The World of Downton Abbey Text Only

A CARNIVAL FILMS / MASTERPIECE CO-PRODUCTION

THE WORLD OF

DOWNTON ABBEY

TEXT

JESSICA FELLOWES

FOREWORD

JULIAN FELLOWES

TEXT ONLY EBOOK EDITION

LORD GRANTHAM

‘My dear fellow. We all have chapters

we would rather keep unpublished.’

Contents

Cover

Title Page

FOREWORD

Family Life

Society

Change

Life in Service

Style

House & Estate

Romance

War

Behind the Scenes

CAST LIST

FURTHER READING

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Copyright

About the Publisher

Foreword

I have always enjoyed country houses. There is something about their completeness, with their different rooms and offices catering to almost every need, making up a microcosm of a complete world, that is very satisfactory to me. But, as a child, wandering around the homes of my parents’ friends and relations, I was aware that I was looking at the remains of a way of life that, with rare exceptions, was no longer being lived in by them. Those empty attic rooms, often still boasting an iron bedstead or a dusty cupboard with vacant nameplate holders on the doors, spoke of a once-crowded place, peopled then only by ghosts. Those echoing stables, full of abandoned toys and rusting gardening equipment, those vast kitchens, jammed with discarded luggage and broken bicycles and signs for use in the village fête, were haunted to my childish eyes by shadows of what used to be.

Of course, I grew up in the sad years for these monuments to the past. They had lost their value as the aristocracy largely threw in the towel after the war, and in the 1950s they could hardly be given as presents. Instead, palace after great palace, those that were not considered suitable for some new and frequently inappropriate role, fell victim to the demolition ball, and an immense part of our nation’s heritage was literally thrown away. Until 1974, when the new director of the Victoria and Albert Museum, Roy Strong, decided to stage an exhibition, The Destruction of the English Country House, and it is not an exaggeration to say that everything changed, almost overnight. We woke up to the idea that these houses were an integral part of our history, that the life formerly lived in them had involved us all, whether our forebears had been behind the green baize door or in front of it, that they were not simply huge and unmanageable barns, no longer viable without sufficient staff, but expressions of our national character that we should be proud of.

And as we learned to love them again, so a younger generation invented a new way to live in them. They didn’t mourn the servants they had usually never known. They simply saw the space and its possibilities. The big kitchens were re-opened and the horrible converted ante-rooms and passages that had served as kitchens for our parents’ generation were abandoned. But this time, the family chose to occupy the kitchens in their own way, importing televisions and sofas and toys and making them right for the way we live now. Helpers did not sleep upstairs in the garrets but came in from the village and called the owners by their Christian names and felt, quite rightly, that they had a stake in making the house work. In a way, the landowners reinvented themselves, as the aristocracy has done so many times before, and found a place, for themselves and their houses, in modern Britain. This was perhaps the main inspiration for the series, Downton Abbey, because we did all feel that were we to go into this territory, it must be right for our present zeitgeist to give equal weight, in terms of narrative or moral probity or even likeability to both parts of the community of a great house, the family and their servants. This I hope we have done, favouring neither group over the other, which I am convinced remains one of the principal strengths of the show.

Like most of the good things in my life, Downton Abbey came about entirely by chance. I had been trying to get a completely different project off the ground with the producer, Gareth Neame, and when at last we realised it was not going to fly, we met for dinner to call it a day. It was then that Gareth suggested venturing back into the territory of a film I had written some years before, Gosford Park, but this time for television, and that is how it began. Gosford was set in a large country house in November 1932 and it dealt with a shooting party and their servants, both those working in the house and for the guests, so it was clear at once what Gareth wanted. I was a little nervous initially, at the risks of asking for a second helping, but the idea grew on me and so Downton Abbey was born. Television – or rather, a television series, with its open-endedness, with its unlimited time to develop any character – held possibilities that the space allowed for a film narrative could not offer. We decided at once to retreat twenty years to 1912, since the underlying theme of Gosford Park had been that it was all coming to an end; but we didn’t want to go further back than that as we both agreed that we needed the action to take place in a recognisable universe – with cars and trains and telephones and many other modern devices, albeit in embryo, which defined the period clearly as the parent of the present day.

