you would think that their spelling would settle the question.  Blake’s pronunciation strikes me as an affectation, something I don’t expect from such a grounded fellow.

It was a bad night for Edith and for the Bateses, but things seem to be rounding into form for everyone else.  Cora and Robert are back together.  Isobel is going to accept Lord Merton.  Gillingham is again chasing Lane Fox, leaving Mary available for Blake, who will not miss his second chance.  Rose and Atticus are about to enter full romantic mode.  His family’s religion doesn’t seem to bother anyone, eliciting a mere “It’s always something” from Violet.  (I’m sure the writers put that in as a special favor to Maggie Smith.)  Violet has enjoyed a face to face visit with her old flame Prince K and the frisson of excitement as he resumed the seduction that was merely interrupted half a century earlier.

(Slight pause while I yawn.)  Mrs. Patmore has found a sound investment for the inheritance she received.  She is not the least put off by the “outdoor privy”.  Mr. Carson has proposed marriage to Mrs. Hughes in the most oblique manner possible.  Still, his meaning was unmistakable.  Baxter had a further opportunity to demonstrate her purity of heart by helping to get Thomas much-needed medical treatment even after he had posted an anonymous letter that put her through an unnecessary encounter with the police.  The effect on Thomas seemed to be positive, but he is someone about whose moral reformation we must remain guarded.  Finally, Daisy’s education has reached the War of the Spanish Succession, a series of events the study of which has caused the ambitions of many a young scholar to founder[1].  Fortunately, Mr. Molesley is there to help and provides a slim volume of 700 pages for context.  His ambition to become a teacher will not be fulfilled, but he can experience some of the pleasures of pedagogy by helping young Daisy, whose growing confidence must be a source of pride and satisfaction to the entire viewing audience.

All of this contentment and improvement is not helping Anna and Mister Bates.  Things were looking quite bad for them when Bates discovered the birth control device that Anna is keeping for Mary.  He draws the obvious if incorrect conclusion that Anna is trying to avoid having a child with him.  She cannot provide the true story without compromising the reputation of Lady Mary.  What a spot to be in!  In the course of their mutual tear-laden confessions and revelations, we learn that Julian Fellowes gave us a first class head fake last season.  Mister Bates never went to London.  All that discordant music, his purposeful stride as he left the grounds with murder in his heart, and the London train ticket in his coat pocket on his return were designed to lead us to the conclusion that Bates killed Green.  I fell for it without a second thought, but now it turns out the blighter never traveled to London that day!  Why didn’t Mrs. Hughes or Lady Mary notice that the train ticket had not been used?  In my defense, I don’t know the ways of the British rail system.  I can’t tell whether a ticket has been used, but the two ladies in their very different stations in life know all about these things.  Why didn’t one of these intelligent, perceptive females notice that the ticket had not been used?

Well, whatever the explanation, Bates is now in real trouble.  I had speculated earlier this season that there was no way the writers were going to send Bates to the gallows for a crime he actually committed.  But now that he is innocent he is completely without protection.  Sending an innocent man to prison or the gallows is purely routine in this kind of story.  A writing crew that could send Matthew Crawley to his death on the day his son was born – and remember that in the UK that episode aired on Christmas Day – that crew is capable of anything.

I confess that the thought has crossed my mind that maybe Anna really did kill Green.  She was in London at the right time (as we or at least I learned last week) and she had motive.  It would be completely out of character, and it’s hard to imagine that she would have withheld confessing to Bates when he bewailed the lost train ticket, but it is not impossible.  Needless to say, I do not predict.  I offer the possibility for consideration.

Edith has been temporizing for two years, waiting for news of Michael.  Our worst fears were confirmed this week when his body was finally found.  There seems to be a slight hitch in the chronology of these events.  His death is being attributed to the violence attendant upon the “Beer Hall Putsch” in Munich in November 1923.  This was an attempt by the National Socialist party, led by Adolf Hitler and assisted by Erich Ludendorff, who had been in effect the commander of the German army during the last years of World War One, to take over the government of the state of Bavaria by force.  Some people died in the putsch, most of them party members, some of them police.  The chronological hiccup is that Michael went missing in 1922, probably 20 months before the Munich violence.

That’s just another one of those little nits that I like to pick at.  The main point is that he is now confirmed dead and that tells Edith that there is no point waiting for better days.  She needs to act now.  Last week, I thought she was going to kidnap the child because the alternative would have been to reveal the truth, which appeared to be a psychological impossibility for her.  I thought a full confession might have been the better course in the long run.  She found a compromise by taking the child after revealing the truth to Mrs. Drewe, who is heartbroken and furious at the same time, but telling no one else anything more than that she is going away.

By going away with her child, Edith may be opening up possibilities that she couldn’t see from the drawing room at Downton.  Last week we learned that she is still writing her column about the changing times.  In the current episode we learned that Mr. Gregson left his publishing firm to her in his will.  Incidentally, that makes the fourth will to have figured in this story by my count:  (1) the original will by Robert’s father entailing the estate; (2) the Swires will that puts funds into Matthew’s hands just when they are needed; (3) Matthew’s will leaving everything to Mary; and now (4) Gregson’s will to Edith.

Cora is moved by Mr. Gregson’s generosity.  But what about Mrs. Gregson, who is living in a mental institution somewhere?  Perhaps Gregson had other more liquid assets that could be devoted to the maintenance of his wife for the remaining half century or so of her life.  Otherwise, let’s not be surprised if her representatives raise an objection to the Gregson will.

Assuming that Edith gets to keep the publishing house, what is to prevent her from running that business, continuing her writing career, and doing all of that while acknowledging openly that she is a single, indeed unwed, mother?  She apparently is the beneficiary of a trust fund, so between her own funds and the income from the publishing house, she doesn’t have to worry about anyone’s opinion.  (I believe publishing was a lucrative business in the 1920s.)  She may not be asked to any fashionable parties, but then she might be just as well off avoiding members of her social class and finding new more bohemian companions.  I have to say that I like Edith’s chances in this situation, and she may agree once she has an opportunity to appraise things away from the constricting if stately confines of Downton.

As a final note, Isis the dog seems to be either ill or pregnant.  The fact that Robert is unconcerned suggests that the situation will soon be dire.  I hope that Robert decides to use the local vet and not some knighted fellow who will leave a path of devastation and mourning behind him.

[1] It’s interesting to note that the commander of Britain’s army in that war was John Churchill, the first Duke of Malborough, an ancestor of both Winston Churchill and Princess Diana.

The secret of comedy is, as everyone knows, .   .   .   .   timing. Just ask Mr. Bricker and Lord Grantham. Had I known last week what Bricker was going to pull this week, I would have saved the joke about the linguist and the maid. As it is, for a topical chuckle on an event that resulted in a rare example of overt physical violence on this show (putting aside World War One), I refer the reader to the footnoted joke that appears in the commentary to Episode Four. And at one time I thought Bricker might be gay! In an idle moment, I pictured him and Barrow together in a seaside cottage somewhere. Instead, he ends up getting cold-cocked by a jealous husband, an earl of the realm no less, and fighting it out with him on the bedroom carpet. The hidden depths of these art historians!

I was curious to see that when Mr. Bricker left, he tipped Carson but not Molesley. I had not noticed anyone tipping Carson before now. I found an article on proper decorum at house parties written in 1922. It said that gentlemen guests should tip the butler, the valet if one was “supplied” and possibly the chauffeur, but no one else. Once again, Molesely draws the short straw. By the way, when the house was preparing for the cocktail party – such a racy event! – there were numerous young fellows rolling up carpets and doing other heavy work. Couldn’t they help polish silver, put away dinnerware and the like so that Molesely doesn’t have to do everything? Where are all these people in between cocktail parties?

