I am writing this as a free service to the cell phone using public.  Wherever I go, I see people whispering into their cells phones, cupping their hands over their mouths and the device to avoid having their conversations intrude on the people around them.  It’s a nice gesture, but it’s completely unnecessary!

Most people who use cells phones don’t seem to realize that when you use one of these devices, a cone of silence descends over you.  You can talk as loud as you want about all of the trivial events of your life, and all the trivial events in the lives of your friends and relatives, without bothering anyone around you.  No one can hear you when you talk on a cell phone.  Just let yourself go!

I just think it’s so sad that the great majority of cell phone users don’t seem to get this.  There is no need to go into a corner and mumble into your phone.  You’re on a bus?  Just talk away at full volume.  On a street corner, in a restaurant, at an airport?  Same thing.  The rest of us can’t hear you.

I know it is not going to be easy for a lot of you to make the transition.  Best advice is to start slowly and build up your volume, length of call, and vacuity of subject matter slowly.  In a week, you’ll have the hang of it and you’ll be talking at full volume while you are sitting in public places, standing in line, or walking through malls.

And it won’t bother anyone, because of the cone of silence.  We can’t hear you!

Now that Season Four has come to an end, I wonder how it will look to us later, when the series itself comes to an end.  I picture Season 17 closing with the family attending the reception following the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1952.  The coronation itself was nearly ruined when it was learned that a compromising photograph had been taken by a rogue journalist.  Fortunately, young Mister Bates (do I get credit for avoiding a tasteless pun?) was able to remove the negative from the offending camera without anyone noticing, while the rest of the family distracted the photographer with a raucous puppet show.  Someone said history does not repeat itself, but it rhymes.

I wonder if, after we have fully digested the meaning of this season, we will see the critical events as the coordinated rise of Isis and fall of Mr. Napier.  We began the season with Isis missing in action, and she failed to appear in the first couple of episodes.  Eventually she turned up in the drawing room.  In the climactic episode, she was featured as part of the company that made its way from Downton to London after the rest of the establishment had settled in.  In contrast, Mr. Napier re-entered the story early and forcefully as an important government official and as a suitor for Mary’s hand.  His star gradually dimmed and in the last episode, he did not even appear, except in a condescending reference.  To make the point to Gillingham that her future prospects covered a wide field, Mary offered Napier as an absurd example of who might end up as her future husband once she starts accepting applications in earnest.  I picture a graph showing the crossing lines of the relative status of Isis and Napier, looking like a demand curve in an economics textbook.

I can tell that no one is buying this.  All right, let’s consider some other aspects of this season-ending episode.  There was no particular need to bring the future Edward VIII into the story as a character, except to lend more interest to the shenanigans associated with retrieving his letter.  I was curious about the historical accuracy of the story’s treatment of the prince.  I thought I recognized the name of his lady friend, and learned that there really was someone named Freda Dudley Ward.  She was born in 1894 and did not turn in her ticket until 1983.  It seems to have been common knowledge that she and Edward (she called him “David” but we are not on such close terms with him) had a sexual relationship from 1918 to 1923, so it would have ended later in the year in which Episode 8’s events occurred.  They remained friends until 1934 and she appears to have had something to do with introducing him to Wallis Simpson, the woman for whom he gave up the throne in 1936.

I can’t find any indication that they went to public places together, plays, parties, etc.  It’s also not clear that the Prince of Wales or any other member of the royal family would have just dropped in on a private party.  However, it just spoils the fun if we insist on that much accuracy, so let’s assume it was all in a day’s work for the Prince of Wales to attend events like Rose’s after-party and to crack jokes at the expense of loud unmannered Americans who happened to wander by as he stood alone near the buffet.  He traveled widely, including to India as indicated in the story, and he would have been there at the time that Rose’s dad was working there.  He was a hit wherever he went.  While his parents were reserved and formal, even by English standards, Edward was social, gregarious, handsome, charming.  A song written about him later in the decade gives an indication of his star power.  Here’s an excerpt (it scans better if you stress the last syllable of each line):  “Glory, glory Halleluiah! / I’m the luckiest of females! / For I’ve danced with a man / Who’s danced with a girl / Who’s danced with the Prince of Wales!”

What about the letter that caused so much trouble?  It turns out that Edward wrote at least one letter that could have caused trouble in the wrong hands.  Here’s a link to a news story from the (London) Mirror about a letter that Edward wrote to Freda in 1919, when he was Prince of Wales.  http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/king-edward-viii-foul-mouthed-handwritten-2851508  The story is dated November 2013, well after this episode would have been written, so possibly the writers did not know about the letter.  But it is a strange coincidence that the 1919 letter, containing an obscenity that no monarch should ever use (but which Edward’s brother did use at high volume in “The King’s Speech”), was in existence at the time of our story, although it was lost for nearly a century.  Well, a man who writes one embarrassing letter might write another.

Mary comments that Edward’s wild ways will eventually land him in trouble.  It’s almost as if she had a momentary glimpse into the future!  It was also interesting to me that Mrs. Levinson knows all about Freda Dudley Ward.  The prince’s private life was all over the American press, but the British press practiced what was called “patriotic reticence”.  This was true right up to the abdication in 1936.  The British public learned about the affair with Mrs. Simpson very late in the day, while the rest of the world knew all about it.

We now know a little bit more about the disappearance of Mr. Gregson in Munich.  In an earlier comment, I had allowed for the possibility that he had been beaten up by political agitators, but I thought it improbable because the political situation in Munich was relatively calm in 1922, compared to what was to come in the following year.  I did a little research and found that the Brown Shirts or Storm Troopers were indeed an active force in 1922, but had a specialized purpose.  The National Socialist party was up and running, with Hitler as its leader.  When they held rallies, their political opponents would attempt to heckle and disrupt.  The function of the Brown Shirts was to beat up anyone who tried to disrupt a party meeting.  Also, the Brown Shirts were used to break up the meetings of the Nazi’s opponents.  So, their function appears to have been providing violent service to advance particular party functions; they don’t seem to have been engaged in general street violence outside of a political context.  However, if someone like Mr. Gregson were to offer overt disapproval of their program, no doubt the Brown Shirts would have been happy to provide a beating off the books and free of charge.  Perhaps Mr. Gregson, as an intended future German citizen, thought he would replicate the give and take of Hyde Park oratory in central Munich.  Where Mr. Gregson ended up after his confrontation, I’m sure we will learn in due course.  I continue to believe that he will turn up, but obviously we will have to wait for Season Five to find out any more details.

