Jessica Fellowes - The World of Downton Abbey Text Only

• Wrap a delicate evening coat in linen when sewing on a missing button.

MARY

‘Women like me don’t have a life. We choose clothes and pay calls and work for charity and do the Season. But really we’re stuck in a waiting room until we marry.’

Elizabeth McGovern is Cora

‘Mary is a very well-written typical eldest child in that she puts her own needs at the forefront ... She’s not as inclined to conciliate or placate. Cora is fascinated by Mary.’

The daughters of the house – Mary, Edith and Sybil – find it hardest of all to carve out a role for themselves. In 1912 it was difficult for women to enjoy any kind of independence until they were married. While living under their father’s roof, they are subject to his rules. Fortunately, Cora and Robert are interested parents and Cora, as an American, might enjoy her children’s company more than her British counterparts would have done. Still, the girls’ time is mainly spent preparing themselves for a successful marriage. A governess was employed to teach French and possibly German. Then the girls would have been trained to start conversations, in preparation for their coming social duties with tongue-tied inferiors. Julian recalls that members of his own family had precisely this sort of instruction, ‘My great-aunts would be taken round the gardens by their governess and at every shrub they would have to introduce a new subject. The idea was that you could keep a conversation going even with someone who was completely socially incapable.’ On top of all this, any musical skill was always a bonus; playing the piano and singing – though only ever for private entertainments. Painting in watercolours was considered an asset (not, as a rule, oils, which were considered a little Bohemian), and embroidery and decoupage were encouraged.

Like all sisters, the girls can be arguing fiercely one minute and loyally defending each other the next. Edith, squashed between the beautiful Mary and the ambitious Sybil, sets herself up in competition with her elder sister, scheming to win their battle to land a suitable husband. Mary, as the first born, feels the pressure to get the very best husband possible; when potentially brilliant suitors appear to be making overtures to Mary, the whole household is on tenterhooks.

When not plotting invitations to eligible sons, writing carefully worded letters to them, or practising any of the skills that are supposed to improve their marriage prospects, the girls spend most of their time changing their outfits throughout the course of the day. The choosing of skirts and accessories, finding clever ways to update details and trying out new hairstyles, turns the chore of dressing into something rather more pleasant. At least this side of life is unashamedly fun when they are all together and getting on well, gossiping with each other and the maids, who are helping them dress. At all other times, the lives of the daughters and the servants could not be further apart, but in those moments they share in the simple delight of being young girls together.

Dan Stevens is Matthew

‘There’s no such thing as a typical day’s filming, but if it’s a full day, I’ll be collected by car at 5.30am and driven to Highclere to meet other bleary-eyed actors. After breakfast and 20 minutes in the make-up chair, I’m ready to start shooting. Sometimes we manage two or three scenes in a morning, but often it takes that long for a single scene. Lunch is a good chance to sit on the bus and chat to the other actors and crew. We shoot more scenes in the afternoon until tea and cake at 4pm, which causes a flurry. We can’t take any food or drink that’s not water into the house, so we usually cower under a rain shelter, but if there’s glorious sunshine we can have tea on the lawn. We wrap about 7pm and then I’m driven home.’

Elizabeth McGovern is Cora

‘I think Cora is very much an emotionally connected mother. As an American she would have a distinctive approach, different to the English aristocracy’s way of doing things. Her instinct is to be involved with the day-to-day and to go about things in a more hands-on way.’

Society CHAPTER TWO Society Change Life in Service Style House & Estate Romance War Behind the Scenes CAST LIST FURTHER READING ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Copyright About the Publisher Конец ознакомительного фрагмента. Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес». Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес. Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.

Mary: ‘I hope you’re not dreading it too much?’

Robert: ‘Not dreading it exactly, but it’s a brave

new world we’re headed for, no doubt about that;

we must try to meet it with as much grace

as we can muster ...’

To be truly accepted into Society at the turn of the last century, you had to be born into it. While there were books published on etiquette, there were pages and pages more of unwritten rules that should be observed – and a knowledge of these marked out those who were grand as opposed to those who were not. For someone like Violet, the Dowager Countess, the notion of her world changing and allowing a broader cross-section of people to enter it was insupportable. Some things were preordained and immutable: Society, and the circle of people who encompassed it, was one of them.

Violet is an aristocrat through and through and, as a firm believer in noblesse oblige, is committed to its principles. Although aware of the changes occurring, or threatening to occur, in the younger generation’s way of life, Violet nevertheless believes that the rules of Society are fixed. So when she is faced with a middle-class interloper, with his ‘weekends’ and his bicycles, taking over her late husband’s family’s title and estate, she expects that the sheer might of her aristocratic power and privilege will win out and preserve the status quo.

VIOLET, THE DOWAGER COUNTESS

‘I have plenty of friends I don’t like.’

ISOBEL CRAWLEY

‘What should we call each other?’

VIOLET, THE DOWAGER COUNTESS

‘We could always start with Mrs Crawley and Lady Grantham.’

However, the situation is not as bleak as Violet would paint it; although he has a lot to learn when it comes to the subtle politics of life as a nobleman, Matthew is not a man without social standing. He is, in fact, a part of the prosperous, professional upper-middle class. Brought up in Manchester by well-educated parents, he could certainly conduct himself with ease in even the upper tiers of Society – he can ride and is affronted when Thomas infers that he may not know how to serve himself at dinner. Yet Matthew is also a liberal: he understands the argument put forward by the suffragettes and is sympathetic to their cause. He is on the side of social change and so when he discovers he is to inherit a new position in the higher ranks of Society, as an earl with a great estate, he does not immediately feel it is a good thing. Matthew is not socially ambitious, but his feelings are irrelevant; whatever happens he will become an earl, what matters is how he handles this transition.

Violet, the Dowager Countess

‘Violet believes that if you take a brick out of the aristocratic wall the whole thing comes crumbling down’, says Julian Fellowes. Violet knows that she can do nothing about Matthew Crawley inheriting Lord Grantham’s title – in 1912 there was no legal mechanism in place which would enable someone to renounce a peerage – but she decides she must do all she can to save Cora’s money for Mary, if not the whole estate itself. As she herself said: ‘Mary holds a trump card. Mary is family.’ After all, Violet worked for years to keep the estate going and continues to live on it as the Dowager Countess; she cannot allow this remote cousin to threaten the formidable walls of prestige that buttress her own existence.