The show has been hinting at a Jewish angle for two years, and it appears that things are now getting serious. I expected something a couple of years ago when Cora’s mother (Shirley MacLaine) was a guest at the Abbey. Her name, and therefore Cora’s name before she married, was Levenson. Her husband, deceased, was a furrier in Cincinnati. No other information was supplied. No doubt there are plenty of men named Levenson active in the fur trade who are pillars of their local Presbyterian church, but I wouldn’t bet it that way. In the current season, while Cora is sauntering about the tonier districts of London’s West End with Mr. Bricker, she tells him that her father was Jewish. When she puts it that way, it’s a fair inference that her mother was not.

The writers might have left us with this interesting genealogical footnote, but have instead opened new possibilities through the introduction of a fully Jewish character with the unlikely name of Atticus Aldridge. The two consequences of Mr. Aldridge’s entry into the story are demonstrations, respectively, of Russian anti-Semitism and Rose’s naïveté.

Rose is described as administering to a group of Russian émigrés, but in fact only two have really entered the story: Prince Kuragin, who is the moody fellow with a Violet past (sorry), and Count Rostov, who has lost control of his emotions twice so far. The first occasion was Rose’s tea party at the Abbey, when Rostov lost it under the prodding of Sarah Bunting, who we learned later had been just warming up, preparing for her big moment at the Crawley dinner table. The second incident was in the present episode, when Rostov’s quiet game of chess with Kuragin was interrupted by the presence of Mr. Aldridge. When Rose reports that the ancestors of her new friend were fellow countrymen of Rostov and Kuragin and first left Russia in 1859, Rostov is able to conclude that the rest of the family left Russia in 1871. When this chronology is confirmed, Rostov announces that the Aldridge family is not Russian but Jewish. After this bit of deduction, he flies into a rage and storms away. It’s bad enough that he has to fill his time with chess and tea in an old church in York, but it is more than he can bear to have his peace interrupted by a descendant of those that his own ancestors drove out of his native land.

Russian and Ukrainian anti-Semitism was (is) virulent, violent, and remarkably durable. The Aldridge family, as they are now called, left by way of Odessa after pogroms in 1859 and 1871. The Ukrainians put on another pogrom in 1881. In 1891 the Russian government forcibly removed all Jews living in Moscow (some 200,000 persons) and St. Petersburg (another 2,000) to the “Pale of Settlement” – an area where Jews were at first permitted, later encouraged, then finally required to settle. A new series of even more violent pogroms began in 1903 and continued through 1905. That 1905 pogrom was as much as my great-grandfather was willing to put up with. He left for America and after getting established here, he sent for the rest of his family in 1910. The timing of their emigration had a pattern similar to that of the ancestors of our new friend Atticus, but more compressed as circumstances no doubt dictated.

The Russians and Ukrainians put millions of people in such fear for their physical safety, the security of their homes, and the lives of their families that some two million Jews left Russia between 1880 and 1920 and started all over again in places like Britain, western Europe, and most particularly the United States. I have no doubt that those people, like tens of millions of others who immigrated to the United States at that time, would have gladly contributed to their native country what they ended up contributing to the societies that they joined.

It might have occurred to Rostov that here we have (courtesy of Julian Fellowes) one of history’s little ironies. Rostov and Aldridge have washed up on the same shore via very different routes, and have met through the agency of the same lovely young lady. They have a lot in common despite appearances. It might have been to Rostov’s advantage to explore, or at least leave open, the possibility of a cordial relationship if not more. Not in this episode, and maybe not in this life. When Czar Nicholas II’s ministers informed him of the importance of the military arrangements with Britain that were then being negotiated, the Czar (according to Barbara Tuchman) combined his two favorite prejudices by announcing “An Englishman is a zhid (a Jew).” He agreed to the military arrangements, but he retained both prejudices. Rostov seems to be of the same mind as to one of them.

In the meantime, Rose’s naïveté concerning the relationship between Jews and the wider societies in which they lived is almost staggering. She has not been locked in a convent her entire life; she might figure something out now and again. On the Russian side, she might have heard that Russian pogroms had driven out countless Jews. And on the British side, has it never occurred to her that she really doesn’t run into very many people who are not rich, titled, and in communion with the Church of England? (OK, the Russians are only formerly rich and are Orthodox Christians.) She seems to know two Americans (Cora and Mr. Ross, who let us agree she got to know well enough to kiss), one Catholic (Tom), and now one Jew. (Atticus? That’s really his name?) She is not a candidate for Britain’s Miss Diversity of 1924. So, it seems hopelessly (what’s the word?) jejune for her to blithely spout that after all we’re all just plain English, as if to say what difference does anything else make as long as we all drink tea at 11:00 and 4:00.

Well, I may find her ignorance exasperating but clearly Mr. Aldridge does not. He is entranced not only by her beauty but by the simplicity and purity of her personality. He is going off to London to start a new job, but we find out later, after they part, that his family has just acquired a stately home in the neighborhood – well, the same county – and a title (money and a title – two out of three, only missing on the Church of England connection) so we know that we’ll be seeing more of him.

Meanwhile, Carson and Barrow are each reverting to their worst impulses. Carson is becoming stuffier and more insufferable as each episode unfolds. He doesn’t know anything about investing, but he has to pretend he is an expert because he won’t admit that there is something he doesn’t know. Incidentally, did you notice that Mrs. Patmore asks him if a local builder has gone public (except that like a good Yorkshirewoman she says “pooblic” just as Bunting wishes Daisy good “look” instead of luck)? The expression did not enter the language until mid-century, and even then I doubt that it was immediately on the tongue of country house cooks. I expect that the anachronism was intentional.

Barrow’s course of medication is clearly damaging his health. He is sweating like a draft animal, he has bags under his eyes, and even Violet notices that he looks pallid. But as the outer man deteriorates, the inner man retains his bitter sarcasm and his habit of retailing the most damaging gossip. Those around him who are not annoyed are instead offended. It’s hard to see this ending well for Mr. Barrow.

I know that I occasionally miss points of detail in the plot, but I was truly surprised to learn that Anna had been in London on the day of Mr. Green’s death. Unless the writers added this point after the fact in order to make her a more realistic murder suspect, I just missed it completely when Green died. Now that Anna has no alibi, it seems a racing certainty that she is going to be charged. When are these English police going to get one right, finally?

I would like to say that Mr. Blake is a very clever and patient fellow and I think he has hatched an excellent plan. He and Mary clearly bonded in the pig sty and I think she will soon come to see that sending him away was not a good move. He knows that he has to get rid of Gillingham and the best way to do that is to lure him away to his first love, the fabulously wealthy heiress Lane Fox. He also knows that Miss Fox is someone too intelligent to be manipulated through subtlety, so he manipulates her openly by telling her his plan. The fact that her reaction was to leave the manger à trois in a huff demonstrates that Mr. Blake’s spell is already taking hold. If she had said “Don’t be ridiculous” and then dug into a hearty plate of roasted beef, that would have signaled that she had no further interest. Her hasty departure tells us that Blake has touched a nerve and she will come around in time. By the time Gillingham leaves Mary for the third and last time, Blake will be flavor of the month.

I have a plea to make to Tom. Please, Tom, do not go running after Sarah Bunting. If you look, you are sure to find another companionable socialist in the neighborhood, one that can get along with the Crawley family and at the same time work toward the complete rearrangement of society.