When he does finally turn up (I will stick with this as a working hypothesis until proven wrong), he will find that he has a young daughter living under an assumed identity at the tenant farm down the road.  (Another correction – I thought the farmer with whom Edith was originally going to leave the child was the fellow she worked with and kissed during the war.  Actually, it is Mr. Drew, the tenant whose family has been serving the Crawleys since Napoleon was a lieutenant, the man to whom Lord Grantham lent 50 pounds.)  Is it reasonable to think that Edith can actually pull this off?  She received Mr. Drew in one of the Abbey’s great rooms.  He was shown in by one of the staff (who looked like Peg, but what would he be doing at the Abbey?), who is bound to think it odd that Lady Edith is meeting with a farmer, who also happens to be Lady Mary’s new pig man.  This might be worth a comment in the servants’ hall, which would be as good as making a public announcement.  Now that the arrangement with Mr. Drew has been made, Edith is going to travel back to Switzerland to retrieve the baby from the Schroeders.  Assuming that they are willing to hand the child back, Edith is then going to return to Yorkshire, carrying all requisite baby gear, not to mention a baby, to some convenient spot where she can hand the child off to Mr. Drew.  All this is to be done without running into anyone who might know her, and without any help (other than possibly from Aunt Rosalind, if she can tear herself away from Mr. Samson).  It doesn’t sound like a plan that can remain secret for any serious length of time.  Well, perhaps that’s the idea.  Possibly, we will spend half of Season Five watching Edith’s secret gradually become common knowledge.  Hurry, Mr. Gregson, faster please.

I refuse to be drawn into an extended commentary about the search for the letter.  The whole thing is too ridiculous for comment.  The only point I want to dwell on is Robert’s absurd statement that his motivation for organizing a criminal conspiracy, including forgery, burglary, subornation of felony and heaven knows what else, is that he is a monarchist!  My reaction was that if he were truly a monarchist, he should hardly feel it necessary to retrieve the letter.  If you believe that the hereditary king or queen ought by right to be the head of state, then the particular character or actions of the monarch ought to make no difference.  By contrast, when a certain U.S. president was found to have engaged in conduct unworthy of his high office, there were those who defended him and those who called for his impeachment.  But no one reacted by saying that such behavior calls constitutional representative democracy itself into question.  Perhaps it is not monarchism that Robert wants to protect.  Maybe his instinct is that when the monarch is known to have no respect for his high station, it is the British class system rather than the status of the monarchy that is put at risk.

I was surprised by how little was left up in the air when this season ended.  There was no cliffhanger ending.  We don’t know how Edith will manage and we don’t know if, when, or how Mr. Gregson will return.  We don’t know what Mary is going to do (but I make it about 7-2 for Mr. Blake, especially now that we know he is secretly rich and going to come into a nice title, and the rest of the field at about 8-1).  There isn’t a lot of tension anywhere else.  The perfection of Bates’s crime was in slight doubt, but his service to the royal family saved him.  (You know how it is when you commit a capital crime.  You mean to go through your pockets to remove evidence, but there is always something else to do.  Well, it worked out this time.)  Mrs. Hughes has made her move and Mr. Carson’s fate is now sealed.  I feel that we have left Downton with the sun shining while a light breeze carries the song of birds to our ears.  I hope all of the characters are enjoying this little break.  I fear this pleasant mood will not last once Season Five gets underway.

I apologize that this comment comes so late after Episode 7 aired.  I know there are readers who cannot fully digest an episode without reading this commentary.  For them, there is no apology I can offer that will be adequate.  I am quite sure that there are such people, by the way.

I feel that with this episode we have returned to the Downton Abbey that we came to appreciate over the previous three seasons.  When I came to the end of this episode, I realized that the previous week had been a turning point in my enjoyment of the series.  Once Mr. Green sealed his fate, without himself realizing it, I knew that the story could now get back on track.  The wound that he inflicted will leave irreparable scars, both on Anna and the audience, but the rest of the body will be able to heal and to grow.

This episode was remarkable in that so many characters were part of the story.  The only exception I can think of is poor Mr. Napier.  In the previous episode, he was allowed one sentence, which he didn’t even get to finish.  In this episode, he was completely silent.  I can just see the director working with the hapless actor who plays Mr. N.  “Now, Mr. Napier, I wonder if could have you stand just there, in front of the fireplace, and I wonder if I might trouble you to hold this glass of wine. . . .”

Although the writers have returned us to the Downton of old, their use of completely unbelievable plot devices continues to fascinate.  Take Tom’s contemplated political career.  At Isobel’s prompting, Tom has rekindled his interest in politics.  In an earlier episode, it was Isobel who sent him off to that Liberal Party meeting where he filled the empty chair next to his future wife.  In this episode, Isobel encourages Tom to run for office in the upcoming Parliamentary elections.

But how much sense does Tom make as a political candidate?  While he has been politically active in the past, his focus was not electoral politics.  He was an agitator in Ireland and his principal political action was to help burn an English upper crust family out of their home.  Possibly the Labor Party would have let that pass, but there would still be the fact that he is Irish and Catholic.  I was curious about how many Catholic members of Parliament there are in today’s House of Commons.  There are approximately 70, out of a total membership of about 650.  I doubt that the proportion would have been higher in the less tolerant 1920s.  A further count against him as a candidate of a party of the Left would have been that he is the son-in-law of a peer and manages the family’s estate.  If Leon Trotsky’s qualifications were that he was an accountant at Macy’s, would Lenin have taken him on?

On top of that, he has no experience running for office and has displayed none of the talent for constituency work that is essential for a successful candidate.  Nevertheless, Isobel thinks the best way for Tom to prepare for the upcoming election would be to drive into town and buy some books about modern politics.  Given all of Tom’s electoral disabilities, it is hard to believe there is a bookshop in Yorkshire big enough to supply these deficiencies.

Of course, for the writers, the point of going to the bookstore is not to help Tom get elected.  The point is to provide him with an opportunity to run into the young woman from the political meeting, whose name, we learn, is Sarah Bunting.  I thought she would work in the book shop but apparently that was too much coincidence even for the Downton writing crew, so she and Tom simply ran into each other on the street.  Turns out she is a teacher.

Their next meeting occurs under circumstances that further strain our credulity.  Her car has broken down on a country road, and who should turn up with his own car and a full set of tools, but Tom Branson!  I was surprised that a teacher in an out-of-the-way district could afford a car that nice.  And how did she pick that particular road for her journey that day?  Tom spent possibly an hour of story time fixing her car and not one other vehicle went by during that time.  Theirs were the only two cars on that road for an extended period of time.  I know that love will always find a way, but this level of coincidence is stretching the point.

And how sincere is Tom in his belief in the brotherhood of man?  When he saw Rose and Mr. Ross having lunch on highly friendly terms, he might have reacted by thinking that this was exactly his situation just a few years ago.  He was the unqualified suitor for the hand of a lass of a noble family.  That relationship worked out quite well (for those who survived to look back on it), so why not let Mr. Ross and Rose seek happiness on their own terms?  Instead, he heads back to the Abbey and rats them out to Mary, who is emerging as the capo di tutti capi of the Downton gang.

The Rose-Ross relationship is another example of an unexplained turn in the story that makes little sense.  During the previous episode, while Ross is rowing their boat, he asks Rose where their relationship is heading.  She tells him that she just wants to live for the moment.  In the present episode, Rose is set on marriage and Ross is the one wondering if it makes sense to move forward.  She is pursuing the relationship to shock her mother, but in that case, why in the previous episode did she treat Ross’s obviously serious intentions so frivolously?