As to why I find the subject so appealing, I suppose it is because that half century from around 1890 to 1940 seems to me to form a bridge from the old world into the new. At the beginning, society was run along much the same lines it had been since the Conquest. Inventions had altered things, of course, but the strict pyramid shape, the idea that everyone had their different roles to play and that, to a great extent, they were born to play them, was still unchallenged, or so it appeared. In fact, of course, beneath the smooth surface of the long Edwardian summer, a good deal was being questioned. Trades unions, women’s rights, Marxism, were all waiting in the wings and it would only take a couple of years of war before they started to stride centre stage. New modes of travel would shrink the world, new methods of production would transform it. For most of the population of Monarchical Old Europe, at least for those who were young adults at the turn of the last century, the world they would die in would bear almost no resemblance to the world of their beginnings, whatever their nationality, whatever their class.

My own great-aunt Isie, the model for Violet Grantham, was born in 1880, making her more than ten years older than Lady Mary Crawley, and she would die at ninety one in 1971, so I knew her well. She was one of the generation of young ladies who never went to school and her Mama would only allow her to attend university lectures in London if she agreed to two conditions: the first that she would never sit an exam, the second that she would be accompanied at all times by a maid. She was presented in 1898, married before the First World War and set up house in one of the Cadogans, ‘quite near Peter Jones, dear,’ with a butler who had been first footman to Mrs Willie James, reputedly the illegitimate daughter of King Edward VII. She lost her husband in the first war, her only son in the second, and she would live to see men land on the moon. From knowing her and listening to her story, a clear sense came to me that ‘history’ is not so long ago.

For most of them, the way of life lived at Downton would come to an end in 1939. Of course there would be people after the war who employed butlers and cooks, there are quite a few of them now, but as a way of life lived, to a degree, in every village and hamlet from Land’s End to John o’Groats, it was over. Many of the houses were requisitioned by the services, some to their cost, and the debts and mortgages accumulated since the collapse of the agricultural economy in the 1880s and 90s, made the idea of re-opening them when the fighting ended six years later, unalluring. Their renaissance would not come for thirty years or so after the Second World War and then, as I have said, the new owners chose to live in them differently. Happily, this revival has, in many cases, proved successful and Britain’s old families have written and continue to write another chapter in their long history. Which brings us back to the Crawleys of Downton Abbey, but when it comes to how far we will travel with them through the decades of challenge and change that lie ahead for their civilisation, that must remain to be seen.

Julian Fellowes

July 2011

Family Life CHAPTER ONE

April 1912.

The sun is rising behind Downton Abbey, a great and splendid house in a great and splendid park. So secure does it appear that it seems as if the way of life it represents will last for another thousand years.

It won’t.

Welcome to the world of Downton Abbey, a place that has captivated an audience of millions, all following the lives of one family and their servants. Against the backdrop of a fading Edwardian society, we watch their personal dramas unfold and see them through the horrors and change that the First World War brought to Britain. This perhaps is what fascinates us: not just the beautiful scenery, the sumptuous costumes, nor even the skill of the actors, but the fact that we are experiencing something of how life was a hundred years ago. We notice the differences between our lives and theirs; the rigid social hierarchy, the nuances of etiquette, the stifling clothes and the battle for women to be heard. But alongside this, we see something that is the same: family life.