Just a final word about Edith. It looks like she is going to kidnap Marigold (on the advice of her aunt and her grandmother) and then install the child somewhere in London. Aunt and grandmother strongly prefer France, where we learn that there are numerous boarding schools that cater to children born to wealthy but unmarried parents. The London arrangement will allow Edith to play some kind of role in Marigold’s life beyond a couple of visits a year, which is the most to be expected of the French arrangement. Couldn’t all of these problems, both logistical and emotional, be resolved if Edith just told the truth and claimed Marigold as her own child? Of course that would fly in the face of convention and would be a terrible shock to family and friends. It would lead to gossip and the occasional nasty comment face to face. But the family and friends would get over the shock and the scandal would ultimately fade. A lot of the plot of this show is the result of tension between what the characters want and what convention demands of them, so the cleanest solution of Edith’s problem may not contribute to the telling of the tale. I expect that Edith’s and Marigold’s story will come out eventually, but in droplets as with so many other Downton developments.

I apologize that I am posting this comment a full week after the show aired. I think I could produce at a faster pace if there were something actually, you know, happening on this show.

Sometimes you can tell who is watching a show by studying the commercials.  At least that information can tell you what the advertisers think about who is in the audience.  This insight sometimes sends a feeling of ice through my spine when a program I am enjoying breaks for commercial and they start selling catheters or adult diapers.

But that won’t help us figure out who is watching Downton Abbey because the show is on commercial-free PBS.  The only ads are for those Viking Cruises, which have a limited market at best, and Ralph Lauren, someone whose work was as well-known before the series began as it is now.  Perhaps the script can give us some clues.  But in that case, I wonder whether anyone below the age of about 60 is tuning in to any of this.  Romance seems to be in full bloom for the senior set and for almost no one else.

Lord Merton makes his pitch to Isobel, who was inclined to say No until he got to the heart-felt end of his proposal.  Now she will think about it.  Prince Kuragin has let Violet know that he is willing and available.  Without committing herself, she is going to use her connections to find out whether the Princess is still alive and kicking.  Really, Shrimpy dropped in at the perfect moment and he is able to report later that Princess Kuragin is getting by in Hong Kong.  If she was at some point working the night shift to earn a few pounds, we may presume that at her age she is retired or has found another occupation.  The Kuragins, and Shrimpy himself, paid-up members of the elder generation, give us a view of the other side of the coin, when love among the ruins is itself in ruins.

We move to the next younger generation and find that people are at least making an effort, even if they are not quite up to the exertions of their elders.  Mr. Bricker can contain himself no longer and declares his admiration, if not his love, for Lady Cora.  I thought he played for the other team, but it turns out he doesn’t.  Sue me.  Lord Grantham for once has things figured out and seems to be in a good tactical position to head Bricker off, standing between him and Cora as they view the house della Francesca, but he fails to realize the weakness of his wider strategy.  He is still finding new ways to alienate Cora.  I can’t imagine that Cora is going to stray very far, but then how many of us thought that Violet had a past?

When we get to the generation where love should be in full bloom, everything is in shambles.  Mary gives Lord Gillingham his walking papers, but he refuses to accept them.  In the background, I can hear Neil Sedaka singing “Breaking Up Is Hard to Do”.  There is a Seinfeld episode where George wants to break up with a woman who for unaccountable reasons wants to keep the relationship going.  He says it’s like firing a nuclear missile.  You both have to turn the key.  Gillingham is not for turning.

Edith’s position is even more hopeless.  Margie Drewe slams the door in Edith’s face when she tries to visit Marigold, and then Edith learns from someone at the Times that they may soon have news of Mr. Gregson.  If Gregson indeed ran afoul of those Brown Shirts (something I speculated about last season), the news may not be good.  Edith seems to attract bad luck the way trailer parks attract tornadoes.  Unless the writers are in a particularly generous mood, I begin to lose hope for Mr. Gregson’s safe return.

If we look at a snapshot of Tom’s situation, it is superficially more hopeful than that of his two sisters-in-law.  He and Sarah Bunting make a fine looking couple, and it’s nice that their political views are compatible.  All is well until she starts to speak, which unfortunately occurs far too often for the comfort and ease of those around her.  I commented last week that she lacks the British sense of fair play, and that point is further demonstrated this week at the dinner table.  Lord Grantham commits the blunder of having Mrs. Patmore and – what was her name?? – Daisy brought up from the scullery to answer questions about Daisy’s education under the direction of Miss Bunting.  A trial lawyer would have told him (and his mother did tell him) not to ask a question unless he already knows the answer, but Robert, the master of his own house and an Earl of the realm, is so confident of his position that he would not listen to this sound advice.

Robert handles the ensuing predictable humiliation with grace.  He admits he was wrong and is glad, or at least generously says he is glad, that things are going well for Daisy.  All Bunting has to do is remain silent to see her stock on the Downton Exchange rise to its par value (I doubt it would ever go higher), but she can’t resist kicking a class enemy when he’s down.  She gloats, Robert explodes, and now poor Tom’s position is rendered even more doubtful than it was before, as he will be further removed (at least when he is present at the Abbey) from someone who helps him to stay in touch with his humble origins and his hopes for a better world.  When Tom, Robert, and Mary go out to view the housing site, Tom hints strongly that his relationship with Bunting is under further review.

So, in the world of Downton Abbey, Cupid’s arrows are reserved for those he first struck decades ago.  Perhaps Mr. Fellowes has determined that he is not dealing with an under-served audience of youths below the age of 60, and plans to go on spinning the romantic tales of those who walk on three legs.

A thought occurred to me about hats.  Early in the episode, we are at lunch at the Abbey.  Violet is sitting at the table wearing an ornate hat.  No other woman sports one.  Everything these people do is governed by elaborate rules.  What was the rule about hats at the table?

As I feared last week, Thomas is using a syringe to inject himself with a wash-away-the-gay remedy.  I have read that various narcotic preparations, including laudanum and heroin, were used in the 1920s for this purpose, without result needless to say.  Using a hypodermic needle under less than sterile conditions is not a recipe for good health, so let us hope that Thomas does not suffer collateral damage while he pursues this course of treatment.  Poor fellow lived at the wrong time.  Today, he could just travel to Minnesota to find a therapist who specializes in these cases.

The police have posted a plainclothes detective outside Lord Gillingham’s residence.  That seems hard to believe, for an investigation into a death that occurred two years ago.  Anna has aroused the suspicion of the detective by entering Lord G’s place to deliver a note and then walking down Piccadilly.  This is one of London’s busiest streets, so her walk is about as suspicious as someone walking down Broadway or Michigan Avenue.  Besides, she was not in London on the fateful day (as far as we know), so it’s hard to see why she should be suspected of anything, let alone charged.  I suppose the police would say I am protesting too much.

Poor Mr. Molesley, whose luck is about as good as Edith’s, is suffering a bout of Sorcerer’s Apprentice Syndrome.  He got what he wanted and finds himself First Footman in one of the grandest houses in Yorkshire.  He is also the only footman, so he ends up having to polish, put away, arrange, and shine everything in sight and then act as valet for every in-law and art dealer (OK, historian) who hops off the train at Downton Station.  It’s all part of Mr. Carson’s clever plan and it works perfectly.  Mr. Molesley asks to be demoted to Footman without Portfolio.  Why this makes Mr. Carson happy is not clear, but it does.  Mr. Carson dispatches Molesley while Carson decants wine using a very elaborate set of devices.  The candle ensures that he can stop pouring the instant any sediment appears at the shoulder of the bottle, while the cradle and the crank allow him to control the rate of flow with great precision.  The cloth above the decanter catches any sediment that somehow gets past the first stage of the process.  No doubt the Abbey’s wines are worthy of such careful treatment.