The relationship is not going to move forward, as Ross explains to Mary, because he would not want to be responsible for diminishing Rose’s social standing.  The conversation implies that they both agree that Ross’s race would be the main impediment.  I wonder if this is true.  I don’t think that marrying an African American would have helped launch Rose’s career as a hostess, but there are other features of Mr. Ross that her peers might have found even more disabling.  He is not a member of the English upper crust and he has no money.  It’s one thing for Robert to marry Cora with all her money, a different thing for a woman to marry a penniless man from a different class.  On top of that, he actually works for a living and not in a respectable profession, but as an entertainer in a night club.  On top of everything else, he is an American.  He could be as white as a slice of cream cheese and still be completely unsuitable for Rose in the eyes of the social class that she is part of.

As Lord Gillingham, Mr. Blake, and the hapless Mr. Napier all piled into Blake’s car to leave the Abbey (until the next episode presumably), the three ladies standing at the front door to say goodbye got off a good line.  I think the trio was Aunt Rosalind, Edith, and Violet.  They joked about the proper name for a group of suitors and settled on “A Desire of Suitors”.  English is rich in unusual names for groups of things (a group of larks is an “exaltation”), which reminds me of an old joke.  What do you call a group of prostitutes?  A Blare of Strumpets or, if you prefer, an Anthology of Pros.

I thought Rosalind was also funny in her choice of Switzerland as the ideal place to go to improve one’s French.  So much better than going to France, which has the unfortunate quality of being filled up with French people.  Her on-the-spot invention was good enough to get past Cora (not a very stern test, let’s be honest) but was an open book to Violet, who did not even break a sweat in figuring the whole thing out.  Well, Munich is closer to Geneva than it is to Yorkshire, so when Mr. Gregson finally turns up he will have less far to travel.

I do not own a Meerschaum pipe or a deerstalker hat, so I do not feel qualified to offer help in the solution of crimes generally, but in the strange case of the death of Mr. Green I feel that I along with everyone else can safely venture an opinion.  The discordant music that played as Mr. Bates walked off the grounds of the Abbey toward his fateful appointment in York told us all we needed to know.  At the end of Episode 6, I was wondering how Mister, I mean Bates, was going to manage the mechanics of Mr. Green’s death.  Green is after all a younger man and appears to be in good physical condition.  Bates is a few years past his prime and requires the use of a cane.  However, Bates had justice on his side along with a white-hot desire for vengeance.  Did Green and Bates make eye contact as Green fell into the street?  It would be nice to think that he knew what hit him.

Mr. Bates’s account with the criminal justice system seems now to be in balance.  He went to prison to pay for a murder he did not commit, one that was actually a suicide.  He is out only due to the extraordinary efforts of Chief Inspector Anna.  Now he himself has dressed a murder to look like an accident.  If Lord Gillingham is to be believed (and he has not misled us yet), the police are treating Green’s death as an accident.  The only people who know that it was not an accident are Bates, who obviously will remain mum, Anna, who doesn’t want to believe it, and Mary, who has been convinced to say nothing.  So Mr. Bates has committed what may be the perfect crime, one that is not even recognized by the authorities to be a crime. 

So much more happened that calls out for comment, but the season finale is only fifteen minutes away as I write.  I think I hear Mr. Napier clearing his throat in case he is called upon to make a witty remark, or a remark of any kind.  Stranger thing have happened within Downton’s walls.  Until next time.

Palmolive is a reliable brand, as is Dial.  Lux is a great brand, but can be hard to find.  I wonder about Ivory.  It has been 99 and 44/100 % pure for decades.  Can’t the manufacturer improve on that level of purity?  And what exactly is in the 56/100% that is not pure?  That quibble aside, there are a lot of really good soaps.

Which brings us to this week’s episode of Downton, another good soap.

It’s interesting that whenever the writers want to advance an important story line, they just move right out.  Last week, Edith found out she is pregnant, had a good cry, and made the grave decision (off camera) to terminate her pregnancy.  In this episode, she makes her way to London, having somehow found a doctor in London who can perform the procedure.  I don’t think they had Yellow Pages in England at this time and if they did, the doctor she was looking for wouldn’t have been listed.  She gets to London, breaks down under questioning from Aunt Rosamund, who turns out to be a peach of an aunt.  The two go off to the disreputable clinic, where we play out a scene like the one in the old silent movies where the heroine is tied to the railroad tracks.  As the train bears down on her, she makes her escape.  In this case, Edith is next in line to have the procedure performed, realizes that she can’t go through with it for a dozen good reasons, including her future relationships with Mr. Gregson, with her niece and nephew, and with her parents and sister.  Having spent most of the episode projecting her feelings of guilt onto her Aunt Roz, she comes to her senses and leaves the clinic.  All that in one episode!

The Anna-Bates situation has been brewing longer, but it too advanced rapidly.  The story of the rape moves through the house like the flu.  To keep Mr. Bates from the trip to America, Mrs. Hughes must tell the story to Mary, leaving out the identity of the perpetrator.  Mary must tell Cora and Cora, without telling the story, must arrange for Robert to take Barrow instead of Bates.  With all that done, we are just about to relax with a cup of tea and a nice slice of one of Mrs. Patmore’s cakes when who should arrive but Lord Gillingham and his degenerate man Green.  As the episode ends, Green tells the assembled servants that he went downstairs during the Melba concert, which seals his fate.  Mr. Bates now knows the identity of the rapist, whose days are now numbered.  My point is that we started with Bates in the dark and the story of the rape limited to Anna, Bates, and Mrs. Hughes.  We ended 40 minutes later with the tale spread to Mary and Cora and with Mr. Bates now completely in the picture.  Brisk, efficient storytelling.

On the other hand, when it comes to the minor characters, we end up with an exhausting amount of over-plotting.  Think about Albert’s planned visit to the Abbey.  Mrs. Patmore decides he must be headed off, lest the Ivy-Daisy feud disrupt the smooth functioning of the kitchen.  She enlists Mrs. Hughes, always a good person to have on your side.  Mrs. Hughes enlists Mr. Carson after the requisite brow-beating.  Mr. Carson maneuvers Albert to the pub, tells him the house is infected with the flu, buys him a drink, gives him dinner and a room and heads back to the Abbey.  Albert turns up the next day anyway.  Neither of the scullery maids sees through the tissue-thin excuse ginned up by the Patmore-Hughes-Carson triumvirate.  Ivy shows Albert the interest that she withheld while he worked at Downton.  He leaves with his heart fluttering and Mrs. Patmore’s worst fears are now realized.  The writers even allow Mrs. Patmore a dose of poetry, when she complains that for weeks her puddings will be flavored with tears.  Anyway, the whole thing involved an awful lot of screen time, scene changes, one-on-one confrontations, dissembling, and fretting in order to make a slight change in the situation of a few quite minor characters.  Tiring.