At the forefront of everything at Downton is family, whether this stands for the blood ties of the Crawleys or the relationships between the servants below stairs. All of us can recognise a familiar character amongst them: Violet, the dowager Countess, the old-fashioned grandmother; Mary, Edith and Sybil, the squabbling sisters; Robert and Cora, the loving parents; or Rosamund, the interfering sister-in-law. Any of us who have left behind our families to make our own new, adopted ties with those we work with or with friends we choose are creating a new family, just as the servants do at Downton. With Carson and Mrs Hughes as the firm but fair parents, Thomas and O’Brien as the scheming siblings and Daisy as the baby, the servants are close by on the other side of the green baize door that separates upstairs and downstairs. Thrown together in cramped quarters, working long, hard hours, the servants nevertheless find security in their relationships with each other. Like all families, they have their ups and their downs, their favourites and a few petty fights.

Downton Abbey is more than just a house, it is also a home to both the family and the servants. Everyone living here is striving to keep the house and estate in good order, ready to pass on to the next generation. So when the question is raised of who will inherit, everyone is affected – above and below stairs. Even a miniature kingdom needs to know who is king.

For the moment, of course, Robert, the Earl of Grantham, is still the master of his realm. In this role, he has his own duties to fulfil just as much as Daisy, the scullery maid at the very bottom of the pecking order. A place like Downton Abbey cannot run well unless everyone within it understands their role and carries out their work efficiently.

There is a clear hierarchy at Downton; each servant has a position. The maids deal with the laundry, but the finishing of the clothes for the master and mistress of the house is the responsibility of Bates, valet to Lord Grantham, and Miss O’Brien, lady’s maid to Lady Grantham. These servants enjoy senior roles in the household, are two of the few that move seamlessly between below stairs and above, and enjoy the confidence of their employers. The rest of the staff probably think that these two have easier daily routines than the other servants, having nothing more to attend to than the earl and his wife’s needs. But from the first cup of tea brought up in the morning to whatever they might want last thing at night, they must be on duty all day with little respite. Their relationship with their employers is one of trust and practicality: Bates and O’Brien are welcome in the bedrooms, dressing rooms and even the bathrooms of their employers, making them privy to many details of the family’s private lives, and giving them a powerful position in the household. They could use this to their advantage when back downstairs, teasing or threatening the other staff with it – as when O’Brien learns before anyone else that the heir to Downton Abbey has been drowned during the Titanic disaster.

By contrast, the housemaids – Anna, Ethel, Gwen and Daisy – work behind the scenes. They are up early to complete the dusting of the drawing room and libraries, the plumping of the cushions, the cleaning of the grates and the laying of the fires before the family comes downstairs for breakfast. Only when the bedrooms are empty do the maids go in, to change the sheets and refresh the biscuit jars and water carafes. The rest of the day is spent on cleaning tasks set by the housekeeper, Mrs Hughes, such as beating rugs or polishing brass, as well as assisting the daughters of the house or any female guests who come to stay without their maids. They can be called upon at any time; each room in the house has a cord, pulled to summon assistance. The cord is connected to a wire that rings one of many bells on a board in the servants’ hall below; each labelled with the relevant room so the appropriate servant can attend. The jangle of bells is a sound that rules the servants’ lives.

Writer, Julian Fellowes

‘In a house this size, there would normally be a scullery maid, who did the washing up; a vegetable maid, who prepared the vegetables; and a stillroom maid who did the baking. For the purposes of narration, we amalgamated several maids’ jobs into one for Daisy.’

Hugh Bonneville is Lord Grantham

‘Downton Abbey is a microcosm of society. It had its own machinery that needed to keep working – it’s not masters and slaves but had its own order in which everyone depended on each other to keep it going.’

A DAY IN THE LIFE OF DAISY

4.30am: In the small, dark hours of the morning, the kitchen maid, Daisy, awakes alone, dresses herself in her hand-me-down corset, simple dress and apron and steals down the stairs to stoke the kitchen fire. She creeps round the family’s bedrooms to light their fires, before going down to the kitchen to blacken the stove and lay the breakfast things in the servants’ hall.