Under Sarah Bunting’s guidance, Daisy is reading about the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and this has inspired her to assist Mrs. Patmore in her campaign to rehabilitate Archie, the nephew who was shot during the war for deserting his post.  I don’t know what Miss Bunting’s view may be of the Glorious Revolution, but I have been interested to learn that it is an historical event that gives Marxist historians some trouble.  Some of them go to the extreme of denying that it was a revolution at all and insist that it was a foreign invasion.  (You know, those maniacal Dutch were constantly pouring across their borders to invade France, Germany, and Belgium, so why not England?  Except they weren’t.)  Marxists are inclined to view the English Civil War – the conflict in the 1640s that ended with the trial and execution of Charles I that I mentioned briefly last time – as the real revolution in England and in fact many of them use the term English Revolution to refer to what everyone else calls the (English) Civil War.  I expect that a teacher of Bunting’s background, who wanted to instill in Daisy the sense that she is the heir of a radical political tradition, would have started with the regicide of 1649 rather than the constitutional settlement of 1688.

A correction:  Last week I referred to the rescue by the Royal Navy of the Czar’s mother.  I said that her sister was married to George V.  I was off by a generation.  Her sister was the wife of Edward VII, who was George V’s father.  Nicholas II and George V were first cousins; their mothers were sisters.

Last year, the series ran eight episodes.  If the same is to be true of this season, we are half way through.  I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t mind just a little more action in the second half.

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.”

Let’s be honest.  There is not a lot going on this week at the Abbey.  I’m sure there are viewers who could spend hours watching Anna purchase from a judgmental druggist the birth control device that will be a key element in her employer’s upcoming holiday with Lord Gillingham.  I am not one of them.  As a result, my mind wandered.  A few topics grabbed my interest, more for the digressions that they inspired than for their inherent interest.

At dinner, Tom engages in a disagreeable bit of moral equivalence, in my opinion.  Eating at Lord Grantham’s table night after night and listening to him dispense the wisdom that he has acquired from the stone tablets that he keeps in his study would not bring out the best in any of us.  Still, a political commentator once made the point that if one man pushes an old lady into the path of an oncoming bus, and another man pushes an old lady out of the way of an oncoming bus, it is not reasonable to say that they are both the same because, after all, they both push old ladies.  Tom’s equating the English execution of Charles I (1649) to the Soviet liquidation of the Romanov family is a similar equivalence.

One of the charges against Charles, read out at his trial in January 1649, was that he ”hath had a wicked design totally to subvert the ancient and fundamental laws and liberties of this nation, and in their place to introduce an arbitrary and tyrannical government . . . .”:  Among many other faults, Charles had failed to honor the commitments he had made in the Petition of Right in 1628.  The response of Parliament was a revolution in the form of a trial.  If we are comparing regicides, the means by which the indictment was wrung from Parliament would have won the full approval of Vladimir Lenin.  Cromwell could not get the House of Lords to approve the measure, so they were excluded.  Then, a majority of the Commons would not approve, so doubtful members were purged until his supporters formed a majority of the reduced number.  The methods might have been similar to those of the Bolsheviks, but the objective, the purpose behind the act (the reason for pushing the old lady), was to preserve and protect ancient rights and to avoid a tyranny.

The liquidation of the Czar and his family followed a very different pattern.  First of all, Nicholas abdicated in March 1917.  A “Provisional Government” had taken power in February 1917 and when it became clear that Nicholas no longer commanded the confidence of the nation, he abdicated.  The terms of his abdication also applied to his son.  He transferred the throne to his younger brother Michael, who effectively declined, stating that he would accept whatever position the government assigned to him.  The Bolsheviks took power through a violent overthrow of the Provisional Government in November 1917.  Michael died in prison in June 1918 and Nicholas and his family were shot in a basement in Ekaterinburg in July 1918.  In Doctor Zhivago when this news is reported, Zhivago’s father-in-law (a man similar to Robert Crawley in social standing and outlook, but with a more kindly disposition and a less mercurial temperament) asks “What’s it for?”  Zhivago answers that it’s to show that “there is no going back.”  But there was no going back at that point, not to Nicholas anyway.  And it could hardly be said that the Bolshevik’s purpose in eliminating a rival “family” was to preserve the “ancient and fundamental liberties” of the nation.

So, Tom, I realize that it is difficult to sit there while the old fellow rambles on about the latest outrage, but it doesn’t justify moral equivalence.  Not to this viewer, at least.

Now, what about these Russian refugees?  The Czar’s mother remained in Russia throughout the revolution and even after the execution of her son, daughter-in-law, and grandchildren.  She did not want to leave.  In 1919 she was living in the Crimea, in an area not controlled by the Bolsheviks, but under heavy pressure from advancing Red forces.  She was the sister of George V’s wife and the British royals were strongly interested in getting her out.  A British naval vessel evacuated her, numerous relations, and members of her household from Yalta in April 1919.  Many of these people made their way to Malta, as did numerous other destitute members of the Russian nobility, from where they eventually trans-shipped to Britain.  The British made some efforts to keep anyone out who had no financial support, but this was a difficult proposition to maintain to the face of a wartime ally.  During the years immediately after World War One, there would have been a steady flow of well-bred Russians into England.

I haven’t found anything to say, one way or the other, whether any of these people ended up in York so as to be there in time for the lovely Rose to minister to their needs, but there would have been significant numbers of them here and there.  By 1924 what resources they had would have been running out.  So, the presence of Russian refugees in the story is not a complete invention, which I confess was my first thought when hearing about them.

Two of the staff in Downton have seen the inside of a prison (well, three if you count Anna, but she was there visiting Bates).  Both experiences continue to figure in the story.  The Baxter story is being released in droplets, which is the way information is dispensed to family, staff, and audience on this show, but the pace of disclosure is becoming annoying.  There has to be more to Baxter’s tale than she is letting on and my plea to the writers is that they do one of two things.  Either let us, Mr. Molesley, Lady Cora, and the York Daily News know the whole story, or if they prefer, drop it and move on to something else.  Let’s wrap this one up as we all count the spoons.

The police have reopened the investigation into Mr. Green’s run-in with a bus.  An eyewitness has turned up, after some two years!  Whoever it is certainly took his or her time thinking it over before coming forward.  And the method chosen by the York police to advance their inquiry is to call down to the station at Downton Parma or Downton Halt or whatever the local village is called and have the constable talk to the butler at Downton Abbey!  I suppose the writers’ idea is to start small, let the story spread a bit each week.  Just, you know, for a change.  This one will be out in the open about the same time that Baxter’s tale is told in full.  I don’t see Mr. Bates going back to prison, although he and Anna may have to sweat it out for a few episodes.  Of course, if the actor who plays Mr. Bates has been annoying the writers, all bets are off.

Is it possible that Robert has engaged in a subtlety?  He tells Cora to tell Mr. Bricker to stop flirting with Isis!  Surely, Robert knows that Mr. Bricker has been flirting with Cora herself?  And did Mr. Bricker inveigle Mr. Blake into bringing him to the Abbey ostensibly to view the famous painting, when his real objective was Lady Cora?  Or did he come for the painting and stay for the lady?  Or, wheels within wheels, did Mr. Blake talk Mr. Bricker into visiting the Abbey to view the painting so that he, Blake, could see Mary and make his case to her again?  Intricate.