Mary is showing signs of complexity.  When Mrs. Hughes seeks relief for Bates, Mary plays the “we pay you and expect service in return” card.  (You know that card.)  A year ago, Mary would have thought such a statement to be vulgar in the extreme.  Her growing experience managing the farm is turning her into a manager of the household, too.  Then she jokes with her father about what a nice time Barrow will have on board the ship chasing after the male stewards.  He actually has to warn her not to be vulgar, in his own light-hearted way.  Given Mary’s class prejudice, it’s nice to see that she has a certain tolerance where sexual orientation is concerned.

But the real breakthrough comes when she decides to take a walk down to the piggery with Mr. Blake.  And a lucky thing it was that they chose that destination!  The pig man had violated a basic tenet of the pig man’s creed by not ensuring that the pigs had sufficient water.  As we all know, a pig who is thirsty at sundown will be dead at dawn.  Mary and Blake keep the pumps working and use the conveniently available pails to save the pigs (the writers even allow Mary a pun) and then have a bit of fun slinging mud at each other.  Then Mary outdoes herself and cooks eggs.  I would say their relationship is advancing right on schedule.

And Tom has met the next Mrs. Branson!  True, she is not a born revolutionary like dear Sibyl, only a Liberal.  Still, I think she’ll do.  I don’t know how Tom will run into her again, but I’m sure the writers have that all worked out.

Tom got to that political meeting through the intercession of Isobel, whose purity of heart and all-round goodness were on full display in this episode.  I chuckled that she referred to the then Prime Minister as “dear Mr. Lloyd George”.  I don’t know that much about him, but what I do know suggests that it is just possible that his mother and his wife referred to him as “dear” but if they did, that was it.  No one else would have thought of using the word.  Here is how John Maynard Keynes described him at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference: “a half-human visitor to our age from the hag-ridden magic and enchanted woods of Celtic antiquity.”  Not a fan.  To be fair, Keynes later said some very positive things about Lloyd George, consistent with the observation that if you find a pithy and incisive quote from Keynes on any subject, you will also find an equally incisive statement from him to the contrary.  The Liberals, who had been in power continuously since 1910, were demolished in the 1922 election.  The party never again won a majority in the House of Commons and saw its position as the principal opponent of the Tories taken by Labor.

But Isobel was only warming up.  When Violet fell ill, Isobel had the opportunity to rebalance the scales of charity, on which Violet had placed her just treatment of Peg in the previous episode.  The scales are again in balance, as Isobel gave all her strength and devotion to restoring Violet to health.  Violet perhaps gains an ounce of advantage by agreeing to play cards with Isobel, but it’s a debatable point.

There were a number of plot details in this episode that I found annoying.  Jimmy wishes he could go to America, but remember that he came to Downton because his former employer – a Duchess – was going abroad and he didn’t want to go along.  Robert is called to America by his mother-in-law so that he can help his brother-in-law, her son.  The son has gotten himself into some serious financial difficulties involving oil leases.  But remember that when Mrs. Levinson (Cora’s mother, Shirley MacLaine) visited Downton, she was a witness to Robert’s near destruction of the family fortune.  The family was hitting her up for an advance.  So there she is, a wealthy woman living in the country that was emerging as the world’s financial powerhouse, and she calls for help to her English son-in-law who knows little of America and even less about investing.  The whole thing seems highly contrived.

There was frustratingly little to talk about when it comes to Rose and Mr. Ross.  We knew that she was going to use Edith’s trip to London to re-establish contact.  And when Rose establishes contact, she really means it!  I thought for a moment that the two of them would tip the boat over, but perhaps that would be overdoing it, what with Mary and Blake having a water and mud fest of their own back in Yorkshire.  I remain interested in learning more about Mr. Ross, although Rose shows so little interest in anything outside of the present moment that I begin to doubt that my questions will be answered.

So, we’re left with the question of what will happen to Edith and her baby.  The previews of next week’s episode indicate that she will give the child away to that worthy farm family that she spent time with during the war.  I’m not sure they would show us that preview if that is where they mean to take us.  I think Mr. Gregson will turn up in the nick of time.  It’s a pure guess, but I think the writers found a device to get him out of the story temporarily during Edith’s pregnancy crisis.  Perhaps he was hit by a car or a bus while out for a morning constitutional in Munich.  He didn’t have his ID with him, or the ever efficient German police would have figured out who he was.  He was taken to a German hospital and suffered from amnesia when he awoke.  He’ll be back sometime during the third trimester.  With any luck, he’ll have his German divorce papers in hand.  I know I have gotten these things wrong in the past, but I have a hunch this time . . . .

Finally, I think the actor who plays Mr. Green needs a new agent.  If you were representing him, wouldn’t you fight like a tiger to avoid having his character admit in front of Mr. Bates that he went downstairs during the Nellie Melba concert?  You lose that fight and the next thing you know your client is being fitted out with stage blood, a broken neck, the whole bag of tricks at the disposal of the make-up department.

It couldn’t happen to a more deserving character than the debased and degenerate Mr. Green, but surely the actor who plays him is innocent and need not be sacrificed to our desire for vengeance.  Well, I fear it is too late for these regrets.  Mr. Bates means to have his revenge.  Or will someone else beat him to it?

Until now, I have treated Downton Abbey as if it were in the same postal code as classics such as Brideshead Revisited or The Way We Live Now, and perhaps we will someday conclude that it belongs in this company.  At the moment, we seem to be in soap opera territory.  We have some teapot-sized tempests and we have some standard elements of melodrama, but for now, that’s about it.  I’d like to take a brief look at some plot developments and then spend a few minutes on some historical musings that occurred to me as I was watching.

First, the melodrama.  Edith has a letter from her doctor telling her that she is in the first trimester of pregnancy.  Even if she were to marry within the next month – I assume that even a hurried wedding could not be arranged any sooner – the father of her child is married to someone else, he was last heard of in Munich, and now no one knows where he is.  I believe the political situation in Germany at this time was relatively calm.  Things got pretty bad in 1923 (hyperinflation, French occupation of the Ruhr, political violence), but that’s in the future.  So what can explain Michael’s disappearance?  Edith needs some answers fast.  There can’t be enough time for him to get his divorce and get back to England and marry Edith before her condition becomes obvious, so I expect this particular subplot to become more and more emotional but not necessarily more interesting.  I bet there are drug stores in Mr. Gregson’s London neighborhood, but it’s too late now.  Sorry, Edith.

Most of the rest of the developments in this week’s episode seem trivial and overworked.  Alfred gets to go to the cooking school at the Ritz after all.  Daisy is sorry to see him go and lashes out at Ivy who drove Alfred away by not caring for him.  Of course, if she had cared for him, that would have left Daisy out in the cold where she is anyway, but love is blind and irrational, so Daisy lashes out.  In the meantime, Ivy finally sees Jimmy as he really is.  He makes his move on a bench in the moonlight.  By the standards of 2014, nothing terribly shocking seems to have happened, but this is 1922 and Ivy is outraged.  Shallow lad that he is, Jimmy is taking what to him seems a logical step.  He is out of pocket the cost of several nights on the town (well, village) and he now expects a return on his investment.  Ivy doesn’t see it that way, nor do Mrs. Patmore and Mrs. Hughes, to whom Ivy dutifully reports the attempt on her virtue.  An awful lot of screen time has been spent on getting us to this rather predictable and uninteresting situation.