6am: Daisy knocks on the doors of the housemaids to waken them, then takes her basket of logs with brushes, blacking, matches and paper to lay and light the fires in the rooms on the ground floor – the libraries, drawing room, dining room and great hall. The hall boy, another lowly servant who was only occasionally seen and never heard, has already delivered the coal and kindling wood to the scuttles.

10am: Daisy is still in suds up to her elbows as William and Thomas bring the cleared breakfast things, except for the glasses, which they wash in the servery. There’s no respite even as the last plate is stacked to dry; Mrs Patmore tells her to start on scrubbing pots and pans needed for lunch before she chops vegetables.

2pm: Once luncheon has been served and cleared away, Daisy has to wash all the pans and crockery once more, ready for dinner.

4pm: The servants enjoy tea, although not all of them can sit down at the same time. This well-earned break ends with the dressing gong, which marks the time when the family retires upstairs to dress for dinner.

7pm: By now, Daisy has been up for 13 hours but she cannot allow her eyelids to droop. The busiest part of her day is about to begin with the final preparations for the family supper, as well as laying out the servants’ supper.

8.30pm: The pots and pans, which had been scoured to gleaming after luncheon, ready for cooking dinner, need to be cleaned again now that it has been served.

9.45pm: When the family’s dinner is finished, Daisy puts her aching hands into the hot soapy water for the last time that day, cleaning the crockery and cutlery. Once she has had something to eat herself in the kitchen, the cook will send her to bed, much to her chagrin – it’s only when the servants have finished their work for the day and are relaxing in the servants’ hall after dinner that the fun begins.

Tomorrow will be the same again. With just one half day off a week, the routine is relentless. At the end of her arduous day, Daisy trudges wearily up the stairs to her room. Just a few hours later, she’ll wake again to another day in Downton Abbey.

Writer, Julian Fellowes

‘While bells are now seen as a symbol of servitude, at the time the bell-boards came in, around the 1820s, they were hailed as an absolute liberation. Up until that point, the footmen had to sit on hard wooden chairs within earshot of the family – usually in the hall. They would get a message, say, “Please ask my maid to come and see me”, then have to go downstairs, find the maid and then go back to their chair. With the bell-board, they could not only simply be wherever they wanted to be but if the bell rang from, say, the mistress’s bedroom, it was immediately obvious who was needed.’

THOMAS

‘And they’re off.’

Carson, the butler, is the most senior member of the below-stairs family, overseeing the work of all the male servants, and is Lord Grantham’s right-hand man. Butlers were sometimes grand enough to attain a little notoriety: Edwin Lee, the long-serving butler for Cliveden, an estate comparable to Downton in size and splendour, was known even by guests as ‘Lord Lee’. While the butler’s practical duties are few – monitoring the wine cellar, decanting port, pouring wine at the dinner table, and cleaning the fine pieces of silver (the footmen clean the rest) – he is the one who makes sure that everything is running exactly as it should be, and woe betide the footman who neglects to snap to attention. Carson believes the responsibility for the entire house is his, and if there is no one to do something that needs doing, he’ll do it himself. When they are short-handed during the war, he risks his own health rather than let standards slip.

Alongside Carson is Mrs Hughes, the housekeeper, who is in charge of the housemaids – both their work and their welfare. With a big bunch of keys jangling at her waist, she manages the household accounts, draws up the servants’ rotas, checks the linens (sheets and tablecloths are used in rotation so they last for years) and keeps a careful eye on orders for the kitchen store cupboard. This last responsibility, of course, is a bone of contention between Mrs Hughes and the cook, Mrs Patmore, who cannot understand why the stores do not fall under her jurisdiction.

Working long hours in a kitchen that was boiling hot all year round, cooks were famously short-tempered, understandably so when you learn that Mrs Patmore is up before 6am and won’t go to bed until 18 hours later, after cooking eight meals for the family and the servants.