I noticed another small discrepancy involving Miss Bunting.  She is a friend and supporter of working people and hopes that the great experiment then unfolding in Soviet Russia will be a success.  Yet, when she is asked to provide math lessons to Daisy for the fee of half a crown, equal to one-eighth of a pound sterling, Bunting says she’ll do it for five shillings, one-quarter of a pound, twice what Mrs. Patmore was offering!  I truly hope I misheard, but I don’t think I did.  The cost of those lessons is going to take a bite out of the modest wages of a domestic servant.

At the end of Season Four, Mrs. Hughes took Mr. Carson by the hand and led him to the edge of the sea.  With that act, she ended Mr. Carson’s reign as the independent autocrat below Downton’s stairs.  He himself has been slow to realize this fact, but the decision about the war memorial has brought things into focus for him.  He will find it very easy to get along with Mrs. Hughes if he just learns to compromise and to be sure that she has her way in all things.

In the meantime, nothing terribly urgent is going on with Lord Gillingham and Mary, Mary and Mr. Blake, Lord Merton and Isobel, Isobel and Violet, Mr. and Mrs. Drew, Edith and Marigold (I called her Lucy last time, sorry) and the rest of the crew.  When something dramatic happens, there will be time to pick up the various threads that continue to trail behind all of these worthy characters.

The preview suggests that Violet has a Russian episode in her past.  I know we all look forward to hearing more about that!

I like to know where, historically, the story is supposed to be as it progresses.  Sometimes Mr. Fellowes will post the year at the start of an episode, but we opened Sunday with the standard shot of Isis’s . . . tail, which is no help.  We see that Edith’s child is about two and we saw her as an infant in 1922, so we are probably in 1924.  This date is nailed down definitively on our first visit downstairs, where the staff are excited that Ramsay MacDonald has become Prime Minister.  That happened in January 1924.  No doubt the British audience knows this in their bones and don’t need any further indications, but this information is not at the fingertips of most American viewers.  I looked it up.

Britain held a general election in each of the years 1922, 1923, and 1924.  I mentioned the 1922 election in an earlier post.  That election threw Lloyd George (Isobel’s “dear Lloyd George”) out of office and marked the beginning of the end of the Liberal party as a major electoral force.  The Tories won an absolute majority in 1922 but called a general election in late 1923 to seek electoral validation of their policies.  This turned out to be a blunder.  They lost their majority, although they were still the largest party.  The Tories were unable to form a coalition, and in January 1924 the King asked MacDonald to form a government.  He stayed in power until November of that year, when his coalition collapsed and the third election in three years brought the Conservatives back to power.

MacDonald was the first Labor Prime Minister, and most of the staff below stairs are impressed that he was the son of working people.  His father is described online as a crofter, which I understand meant that he was a tenant farmer.  His mother was a maid and was not married[1].  This is not the background from which the Crown had drawn its ministers, so his elevation must have been a dramatic event at the time.  Robert is upset that the head of the government aims to destroy the class to which Robert belongs, while the staff (apart from Carson, who is more royalist than the King) seem cheered that someone is in power who is likely to understand their troubles and their outlook.

So much for the historical context.  Jumping the story ahead by two years must have been a great convenience to the writers.  They avoided an entire round trip to Switzerland for Edith and Aunt Rosalind and the logistical nightmare of moving little Lucy (I may have the name wrong) back to England and to the friendly farm down the road with no one the wiser.  The show’s budget for costumes, props, and location must be out of control.  The additional cost of overtime for the writing crew could have spelled the difference between survival and ruin.  The whole child transfer went off so well that the only problems remaining are tangential – Edith is spending so much time on the farm to be near the child that the Missus is becoming worried that Edith is making a play for Tim, the man of the house.  There’s also the problem that Edith is tied up in knots over the loss of Michael Gregson and the might-have-been domestic life she could be sharing right now with him and their child.  So upset is she that she throws a book with his name on the fly-leaf into the fire, with nearly fatal results.  Let’s come back to those in a moment.

In an earlier note I complained that James (Jimmy to his friends) was inconsistent in his attitude toward travel abroad.  He came to Downton originally because his employer wanted to live in France for a while and he claimed not to like French food.  (This is a view that any sensible person would take who had access to the output of Mrs. Patmore’s kitchen.)  But when Robert took Thomas as his valet on the trip to America, James expressed the wish that he could go.  Turns out it wasn’t the food after all, and I owe Mr. Fellowes an apology.  James was trying to avoid the advances of his employer.  In this episode we located the outer boundary of his resistance.  And the overtime pay that was saved on the writers was available to compensate Jimmy for his work after hours.

And in those overtime efforts, he was ably assisted by Thomas Barrow, who has sublimated his attraction to Jimmy in a very surprising manner.  It isn’t every frustrated lover who is willing to stand guard in the hallway while the object of his attraction is consorting with the competition.  It’s very generous of Thomas to decide that if he can’t have an illicit affair with Jimmy, he will facilitate Jimmy’s illicit affair with someone else.

Barrow’s altruism is part of a very pretty piece of plotting.  While Barrow is standing guard, just down the hall, Edith has thrown Mr. Gregson’s book into the fire.  I didn’t realize it until it was pointed out to me (by someone who had had it pointed out to her) that it was the force of that thrown book that dislodged a burning log that in turn set Edith’s room ablaze.  If Thomas hadn’t been in the gallery standing guard, Edith would have died in the flames.  But, because Thomas was there, he was able to save Edith and to raise the hue and cry that brought Lord Grantham to the front line to fight the fire.  But Lord Grantham not only organized the initial response to the fire.  He also threw open the doors to the rooms of his sleeping family and guests including dear Lady Anstruther, who had her own private fire going when Lord Grantham broke in to announce the one he was interested in.

It was wonderful that the local volunteer fire department was able to control the blaze.  But how many houses in the vicinity have burned to their foundations while these good yeomen put on their uniforms, complete with bronze helmets?  Never one to let a good plot twist go to waste, Mr. Fellowes is able to use a quiet post-fire moment to allow Tim, the local farmer, pig man, and foster parent, who of course leads the volunteer fire brigade in addition to his numerous other local responsibilities, to have a quiet word with Edith about her child.  In stories of this kind farmers are fonts of great wisdom, but only those who have been at it for a long time, such as Mr. Mason (Daisy’s father-in-law) or Edith’s man, can boil their wisdom down to plain spoken Proverb-like morsels.  He tells Edith “We must find a way for you to live the truth without telling the truth.”  That is very nicely put, the English language at its plain and simple best.  The previews tell us that the next episode will reveal how this wisdom is to be put into action.

Note, meanwhile, that before Edith threw the book into the fire, she removed the picture of her child and placed it under her pillow.  Do you think, gentle reader, that the photo was consumed in the flames, or did it somehow survive the fiery furnace that had been Edith’s room on that cold night?

I continue to focus on plot elements that don’t appear to make sense.  For example, Lord Gillingham is back competing for Mary’s hand.  When we last saw him, he was going to marry the heiress of the year.  That was after telling Mary to take her time, and then telling her in the next episode that he needed an answer right away.  The answer was No, he went away, and now he’s back without further explanation.  And Mr. Blake?  Things were going splendidly between him and Mary and now she is prepared to take batting practice with Lord Gillingham without a thought for Mr. B.  Would it be asking too much to just give the audience an explanation?