Now that Alfred is finally off to London, you would think that things would be looking up, at least modestly, for Mr. Molesely, but Mr. Carson is not a man to forgive a slight and that means that Mr. Molesely may be condemned to manual labor for the rest of his days.  Incidentally, I apologize that I have misspelled his name as Mosely until now.  Fortunately, Mrs. Hughes and Mrs. Patmore team up once again and eventually Mr. Molesely finds work as a footman at the Abbey.  He will even retain the dignity of being addressed by his last name, a breach of protocol that clearly has Mr. Carson off balance for a moment, although not as far out of balance as he will be a bit later when the American jazz singer enters the house.

Another overworked development had to do with the merry battle between the earnest Isobel and her nemesis Lady Grantham.  Lady Grantham wins a round when her noblesse oblige trumps Isobel’s upper middle class sense of fair play, but what a lot of over-plotting we had to go through to get to the punchline!  Isobel has to feign illness at Violet’s front door when she finds Violet not at home, then toss the parlor where the precious letter opener went missing, then find the missing item in a seat cushion – really a stretch – then later confront Violet only to find that Violet has already done the right thing voluntarily.  I have no doubt that Violet restored Peg to his job so that she could show Isobel up in the end, but we spent a lot of time and attention on an incident that does not really advance the wider story line at all.

At least Violet is getting off a few decent zingers.  I thought that until now in this season her one-liners had been weak.  Tonight she was able to tell Edith to “Let your time in London rub off on you a little” (if she only knew) and when asked what she thought about the jazz band wondered “Do you think they know what the others are playing?”  (Would she say the same of a Bach concerto?)  She put down Isobel by saying that “Indignation is her fuel.”  These are not up to her earlier standard, but she is getting back into form.

We shall see what develops between Mary and Mr. Napier or Mary and Mr. Blake.  If I had to bet on one of them, I’d pick Mr. Blake.  Napier seems to have no personality at all, although his upper class credentials may give him an edge with the snobbish Mary.  Mary and Mr. Blake seem to dislike each other on sight, which is usually a sign of romantic complications ahead.  Mr. Blake has inspired Mary to use for the first time in years that sharp tongue she inherited from her grandmother.  And Mr. Blake finds Mary’s upper class manners and attitude completely off-putting.  I think we have the start of a beautiful relationship.

I’ll come to Rose and the singer in a minute, because there is not much else left to talk about.  Anna and Bates have a night out and get to show up a snobby maître d’.  Lady Cora helps the situation and reminds us all what a good person she is.  Baxter begins to chafe under the constant pestering by Barrow to provide more information about the doings upstairs.  He acts and talks as if he has some kind of hold on her, but it’s not clear what that is.

It was obvious a couple of episodes ago that Rose wanted to get back in touch with Mr. Ross, the American jazz singer.  I thought she was going to send Robert’s birthday celebration to the club where Ross sings, but instead she brought him and his band to the Abbey.  Mr. Carson has just finished explaining to Rose, who has come downstairs to warn of the band’s imminent arrival, that even simple Yorkshiremen know something of life’s diversity.  He has barely finished his little speech when in walks Mr. Ross and Mr. Carson nearly sends his teacup to the floor, something rarely seen beneath the battlements of Downton Abbey.

I do hope that we get to learn more about Mr. Ross.  We know that he is an American.  His accent combines with his self-possession and self-confidence to suggest that he is not a product of the Jim Crow South.  The Harlem Renaissance was in full swing at this time and Mr. Ross may have been an active participant, but in that case why did he leave that exciting cultural milieu to sing in the stuffy confines of a London night club?  He may have an interesting tale and I hope we get a chance to hear it.

In the meantime, Rose has decided to cross the class barrier that she has tip-toed up to in the past.  Mary descends the stairs to arrange for the band’s bill to be sent to Robert and finds that Rose and Mr. Ross are kissing in the shadows.  Ross steps out of the shadows without any hint of embarrassment.  He is ready to pursue this adventure where it leads him.  Rose’s intentions are less clear.  She went below stairs to spend time with Ross.  She did not invite him to come upstairs to a sitting room.  Is this because she wants to neck and cannot do that (with Mr. Ross or anyone else) upstairs?  Or is it because she is not really crossing the class barrier in any interesting way, but just visiting as a tourist?  Does Mr. Ross’s race add a touch of adventure for Rose, or is she genuinely attracted by his talent and his manner, race aside?  She has displayed a most shallow personality until now, so I would bet on the former until proven wrong.  Again, we would have a much more interesting story if Rose and Ross were to develop a romance, but Mr. Fellowes’s plans may be to work up nothing more than soap bubbles.

Ross’s conversation with Mr. Carson concerning England’s role in the antislavery crusade sent me to the history books.  I am not sure that Mr. Carson has the story exactly right.  Mr. Carson proudly points out that an English jurist in 1763 declared that any person who sets foot on English soil became free at that instant.  William Blackstone made a similar declaration in the first edition of his commentaries published in 1765 and it appeared that the emerging view of the Common Law was that slavery was unlawful in England (but not in the colonies) in the absence of legislation making it lawful.  The point was made poetically through the statement that “The air of England is too pure for slaves to breathe”.  Unfortunately, this view was ahead of its time.  The statement in the 1763 case was not necessary to the disposition of the lawsuit and came to be dismissed as “dictum”.  Blackstone altered his view three years after he initially expressed it, to suggest that the slaveholder who brought a slave to England might still have the legal right to demand the other’s services when they left.

The issue was revisited in 1772 in Somersett’s Case.  An English slaveholder purchased another person as a slave in Boston(!) and brought him to England.  When the slaveholder attempted to leave England with his slave, as he considered him, antislavery activists sought a writ of habeas corpus.  The English court had the opportunity to declare slavery unlawful and seemed to come close to doing so, but in the end held that the slaveholder did not have the right to compel another person to leave England against his will.  However, the case was widely believed by persons held as slaves throughout the British Empire to render slavery illegal.  The details are in a marvelous book titled “Rough Crossings”.

I will say that the English did a much better job attempting to end the slave trade than did the United States.  Both countries had made the trade illegal early in the 19^th century, and both declared that engaging in the trade was piracy, but the U.S. made only desultory efforts at enforcement, while the British devoted considerable resources to eradicating the trade.  It’s interesting to note that Britain outlawed slavery throughout the British Empire in 1833.  Had the United States lost the Revolutionary War, slavery might have ended in the U.S. without the loss of 600,000 lives.  Of course, we would all have bad teeth, drink tea and warm beer, and beat each other up after soccer matches.

So, all in all, I think Mr. Carson recovered nicely from the shock of having a person of color in the servants’ hall, in all likelihood for the first time.