Attending to guests

Gordon Grimmett was second footman at Cliveden while it was the country home of the Astors. The many high-profile guests, including film stars, politicians and writers such as Charlie Chaplin, Gandhi, T.E. Lawrence and Winston Churchill, meant a lot of work for the staff. ‘Every morning would see us up at seven, running down to the stillroom, eventually emerging with six small morning tea trays arranged on one large butler’s tray, distributing them round the guests’ rooms, opening curtains and gently but firmly waking them. We didn’t want them slipping back to sleep again and blaming us for their having missed breakfast. Then we collected their clothes from the night before, and whipped them into the brushing-room, to sponge, brush, fold and hang them. Then we would be laying up the breakfast table, and bringing in the various dishes ... and the constant running to and fro with fresh toast.’

PREPARING FOR HOUSE PARTIES

The arrival of guests at a house such as Downton is an important event not only for the family, but for the servants, too. Most household staff had real pride in their work and the house in which they served, and visits were a chance to show just how good they were at their jobs. The presence of a very noble visitor, such as a Duke, was considered an honour and the servants would be eager to serve him and make sure that he left feeling that their house was a well-run one.

CARSON

‘It’s certainly a great day for Downton, to welcome a Duke under our roof.’

Preparations at Downton are begun by Cora, who decides which bedrooms will be used, then the right menus are put together with Mrs Patmore – for meals that will show off the best of the home farm produce as well as the cook’s ability to create a worthy feast. Once agreed, the menus are written in French. Cora then decides the placement around the dining table at each meal in advance. At the lunches and dinners, if more people are staying than the footmen could reasonably be expected to serve, the valet is asked to help. Carson might help out in the dining room if necessary, but never a maid – although this rule had to be relaxed on occasion during the war when there weren’t enough men.

Mrs Hughes then makes sure the bedrooms are made up freshly on the day of the guests’ arrival, and clean towels and new soaps are placed in the bathroom. Inkwells must be full, and sheets of Downton Abbey writing paper and envelopes must be laid out on the bedroom table. The head gardener is asked to supply cut flowers for the house and for an arrangement in a vase for each of the guests’ bedrooms.

If the visitors arrive without either a valet or lady’s maid of their own, a footman or housemaid is assigned to them. Branson, the chauffeur, is despatched to the station to meet everyone off the train. Arriving at the house, they are greeted by Lord and Lady Grantham and their daughters, Carson, and William and Thomas, who take the luggage.

Guest luggage is unpacked in a room that has a series of locker-like cupboards. If several ladies are staying, this is the opportunity for their maids to compare the dresses planned for the Saturday-to-Monday and thus avoid anyone wearing anything too similar at the same time.

The footmen, Thomas and William, are the servants most visible to the family and any guests, and therefore they are dressed in tailored livery. They answer the front door, deliver messages to the village, serve in the dining room and stoke the fire if a member of the family is in the room. William is also in charge of walking Pharaoh, Lord Grantham’s Labrador, first thing in the morning and last thing at night, and Thomas has been given the unusual responsibility of cleaning all the clocks in the house, because his father was a clockmaker. Footmen were often known for their arrogance – their appearance gave them an advantage over the rest of the servants and they weren’t afraid to use it.

MRS HUGHES

‘You have to ease up a bit or you’ll give yourself a heart attack. Things cannot be the same when there’s a war on.’

CARSON

‘I do not agree. Keeping up standards is the only way to show the Germans they will not beat us in the end.’

Below stairs, the day begins early, and breakfast is eaten after completing their morning tasks but before the family come down from their bedrooms. Gordon Grimmett, third footman at Longleat House during the First World War, did not look forward to breaking his fast in the morning: ‘It was a picnic kind of meal with people coming and leaving as their duties required. There was little variety, it seemed it was always kedgeree on weekdays and bacon on Sundays. As it was war time we were each given a quarter of a pound of butter a week, which we kept in a small tin; once that was gone it was dry bread.’