Or take the Baxter-Barrow-Cora situation.  Baxter confesses her past sin to Cora in order to pre-empt Barrow, whose frustration with the maid’s failure to report gossip does not result in the sublimated altruism that characterizes his relationship with James.  Baxter gets the classic Barrow treatment: browbeating, threats, and revenge.  Baxter’s confession to Cora is incomplete.  She never tells why she stole the bracelets, what she did with them, or why she didn’t return them.  Cora is very kind to consider keeping Baxter on, but is it really believable that someone in Cora’s position, the owner of a considerable amount of valuable jewelry, would consider keeping Baxter on without knowing the entire story?  Why is Cora willing to accept such an incomplete account?  And just because Cora is willing to accept a half-cocked story, why does the audience have to suffer?  How about a little more consideration for the viewers?

As a final incongruity, let’s consider the behavior of one Sarah Bunting.  She receives an invitation to dinner and goes to great pains to make sure that the invitation comes with the blessing of her host.  She is led to believe that it does, when in fact Cora has given her approval without any great enthusiasm and Robert was not consulted.  He would have preferred to have her tied to a stake in the village square.  However, Sarah has demonstrated a concern for proper decorum.  She arrives as a guest and Robert makes the minimal effort required by his code to be civil.  But Miss Bunting, so concerned with the proprieties prior to her arrival, becomes a boor once she is inside.  She insults a guest and then, at dinner, goes out of her way to embarrass her host about the chairmanship of the memorial committee.  Fortunately, Carson is able to save the day, but that doesn’t excuse Miss Bunting’s lack of courtesy.  I think Tom may have to reconsider.  Again, I think the audience deserves an explanation for this hairpin turn in the matter of manners.

There was so much else going on – Violet and her merry war with Isobel; Daisy and her difficulties with math; Mary’s growing confidence managing the estate; the poor Doctor’s inability to obtain tea or cake from Violet’s butler.  And let us acknowledge the continuing absence of Mr. Gregson, sorely missed by Edith, and Mr. Napier, who may yet return to say a few words.

Perhaps these worthy gentlemen will play a part in next week’s episode.

Until then.

[1] And yet the expression “He may be a bastard, but he’s our bastard” originated in America.

Is there a food more delicious, more enjoyable than grilled steak?  One of the joys of steak is that the complex, robust flavors are the result of a cooking method so primal, so simple.

To say that something is simple is not to say that it is easy.  So it is with steak.  There is nothing complicated about cooking a perfect steak, but it isn’t easy.  At least it isn’t easy to find one.  In the last few years, I have had what I considered perfectly cooked steaks in three places: Canlis Restaurant (Seattle), the Buenos Aires Grill (Seattle), my house.

Why has such a simple thing become so difficult?

I have eaten steaks at national chains and local chains, neighborhood restaurants and downtown restaurants.  The results are always disappointing, except for the places I mentioned.

One national chain puts so much pepper on their steaks, you taste nothing but pepper.  Many classically trained chefs do the same.  I cannot think why they do it.  You can’t taste the meat, you can’t taste the wine, you might as well be eating chili.  Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, naturally, but my opinion is that the flavor of black pepper and the flavor of grilled rare beef do not combine to the advantage of either.

I have been served steak at a heavily advertised, locally well-known chain.  The poor innocent steak had an exterior that had become carbon.  This is a place where the waiter comes by to shine a flashlight on the nice dark pink interior of the steak, but it’s the charred exterior that renders the steak inedible.

I went to a grilling class south of Seattle where the instructors, supposedly famous for their art, showed us how to grill four different types of steak, none of which would have been worthy of an Applebee’s.

I have eaten too many ruined steaks and most of the ones that were ruined suffered from over-complication.

I eat a steak perhaps once a month, maybe every six weeks.  I want the experience to be memorable.  I no longer take my chances on a steakhouse or a restaurant, outside of the two I mentioned.  Here’s what I do.

First, I buy only U.S. prime beef.  You can get prime tenderloin steaks at Costco for the price of supermarket choice steaks.  If you find the price is too high, buy the package anyway and just eat the steaks less often, every two months, say, instead of every month.  They come in a pack of four.  Grill one now and freeze the rest.

Another option, buy Costco prime sirloin steaks.  They also come in a package of four and are an outrageously good value for money.

Second, I bring the steaks to nearly room temperature.  If your steak is frozen, transfer it to the refrigerator at least 36 hours before meal time.  48 would be better.  Two hours before meal time, take the steak out of the refrigerator.  Take out a dinner plate and put a cooling rack on it.  Pat the steak dry with paper towels.  Put the steak on the rack.  Sprinkle it with Kosher salt.  Don’t use any other kind of salt.  The salt should mostly cover the surface of the steak, like snow that is just beginning to stick to pavement.  Rub it in gently so it adheres.  Turn the steak over and do the same on the other side.

Now leave the steak alone.  Don’t touch it again until you put it on the grill.  Notice, please, no marinades, no rubs, no pepper, no seasoning or spice of any kind.  Just a generous sprinkling of Kosher salt.

I use a gas grill.  If you are a charcoal purist, you probably have not read this far anyway.  I turn the grill on to high about 25 to 30 minutes before cooking starts.  I want the grill to be as hot as I can get it.  After perhaps 15 minutes, I lubricate the grill with oil.  I use peanut oil, but I doubt that the type of oil matters.  Before Christmas 2014, I put the oil in a bowl, folded two paper towels up to form a wad, and used tongs to dip the wad into the oil.  Then I gently rubbed the grill.  The problem is, if you rub too hard, the paper towel will shred, which does not advance our cause.  For Christmas, my daughter Amy gave me a little grill mop that can be dipped in a bowl of oil so that the grill can be lubricated without bothering with paper towels.  This is a great idea.

A tenderloin steak, 1-3/4 inches thick that has been treated this way can be put on the grill for 3-1/2 minutes a side for very rare, 4-1/2 minutes a side for medium rare.  If you want pretty grill marks (and who doesn’t) put the steak on the grill at a 45 degree angle, with the ends pointing northeast and southwest.  Divide the cooking time for the first side of the steak in half.  At the half-way point, turn the steak 90 degrees so the ends are pointing northwest and southeast.  You’ll get lovely diamond shaped grill marks.  No need to repeat this for the second side, because no one is going to see that side.

When the steak comes off the grill, put it on a cutting board and leave it alone for five minutes.  Do not touch it, do not cut into it.  After five minutes, admire the steak, make sure your fellow diners admire the steak, then slice it.  Cut against the grain, at about a 30 degree angle to the cutting board, cutting slices perhaps 3/8 of an inch thick.  The slices make a better presentation on the plate than one big slab of meat, no matter how perfectly it has been cooked.

What about accompaniments, you ask?  I have two ideas involving mushrooms.  The first is very simple.  Roughly dice an onion and cook it in some olive oil on low heat until the onions are very brown, perhaps 45 minutes.  Then add a tablespoon or more of butter and a half pound of sliced mushrooms.  Increase the heat slightly and cook until the mushrooms are fully softened, perhaps ten minutes more.  This can be held over very low heat until the steak is ready, as long as you stir it now and again.

A second idea requires that you have beef stock available.  Sauté one-half pound of sliced mushrooms in 1-1/2 tablespoons of olive oil and 1-1/2 tablespoons of butter over medium heat.  You want to get these guys fairly brown.  Julia Child’s technique works perfectly.  Set aside.  In a separate saucepan, melt 1Tb of butter.  After it is done foaming, add 1 Tb of flour (I often add 1tsp more).  Make a nice dark roux.  Add a cup of stock, but have more available to keep thinning the sauce as it cooks.  You want to end up with a moderately thick sauce.  Five minutes before serving time (while the steak is resting) add the mushrooms and stir the whole lovely thing together.