I was curious whether the inquiry of Messrs. Napier and Blake into the finances of the great houses of Yorkshire was based on any particular historical event.  It doesn’t seem to be.  They state that the inquiry was directed by Lloyd George, who became prime minister in December 1916 in the middle of the First World War and remained prime minister until October 1922.  By late summer 1922, where we now seem to be in our story, his political position was deteriorating rapidly.  He had been accused of selling peerages and honors and the charges seemed to be backed by evidence.  He was so busy putting out political fires that it’s hard to believe he had time to undertake a technical inquiry into upper class finances.  He remained active in politics for the next two decades until his death in 1945 and appears to have taken up an interest in land reform after he left the premiership.  I can’t say that there never was such an inquiry in 1922 but it seems unlikely.

Anyway, all this got me wondering about how these gigantic establishments sustained themselves.  Where did the vast amounts of money come from that were needed to keep them going?  The answer seems to be that originally they sustained themselves through collection of rents.  A noble family would receive a grant of land in payment for military or other service and if the grant were large enough, the tenants’ rents could pay for the upkeep of a sizeable establishment.  However, over the course of centuries, it inevitably happened through bad management or bad luck that many of these houses could not be sustained without outside help.  As the British Empire expanded in the 18^th century, fortunes were made in the Caribbean or in India and the newly enriched English colonials would find their way to England and buy into a stately home, either through purchase or by marrying into the family.  In the 19^th century, many industrial fortunes beat the same path.  Another course was to find a wealthy American or Canadian heiress and bring new money into the establishment through marriage.  That’s the solution that Robert’s father worked out by having Robert marry Cora.

An agricultural depression hit Britain in the 1880s as American and Canadian grain began flooding British markets.  The huge industrialized farming operations of the American and Canadian plains could produce grain at half the cost of the less efficient British farms.  The houses that depended on rents began to lose revenue.  Taxes began to bite as the 20^th century began.  The cost of the First World War, then the ravages of inflation (there was almost no change in prices from Waterloo to the outbreak of WWI), then increased taxation took a greater toll.  The Great Depression and the Second World War finished off a great number of these homes.  I have read that over 1,000 have been demolished since the end of WWII.

But in 1922, the tougher ones were still going strong.  An English poet wrote in 1827: The stately homes of England / How beautiful they stand! / Amidst their tall ancestral trees, / O’er all the pleasant land!  For purposes of our story, this alteration by Noel Coward is more appropriate:  The stately homes of England / How beautiful they stand / To prove the upper classes / Have still the upper hand.[1]

On a final note, the song “I’m Just Wild About Harry” was written in 1921 by Eubie Blake, himself an important participant in the Harlem Renaissance.  He died in 1983 just a week after his 96^th birthday.  He famously said “If I had known I was going to live this long, I’d have taken better care of myself.”  The song was part of the first Broadway musical to feature an African American cast in a play about African Americans.  So, coming back to Mr. Ross, why did he not stay in New York to do things like that, rather than hang around below stairs in drafty English houses?

Until next time.

Someone described flying an airplane as hours of boredom interrupted by moments of terror.  Downton Abbey shares this pattern.  We drift along, consuming tea by the gallon, planning a party here, collecting rent there, just floating downstream.  Then something horrific happens.  A visiting Turk dies in a room not his own.  Lady Cora miscarries when she slips on a bar of (wait for it) soap.  Matthew is killed on the happiest day of his life.  Anna is raped while Kiri te Kanawa sings O mio babbino caro.

Nothing like that kind of excitement was on offer in tonight’s episode.  We are in a lull.  Until the next horrific event occurs, we are stuck with a plot as bland as the Sauce Béchamel that Alfred was learning to enrich[1].  Let us count the ways.

Starting for once above stairs, we see that Aunt Rosalind’s warning to Edith is beginning to take form.  Edith is undergoing the 1920s upper class version of “Why doesn’t he call?” and Edith’s visit to a doctor, undisclosed to the rest of the family, suggests that Aunt Roz knows whereof she speaks.  Let us hope that Mr. Gregson is the decent chap he has presented himself to be, and let’s hope that his lawyers have correctly understood German divorce law.

We have been visiting the Crawley family for ten years (ten Downton years) and have not yet had any indication that Robert’s birthday is anything special to him or anyone else.  But now it turns out that there is always a special dinner to mark the occasion.  Clearly, Lady Cora would love to do more but a special dinner seems to mark the outer limit of celebration for this bunch.  However, Rose has an idea that we have not yet heard, and I will not be surprised if another trip to that night club is ahead of us.  However, so quiet was this episode that I don’t believe either the word “night” or “club” was uttered once, either together or separately, during the entire hour.

Lady Mary had to absorb the news that Lord Gillingham is now engaged to his heiress, but she took it well.  Her upper lip may have quivered for an instant, but it remained stiff.  No sooner had we got past that event, which she and we should have expected after last week’s kiss-and-farewell sequence, than Mr. Napier reappears.  I recognized him from a couple of seasons ago, but don’t really remember much about him.  At this point, he seems to have a responsible job with the government and will play a role in the financial part of the story, but is he likely to be Mary’s next romantic interest?  Surely he should be expected to bring some ready money to the table beyond his paycheck from HMG?

Robert has bungled so many things over the past couple of years, and has adopted such inflexible attitudes on so many important matters, that we can forget that his most fundamental characteristic is decency.  He does the right thing by helping his tenant, lending him the money to make up his arrears in rent.  The Abbey is an institution that has a moral connection to its tenants, its employees, and its vendors as well as a financial relationship with all of them.  Robert has made any number of mistakes in his management of the Abbey’s finances, but he has kept in sight the wider responsibilities he bears as the Abbey’s current owner.  Of course, he won’t be able to meet those responsibilities without substantial funds.  But he also knows that meeting the Abbey’s financial obligations is only a start.  Robert jokes that he is aligning himself with Tom’s socialism, but he wouldn’t extend himself for an abstraction, a social class.  He is willing to reopen the lease and to make a loan to this particular tenant[2], with his particular family and history, and with his claim as a long-term partner in the life of the Abbey.  Robert can be, usually is, irritating but this was a fine moment for him, I thought.

And Lady Cora has tasted orange juice for the first time in some thirty years!  None of her previous maids ever did any research on American dietary habits and it appears that it never occurred to her to ask for a daily glass of OJ.  However, the efficient Baxter[3] has studied the American diet thoroughly and brings Lady Cora the first taste of Florida sunshine she has enjoyed since moving to Britain.  This is only a small sample of Baxter’s efforts to ingratiate herself with everyone she meets, both above and below stairs.  She touches Lady Cora’s heart by speaking reverently of Sibyl (may she rest in peace).  She introduces the staff to the electric sewing machine.  Daisy, who loves electric appliances, gets to try it, and Mrs. Patmore gets the benefit of it when her apron develops a small tear just moments before her ladyship is due for her semi-annual visit to the kitchen.  We find out later that Baxter’s kindness is in the service of Thomas, or rather Barrow, but this time Barrow seems to want to use Baxter’s friendly manner as a means to obtain intelligence rather than as part of a campaign to undermine another member of the staff, his usual purpose.  So that’s all right.  It’s nice to have a friendly lady’s maid for once.  They’re all up to something, but this one seems to have a benevolent streak lacking in her predecessors.

