I think it’s clear the youngest, Sybil, is destined for the Chauffeur. Or that’s his hope, anyway.
nm
Did anybody catch how Carson snubbed the Duke when he caught him in the servants’ area? It appears that servants were the masters of their domain, and house guests – including Dukes–were expected to heed that.
Again recalling the stories of Wodehouse, being snubbed by a butler in mid-season form was a sure way to ruin your day.
nm
I don’t recall the butler being there. It was Bates, the valet. And I wouldn’t call what he did “snubbing,” but it was trenchant.
I think the meaning of “snub” as Wodehouse used it was a little broader. At least as the author portrayed them, butlers could and frequently did use a variety of methods on misbehaving or unwelcome visitors, from the Icy Stare to the delivery of drinks or tea with an attitude that suggested he would rather swallow live slugs. A good way of garnering a butlerine snub was to comment on the peculiarities of the family members.
Yeah, loved it! Does Maggie Smith play the same (sort) of character in everything?
BTW, I thought for sure that Bates would nearly lose his leg due to the “limp correcting” device, and Mrs. Crawley would come to the rescue. Didn’t expect to see him toss it into the lake.
Dame Maggie has a limited range, true, but she sure earned herself some Emmys in pt. 2, that’s for sure. Her obvious distaste for Mrs. Crawley is just wonderful. Her expression on stage as Mrs. Crawley joined the hospital board was a masterpiece of wordless disgust.
Fun to see an old-fashioned fox hunt.
The Turk snuffing it really surprised me, too. I presume he died at the moment of orgasm… but maybe that’s just the romantic in me. I couldn’t help laugh as the three women snuck him back to his room… and then as the Earl matter-of-factly held forth the next morning on women’s delicate sensibilities.
The surgery on the farmer with dropsy was a bit harrowing. If I were the doctor I’d have ordered everyone from the room except the patient and the assisting nurse… and maybe the wife, if she insisted on staying.
I just don’t buy that Bates would use that leg device to the point of actually having open wounds. First, he’s a military veteran and knows what open wounds can lead to. Second, it would stain his well-creased pants!
It’s bad enought to have a foreigner die inside one’s home, but inside one’s daughter too! Oh the horror. I can’t wait to see that converation between Lady Grantham and Dowager Lady Grantham. It’d be really funny if instead of fainting from the shock the latter critizes her daughter-in-law for not being American and not knowing how to cover up a scandal like this properly.
He needs Mrs Crawley there because she’s familiar with the procedure and can comfort the wife. Dowager Lady Grantham is way to intimidating for him to order her to do anything.
Why no formal mourning in the household after the Turk slip’d this mortal coil? Was there none because (a) he wasn’t a family member, (b) he was a foreigner, © he was a temporary visitor, or (d) something else?
Likely all of those.
As Maggie Smith said, “No proper Englishman would ever die in someone else’s house!”
Formal mourning is for people with whom you have some kind of ongoing, long-term, familial, or formal relationship. Most often it’s a blood relative or a relative by marriage, or someone to whom you owe formal loyalty or fealty. The closer the relationship, the more extensive the mourning.
You don’t go into formal mourning for someone who is merely a friend, even if it is your closest friend you’ve known your whole life if you have no other relationship with him or her. A stranger who visited your house once and kicked the bucket definitely doesn’t rate.
That’s why Mary would have had to go into super-extensive mourning if her engagement to the dude who died on the Titanic had been publicly known, but since it had been known only within the family, she didn’t have to do any more mourning than the rest of her family did. A fiance is closer than a cousin, so requires more mourning.
Aren’t they the same thing in royal circles? 
IIRC the servants would also be expected to go into mourning, but would simply wear a black armband over their uniforms to show this.
Well, no one in this story is royal, first of all. But I think that’s implicit in what I said. If Patrick Crawley is merely Mary’s cousin, that’s a lower level of mourning. If he’s both her cousin and her fiance, fiance trumps cousin, so that’s a higher level of mourning. It’s wasn’t public knowledge that it was the latter, so Mary was free to choose a lower level of mourning.
I think that PunditLisa meant the royals used to marry their cousins a lot.
Yes, and that’s exactly what I responded to. It’s both irrelevant (because we’re not talking about royals here) and redundant (because Mary actually was engaged to her cousin and this very fact was an important part of the “do I have to be in mourning” scene).
Meant to add, the scene where the butler’s old burlesque/dancing buddy shows up, forces his way in, is paid off and told to leave, was great. An interesting situation, with great dialogue and great acting all around.
The DVD comes out next week; anybody know what kind of special features it has? I just watched Gosford Park and Julian Fellowes’s audio commentary was fascinating.
I have the DVD that was sold on Amazon for $17. It includes a short segment on the making of the series and a little background on the estate.