Either of these would make a nice side dish.  I have not gone into timing, but I’ll note that if you are going to make one of these mushroom side dishes, you need to start while the steak is coming to room temperature.

Also, in the produce area of the supermarket, I have seen stalks, stems, roots, leaves and the like in various colors.  I understand that the people who eat them call them vegetables.  I suppose you could try one of those.

It is December 29, Downton Abbey is going to start up again in just a few days, and my intentions of writing on other subjects have become paving stones on a path to . . ..  Well, there is still time for one or two small efforts to break the gravitational pull that Downton has on me.  How about a travel note?

Last year, my wife Margy and I met up in northern Vermont with our two younger children and their fiancées (now spouses).  The plan was to explore the local towns, sample a country market or two, and hike to the top of a hill called Camel’s Hump.  A couple of years ago, Margy and I had done a backpacking trip in the mountains of eastern Switzerland, in an area known as Appenzell.  I figured we could handle anything that Vermont could throw at us.

There is an interesting difference between the ways the Swiss and the Vermonters view a hill or a mountain.  If the Swiss plan to run a train over a hill, they think in straight lines.  They will either run a tunnel straight through the mountain, which is their favorite method, or if they are in a particularly adventurous mood, they will run a cog railway straight to the top.  On an earlier trip, we had taken the cog railway to the top of Mt. Pilatus, not far from the Swiss town of Lucerne.  It is the steepest rail line in the world.  The Swiss have placed signs along the side of the line to inform passengers of the angle at which they are ascending.  They do this to help you enjoy the trip as you try to avoid whiplash while being thrown back in your seat.  At one point, you are ascending at an angle of 48 degrees.  They would have made it steeper had the terrain required it.

But if the Swiss are building a hiking trail over a hill, they don’t think in straight lines.  In their sober, sensible Swiss way, they build switchbacks.  The hiker is still climbing up a steep hill, but the climb is broken into many more steps and becomes manageable, particularly as the many turns provide a place where a hiker’s attention can be drawn away from the physical effort of the ascent to the beauty of the Swiss countryside as it gradually falls away.

The good people of Vermont take a different approach to a hiking trail over a mountain.  They just go straight up and down.  Rocks the size of cottages are no obstacle.  The path just goes right over them.  The view at the top of Camel’s Hump is definitely worth the effort.  We saw splashes of fall color in every direction for miles, but by the time we got back to the bottom I was as tired and as dehydrated as I have ever been.  My leg muscles were twitching, screaming for relief.  It took us six hours to go five miles!

Hiking through an area allows for moments that reveal the character of a place in a way that faster, and I might say more comfortable, modes of travel do not permit.  For example, on our Vermont hike, my son was wearing a University of Washington baseball hat, with a big W on the front.  As we were descending, we passed a group of locals who were going up.  They asked “Did you go to Williams?”  It took us a moment to connect the W.  We had to tell them that it stood for Washington, and we would demolish them in football if the two teams ever played.  It was clear that they were impressed.

The trip down from the top of Mount Pilatus in Switzerland was more leisurely – because we weren’t fighting for our lives as we clambered over the collection of outsized Vermont boulders that passes for a hiking trail in that state.  If the trip up Mt. Pilatus introduces the Swiss fascination, or mania, with trains, the trip down opens wider vistas into the Swiss mind.  You start the trip down by taking a funicular car that goes from the summit to a level area about a third of the way down the mountain.  The Swiss mountains are covered with these things.  It is almost as much a part of their transportation culture as the train.

The first phase of the descent introduces the Swiss love of order and the constant consideration that they show for travelers.  The car holds 75 people.  You enter a waiting area by passing through a turnstile.  There is an electronic reader-board hanging above the waiting area that tells you how many places are still available on the next car and when it is due to arrive.  The counter decreases by one every time someone passes through the turnstile.  That way, you know whether you will make the next car or, if you are going to miss it, how long you will be waiting.

After a brisk descent, you exit the car, and you can continue down by taking a smaller funicular or you can wander around first.  We wandered around into a heavily wooded hillside that was covered with thousands of wild blueberry bushes.  Swiss were spread out on the hillside, each person quietly huddled over a number of bushes, filling canvas shoulder sacks with fresh wild blueberries.  Margy and I stopped and ate a few handfuls of these delicious fruits.  I wondered if the natives would resent us outsiders eating their blueberries.  My sense was that they were bemused by our amateur approach to berry picking, evidenced by the lack of a proper sack, and overlooked our status as interlopers.  I think the Swiss sense is that it is not done to wander through the woods eating a few berries.  The proper thing is to make a day of it, bring home several sacks full of berries, and then produce something with them – jam, a pie, perhaps a blueberry stuffed wild boar.

We wandered about some more and ran into a high school class out for a day in the hills.  It turned out they were lost!  Verloren!  Even more surprising to me was that only their teacher spoke English.  In Zurich, everyone speaks English.  The check-out clerks in the grocery stores are multilingual and speak unaccented English.  But just a few miles outside Lucerne, you need to speak German (Swiss-style German anyway) to get by.  How bad did the luck of these students have to be to get lost on Mt. Pilatus and to have to seek help from some wandering Americans?  We knew the way to the downhill funicular and I stood in the path to show them the turning that would see them home, all 200 of them.  Each one gave me a hearty “Guten Tag” as they walked by and I returned their greetings, even as my throat dried up and my voice became progressively overworked, right up to the last Guten Tag I had in me.

A little further on, we found a metal half-pipe track dug into the hillside.  A tow rope on the side of this installation allowed customers, mostly Swiss youth in their early teens, to ascend the hill in bobsled-shaped wheeled vehicles that had a single bar in front that provided controls for braking and steering.  After the rope tow brought the car and accompanying youth to the top of the hill, another mechanism pulled the vehicle to the top of the track and sent the youth, the car, and the minimal on board controls on a fun-filled ride down the hill.

As we were walking past this activity, I heard a kid, a boy maybe eight years old, pleading with his parents to let him go on the ride.  They were highly reluctant.  Everyone was speaking English, the parents with a Caribbean accent (I correctly guessed Jamaican), the kid speaking like a U.S. kid.  The parents had emigrated from Jamaica to Florida, we learned.  The kid was a Florida native.  As the parents explained that the ride looked too dangerous, the kid countered that if he got hurt, they could sue the company that owned the ride.  The four adults thought that was pretty funny, that the kid knew all about suing people.

Two more funiculars, each one progressively smaller, take you to the wheelhouse at the bottom of the hill, a hundred feet or so above a suburban thoroughfare that leads back to Lucerne.  A steep curved street leads the traveler to a convenient bus stop.  There are signs at every turn pointing you in the correct direction.  You can’t get lost – unlike those high school kids, who may still be up on that mountain for all I know.

The buses run every ten minutes and before you know it you are back in Lucerne, ready for a beer.

The Great Seal of the United States contains the Latin expression: Novus Ordo Seclorum.  A new order for the ages.  That new order began on July 4, 1776, the date that marks the first time in human history that one people founded a nation upon the principle that all human beings are equal.  The event is not without its curiosities.

July 2, 1776 might have been the national birthday.  On that date, the Continental Congress adopted a resolution that had been proposed on June 7 by Richard Henry Lee of Virginia:

Resolved, that these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved.