Staying below stairs, we note that Alfred is making a serious effort to move into the world of fine food.  In his effort to better himself he is following in the Season One tradition of Gwen, the maid who learned to type and became a secretary.  Even Mr. Carson condescends to encourage Alfred, both before his examination and after the disappointing result.  Alfred may be down but like so many others in Downton Abbey he is not out, and I expect that he will eventually be accepted at the Ritz.  He is, as Mr. Carson notes, a hard worker and he seems to have a genuine talent for food.  It was unrealistic to expect that he could enter the kitchen of M. Escoffier without working at least for a while as a food professional.  Perhaps he will now have the opportunity to spend more time under the wing of Mrs. Patmore en route to a better life in London.

Alfred’s upward trajectory is momentarily halted, but poor Mr. Moseley’s downward path is getting steeper.  Mr. Carson offers Moseley a job as a footman and is offended when Mr. Moseley decides to think it over.  Moseley’s reluctance to accept a permanent reduction in status is understandable to everyone except Mr. Carson, who sadistically informs Moseley that the offer has been withdrawn while he thought it over.  This was not one of Mr. Carson’s finer moments.

Ivy is developing something like admiration for Alfred.  The idea that a footman would try to make something of himself, other than a butler, seems to have caught her fancy for at least a brief moment.  At the same time, Jimmy is becoming more and more insufferable with each episode, trying to undermine Alfred’s confidence when he is not actively up to no good with Ivy.  And don’t let him anywhere near the jams.  On the whole, these two characters seem destined to remain minor.

Well, I can’t put it off any longer.  We must take a look at the relationship between Anna and Mr. Bates.  Is it possible that “Mister” is his first name?  It was encouraging that they are now on the road to re-establishing their marriage, but the way they got there fills me with concern.  First of all, Bates got to the bottom of the first part of the mystery by overhearing a distraught Anna talking things over with the reliable Mrs. Hughes, who has confirmed out loud that it is not for Mrs. Hughes to reveal Anna’s secret.  Those events were not necessarily worrisome, but the music that accompanied Mr. Bates’s discovery was decidedly ominous.  Mr. Fellowes does not make a lot of use of music, but in this instance a dark leitmotif of kettle drums, bells, and dissonant piano chords told us that evil times lie ahead.

Last week I thought Mrs. Hughes had proved herself to be worthy of a master poker player but it turns out that Mr. Bates is even stronger.  When she refused to tell what she knew, he threatened to leave the Abbey and had his hand on the doorknob when Mrs. Hughes stopped him.  Of course, it helps if you’re not actually bluffing.  Mrs. Hughes told the tale without identifying the rapist, indeed insisted that the rapist was unknown and, when she was questioned, she insisted that he was definitely, positively not Mr. Green.  She’s a quick one on her feet is Mrs. Hughes and did the best she could under the circumstances, even though she had to swear falsely on her mother’s grave to pull it off.

So, now Mr. Bates knows about the rape and of course holds Anna blameless.  She is reassured and the two of them begin the difficult process of reuniting, but Anna knows that she has to keep Mr. Green’s identity a secret.  That will always be between them.  When Bates told Anna that if it was Mr. Green, “he is a dead man”, that same ominous music played again.  What do you think the odds are that Mr. Green is alive at the end of Season Four?  Without the music, I would have thought Mr. Green had as good a chance as any other minor character.  Those dissonant chords suggest a much shorter lifespan.

Is that to be the next storm to break over the present lull?  Will Mr. Green be found dead, and will Mr. Bates be accused of his murder?  I hope we don’t have to go through that business again.

As always, I don’t wish anyone ill.  I hope that all of our principal characters are alive and kicking at the end of each episode.  But something is going to have to break, some big event is going to have to happen.  I can only watch people drinking tea, sewing clothes, and polishing shoes for so long.  Please, nothing violent, nothing criminal, but . . . something!

Until next time.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A loyal reader asked me to supplement my comments on Season Four, Episode Two with some thoughts on the characters who were not within the orbit of the crime against Anna.  My anger at Mr. Fellowes for putting a favorite character, and his story, and his viewers through this unnecessary trial has not abated.  But, when a reader asks for more, I cannot avoid my responsibility.  A reader’s needs must take precedence over my reluctance to examine the non-criminal aspects of the episode.

First, let’s all take heart from the apparent interest of Lady Mary in the newly minted Lord Gillingham.  We learn from their conversation while on horseback (and incidentally, how do English ladies avoid just sliding off their horses?) that he is engaged to the “heiress of the year”.  Perhaps this information is given to us so that we will understand that his interest in Mary is genuine.  If he is willing to give up one of the richest young women in their social class (a big if – he hasn’t jumped yet), then this must be love.  Mary is well funded herself, of course, but her wealth does not seem to be spectacular, not “heiress of the year” material.  I am really trying not to bring The Crime into this, but one mark against Lord Gillingham has to be his choice of valet.  One assumes that this was not the valet’s first sexual assault, and you would think that the valet would have given an indication now and again that all was not well.  Perhaps that is asking too much of Lord G.  He probably views his valet as an appliance and gives no thought to the life of his servant when not engaged in his duties.  I expect that more will be revealed along these lines in the near future, once The Crime is more widely known.

We cannot entirely escape the subject of crime when we turn our attention to the Editor, Mr. Gregson, at least if cheating at a card game played for money is a crime.  In Mr. Gregson’s defense, we point out that his cheating was compensatory.  He was undoing the harm that Mr. Samson had done at the card table on the previous evening.  A further point in Mr. Gregson’s favor is that he is desperate for some way to earn the favor of his hoped-for future father-in-law, who has just discovered that playing poker for high stakes against a person he describes later as a “tyke” is yet a new way of squandering the remainder of his wife’s fortune.  (Dictionary.com says that “tyke” is used in Scotland to mean “a low, contemptible fellow”.  This usage makes sense when we remember Lord Grantham’s Scots connections.)

But here we have another example of Mr. Fellowes’s manipulation of the plot in ways that strain the audience’s credulity.  Mr. Gregson tells us after the game is over that his ability to walk away with all that money is the result of skills he learned during a misspent youth.  However he spent his youth, that period of his life is easily two decades behind him.  Is it likely that during, say, a quarter century of editing a newspaper and tending to an insane wife he retained sufficient card sharping skills to not only win every penny from a professional cheater, but to do so in a manner that went undetected at any point in the evening by the professional himself?  May I answer my own question: Not bloody likely.

So, Mr. Gregson is now in Lord Grantham’s good graces, ostensibly because he has established his credentials as a gentleman by returning Lord Grantham’s markers, but really because he erased a gambling debt that Lord G could ill afford.  However he did it, Mr. Gregson is now at least part way into the family circle.  Remember the last time a newspaperman was in the story (a proprietor, not an editor) he was able to suppress some unfavorable news.  Perhaps Mr. Gregson will be able to improve his status in the family through a similar service.  I hesitate to predict.  We must wait and see.

Finally, I would like to take a brief look at the way the Old Guard, that is, Lord Grantham and Mr. Carson, planned to treat Nellie Melba.  Incidentally, there really was an opera singer of that name (stage name anyway) who was world famous and who would have been going strong at this time.  If you google her name, you’ll find an article from the Telegraph about her appearance in this episode, which states that she would never have put up with the insulting treatment intended for her by Mr. Carson or Lord Grantham.  She would have insisted on being treated as a guest and would never have consented to taking a tray in her room.  Indeed, she would likely have considered herself to be the true aristocrat in the company, which of course she was if we rightly concern ourselves with talent rather than titles.

I did enjoy the moment when Lord Grantham, who had previously approved the arrangements planned by Carson, was over-ruled by Lady Cora (her American meritocratic instincts still functioning after nearly three decades among the mother country’s aristocrats).  Lord Grantham turned to Carson to say “I blame you.”  Even Carson must go under the bus when Lord Grantham is in danger of being skinned alive by his spouse.  Carson no doubt thought he had already experimented with Bolshevism when he permitted the kitchen staff to attend the recital, something never before allowed under the roof of Downton Abbey.  Carson and Lord Grantham will stumble forward together as the 1920s unfold.

Well, I hope everyone feels up to date and in the picture.  I look forward to fresh developments.

A certain type of English novel has focused on the doings of the upper classes.  I have tried to recall every novel I have read that involves at least one scene in an upper crust country house or a grand house in London.  I have not read widely in this field, but I can list Dickens’s Bleak House, the six “Palliser” novels plus The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope, and Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh.[1]  In addition to the novels I have mentioned, you could add the old PBS series Upstairs, Downstairs.  It’s not a huge sample, but large enough to form some opinions.

One attraction of these stories is that they grant us a glimpse into a life we could not otherwise know, both because it is of an age much earlier than ours and because it is lived by people we could not possibly hope to know in that age or our own.  The Palliser novels are interesting to read as stories and as character studies, but they also can be read as social history.  Trollope’s characters are sufficiently dimensional that we can imagine them living a life, competing with their rivals, falling in love, making decisions and taking risks without knowing how things will turn out.  The same is certainly true of the work of Messrs. Dickens and Waugh.

In this type of story, a category to which Downton Abbey is an applicant for inclusion, as in other novels aiming at realism, there is a certain unspoken agreement between writer and reader or writer/director and viewer.  We willingly suspend disbelief and accept the local habitation and name that the author has given to airy nothing.  The writer in turn undertakes to provide a credible reproduction of life being lived by believable people who must deal with the complicated problems that the author sets for them.  We sit around the campfire (all right, the TV) in anticipation of an interesting story well told.

Over the course of the previous three seasons, Mr. Fellowes has had to ask the viewers to grant him advance after advance out of our limited store of credulity.  The two cousins were not scheduled to travel on the Titanic, but down with her they went.  The replacement cousin is just the right age to marry Lady Mary and has the looks, charm, and grace to fit the part.  An undressed Turk dies at just the wrong time, and in an even worse place, but the situation is put right – almost – with a bit of heavy lifting.  An evil, twisted, spurned wife is able to make her suicide look like murder, but her successor is so determined, yet at the same time so mild, so generous of heart, so pure of intention, that she sees justice done, almost singlehandedly.  A jilted fiancée gives up her future husband for his greater happiness, without any thought of her own desires, then dies in a manner most convenient.  Fortunes are lost, or are diverted from their preferred course, but wills have a way of turning up to get large sums of money to the recipients who will keep our story going.  Every reader can supply another dozen examples.

Through all of this, we have continued to watch in our millions because it has been fun to see these characters maneuver through the shoals of British upper class life (both above and below stairs) at the point (just before the First World War) of its maximum opulence to the beginning of its decline (where we are at the moment).  The unspoken deal between the writer/director and the viewer has been put under stress, but it has remained intact until now.

I submit that Mr. Fellowes has broken this covenant by subjecting the beloved character Anna to a barbaric sexual assault that has left her physically bruised, bloodied, and violated and emotionally devastated.

I have a weakness for police procedurals.  I was a big fan of Law & Order and Law & Order Criminal Intent.  I will watch reruns of The Closer and I like Major Crimes, a spinoff.  I like the Las Vegas version of CSI and I will occasionally check in with Criminal Minds.  When you turn on one of these shows, you know that the focus is going to be a grisly crime.  It is going to be solved.  We are going to spend some time on the personal issues of the investigators, some of them will be allowed to develop a relationship, or will have an episode where they are in greater focus than usual, but it never fails that the main focus is The Crime and The Solution.  You are never going to have an episode of CSI where the technicians plan a party, we watch various dishes being prepared outside the lab, there is a crisis hiring enough staff to serve the food and drinks, but ultimately everything turns out just fine (except that one major character feels he doesn’t fit in, and some of the techs are competing to see who will be in charge of serving the next meal).  The continuing characters keep the story moving but the crime and its solution are the focus.

This is not to say that crime cannot enter the world of the type of English upper crust story I am talking about.  There is a murder in Bleak House, a spectacular theft of jewels in one of the Palliser novels, fraud and at least the threat of physical violence in The Way We Live Now.  But when crime enters, it naturally takes over the story to the cost of all other elements.  Part of the charm of Downton Abbey up until now has been the complexity of the plot, the multi-layered intersections of characters and events within the confines of a single (grand) household.  I think the best we can hope for is that this complexity will be put on hold, and not lost permanently, as the story focuses on this horrific crime.

Apart from my anger at Mr. Fellowes for putting dear Anna through this life-altering agony, I don’t see how he continues to tell his tale without the vicious assault on Anna becoming the major focus of the story.  Word of the assault will spread gradually because Anna’s wounds, physical and emotional, are too obvious to hide and also because Mrs. Hughes does try to help any situation by bringing in reinforcements.  It appears that Mary and the rapist’s employer are going to develop a relationship, so that will throw Anna and Bates together with the criminal.  No doubt there will be endless permutations of these and related themes.

The act was, is, so horrendous that I don’t see how we can avoid having it become the center of the Downton Abbey tale from this point on until it is resolved with the capture of the criminal, or possibly his own end through violence.  But even then, won’t the breadth of the story be altered permanently?  This isn’t something that Bates and Anna will laugh about in later years, or that Mary and Lord Gillingham (??) will dismiss as “valets being valets”.  I fear that the story will be forced into a much narrower channel and will be less rich, less varied, and less interesting than it might have been.  Our energy is going to be focused on our sympathy for Anna and our desire to see that valet locked up.  That’s fine if we are watching CSI, but I fear that Downton Abbey is in serious jeopardy.

I hope that I am proven wrong (and there is no need to point out that this would not be the first time).  I await Sunday’s developments.

Isis the dog was back to walk us up to the Abbey’s front door.  And O’Brian is still gone.

January 9, 2014

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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