Independence had been enacted.  John Adams, an early advocate for independence, thought the act of July 2 accomplished his purpose. The next day he wrote to his wife Abigail, who was home in Massachusetts:

The Second Day of July 1776, will be the most memorable Epocha, in the History of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more. You will think me transported with Enthusiasm but I am not. I am well aware of the Toil and Blood and Treasure, that it will cost Us to maintain this Declaration, and support and defend these States. Yet through all the Gloom I can see the Rays of ravishing Light and Glory. I can see that the End is more than worth all the Means. And that Posterity will tryumph in that Days Transaction, even altho We should rue it, which I trust in God We shall not.

It’s easy to make fun of Adams for predicting the wrong date for the national birthday, but he was prescient apart from the date.  There has been, every year since 1776, a great “anniversary Festival” and it does resound, with our American love of fireworks and public festivals, from one end of the continent to the other.  And, there has been something worth celebrating.

Independence was enacted on July 2, but not yet declared.  So, one curiosity is why Adams wrote his letter on July 3 and not July 5.  He knew the content of the Declaration.  He was one of the committee of five that had been deputed to work up the document.  He had reviewed it with the other members of the committee, including Benjamin Franklin and the drafter Thomas Jefferson and had presented it to Congress.  Congress began editing the document on the afternoon of July 2 and had not finished at the time Adams was writing his letter to Abigail.

The editorial process ended on July 4 with the decision to publish the document.  This was not the first time in history that a significant, indeed a monumental, political action was marked by the publication of a legal document.  English history is punctuated by such documents, such as Magna Carta and the Petition of Right.  Yet I don’t believe that any of these is commemorated by a holiday.  Similarly, the French Revolution produced the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, yet the event that is celebrated in France to commemorate their revolution is the storming of the Bastille, not the adoption of their declaration.

The Declaration of Independence occupies the place it does in American history and in American minds and hearts because it contains the clearest, most elegant, most incisive statement ever made in support of the proposition that all human beings are equal:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Another curiosity is that the first truth cited is self-evident but not obvious.  Select any human attribute; no two people are equally endowed in their share of it.  The countless talents that humans may possess or lack are unequally distributed.  We are unequal in strength, intelligence, appearance, athletic ability, or any other quality that can be observed or measured.  Because every quality that is capable of being measured or assessed is also one in which individual humans will vary, it is impossible that the self-evident truth of human equality is meant to apply to those observable features of our lives.

It is obvious that slavery or any other system of tyranny is inconsistent with the principles of the Declaration.  In the early days of the American republic, the accepted wisdom was that the institution of slavery was inconsistent with the Declaration and would be removed as quickly as circumstances would permit.  By the 1850s, supporters of the institution saw it as a “positive good” and intended it to become permanent.  They adopted two different strategies for dealing with the tension between their position on slavery and the text of the Declaration.  One U.S. Senator (John Pettit, D – Indiana) claimed that the Declaration’s statement on human equality was a “self-evident lie” while another (Stephen A. Douglas, D – Illinois) claimed that it was intended to apply only to the white British residents of North America at the time the Declaration was adopted and to their descendants.

This kind of unseemly wriggling on the part of its critics is a testament to the power of the ideas in this excerpt from the Declaration.  As Abraham Lincoln replied to Douglas, the Declaration means just what it says and applies to all human beings at all times.  It is a statement of moral purpose, not a summation of observations.  We don’t earn our way to equality, we don’t have to be the member of any group, class, or interest to qualify.  Each of us achieves equal status with every other individual by virtue of our standing as humans.  No evidence is needed and no further evidence could affect this conclusion, which is why the Declaration identifies this truth as self-evident.

And every other statement in the second paragraph of the Declaration follows logically from the first statement.  As equals, we each own our lives and the fruits of our labors.  It is impossible to enjoy these rights without the support of our neighbors, just as it is impossible for them to enjoy their rights without assistance from us.  If we are all equal, then I have no right to govern you without your consent and you have no right to govern me without mine.  Further, we can measure the health of any government by how well it preserves, protects, and defends the equal rights of the citizens whose consent it has received.  When the health of any government, the measure of the protection that it offers, falls below a level deemed acceptable by the governed, they reserve at all times the right to remake their government to restore the state of health – the level of protection of their rights – that logic and reason tell them they have the right to require.  If you grant that all humans are equal, you cannot deny the equally self-evident consequences.

A further curiosity, rising to the level of paradox, is that the finest statement ever made in support of human equality was written by a man who owned slaves.  Patrick Henry, who could speechify himself into a fury, declaimed “Give me liberty, or give me death.”  Yet, he owned slaves at the moment he made that statement.  At least he recognized the hypocrisy of his position.  His defense was that he knew it was wrong, but he could not bring himself to live without the comforts that slavery (of others) provided him.  Not much of a defense.  The response of the typical Virginia aristocrat to this philosophical tension was to expunge the sin by freeing his slaves at his death.  Unlike many of his social class, Jefferson left his slaves as property to his descendants.  None of us can live up to our highest principles at every moment of every day our lives, so let us not judge harshly.  And history is exacting some revenge on Mr. Jefferson’s reputation.  If you tour Monticello, you will find that the docents adopt an extraordinarily harsh treatment of Jefferson’s views on slavery, holding that even his opposition to the slave trade was nothing more than a self-serving attempt to keep prices of slaves high by limiting supply.  I think they have gone overboard in their criticism, but he might have done more during his life to forestall it.

The paradoxical facts of Jefferson’s biography don’t affect the validity of his statement.  Perhaps even at the moment he wrote those words, he had unexpressed doubts about the application of his principles to his own circumstances.  In fairness, I should note that later sections of his draft contained strong anti-slavery language that was removed by Congress.  Jefferson is said to have been angered up to the day he died by the impudence of his Congressional editors.  Whatever his personal views may have been, the principles he enunciated with such clarity stand, as Lincoln noted, as a rebuke for all time to anyone who claims a right to govern others without their consent.

Which brings me to the last of the curiosities that have occurred to me this July 4.  In Washington, D.C., five great architectural monuments are laid out on two lines that intersect at right angles at the Washington Monument.  The National Mall runs west from the Capitol through the Washington Monument to the Lincoln Memorial.  Another line runs from the White House south through the Washington Monument to the fifth site, the Jefferson Memorial.  It was the last to be built and was dedicated on April 13, 1943.  Jefferson’s birthdate was April 13, 1743.  At the time the memorial was planned, constructed, and dedicated, the federal government was as powerful as it had ever been to that time.  For the past 14 years, the government had been intervening in the American economy in ways that would have been unimaginable to previous generations.  When the nation went to war in 1941, the extraordinary powers thought necessary to win the war were added to those that had already been exercised.  The memorial was planned by officials who had proven to be remarkably comfortable in the exercise of power and confident in their ability to exercise it well.

But the exercise of power is not legitimate if it is performed without the consent of the governed.  If those who exercise power illegitimately do so out of good motives, that is preferable to those occasions, unfortunately far more numerous, when the motives are bad, but it is better still not to exercise power except with the consent of the governed.  And that consent can only be granted through the use of language, through precise constructions aimed at ensuring that when power is exercised, it is held within the constraints that the terms of consent have established.  The governing class of 1943 was not happy with these constraints.  They shortened Jefferson’s elegant statement, to remove references to the concept they found so inconvenient.  This is the portion of the famous paragraph that appears in the Jefferson Memorial:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men.

Other statements from later parts of the Declaration are appended – it wasn’t a question of running out of space – but the statement about consent was excised.  The final curiosity – the final one that I have the patience to write about today – is that the author of the clearest statement ever written on human equality, a man who hated to have his work edited, suffered, on the 200^th anniversary of his birth and at the hands of the government he helped to found, the most egregious editorial treatment his work had received since the day Congress authorized its publication on July 4, 1776.