Yes, they really did. Especially if there were guests. This season the family have started to dress down to black tie when it’s just the family and no outside guests. As for the present monarch apparently when she’s having lunch by herself she does eat from a tray table in front of the telly. Pretty sure she dresses for breakfast though, unless she has it sent up to her room.
Me too, although some of the childbirth scenes are a bit graphic for my tastes (& this is coming from a major zombie movie fan).
I would’ve though the O’Briens were Catholic too. I think religion is one of the forbidden topics downstairs. Being Presbyterian wouln’t be a big deal. Mrs Huges probally is (Church of Scotland). A practicing Catholic wouldn’t be able to eat meat on Fridays and during certain fasts, but the same would also be true of a very high church Anglican.
Not that his religon really came up, but the Crawleys did have a Muslim houseguest in the first season; Kemal Pamouk. I don’t think they would actually been able to get halal meat, but would Lady Grantham have known enough not have pork served while he was there?
They had a brief discussion of religion downstairs during the last episode. I had to laugh when Thomas asked Alfred about transubstantiation and Alfred looked at him quite blankly. Carson basically shut it down.
The second season starts here at the end of March. We’re running a mini-marathon of Season I shows right prior to it; I don’t know if other stations are or not. But if you’re interested, now might be a good time to get up to speed on it. One of the nuns is played by Jenny Agutter, the sexy nurse from An American Werewolf in London.
I remember watching her as a child in Logan’s Run.
I just think Call the Midwife does a far better job of illustrating the issue of class than Downton Abbey does. And that’s because Fellowes is fundamentally in favor of this system presented in his show. He would rather have Robert decide to be nice to Mrs. Patmore and pay for her eye surgery rather than let her have access to NHS because she’s worked hard and shouldn’t have to worry in her old age. He’s far too nice to the aristocrats. They are presented as caring about the people they work for when that was not all close to the norm according to the books I’ve read. I find it grating and ultimately quite patronizing to his audience.
In Call the Midwife we see people dealing with the fallout from Robert’s world. Little kids put into the workhouse and still scared of it decades later, a widow who winds up burying her kids because the workhouse wouldn’t feed them enough and so forth. But there’s Robert worrying that he might have to suffer by living in a smaller house.
I think that viewpoint is the show’s achilles heel.
I don’t understand people wanting Daisy to marry her father-in-law. I don’t think he sees her as another other than the daughter he never had. I think it would be great if Daisy went to live with him at the farm and Alfred decided he missed her and started visiting her and they got married and made a life on the farm. That would also solve the eventual problem of too many footmen when Thomas is booted back to footman after Bates returns.
OR, someone could just knock of Mosely. He is such a boring non-character on this show. With Mosely gone, Thomas could be Matthew’s valet. Sure it’s a step down from being the Lord’s valet, but surely better than footman.
Or Daisy’s father-in-law could take up with Thomas (because the one good thing about his wife and son are dead is he’s finally free to be himself), Mosely could be the child’s nurse, Branson could go back to being chauffeur, Daisy could take Ethel’s place in whoretown, a second blackmailer could bring evidence that after leaving “The Cheerful Charlies” Carson had a drag act under the name Tuda Mannerborn, and the series ends with a scream from the servants quarters in which Anna’s found dead with her neck snapped as Bates stands over her saying “Oh… well… this must look bad indeed”.
THAT would be a finale worth watching.
How would Fellowes give Mrs Patmore access to the NHS when the show’s set 30 yrs before it was created? I agree that Fellowes is looking back through rose-tinted glasses, and some of the servants are way too close with the Crawleys. However stuff like paying for medical care did happen or providing retired servants with a cottage & modest pension did happen. It would’ve made more sense (& been funnier) if Robert payed for her surgey because Cora went into a fit about having to replace her cook than out of the goodness of his heart. Like in that episode of Upstairs, Downstairs where Mrs Bridges was charged with kidnapping and Lady Majorie was livid and demanded her lawyer get her released because she had a dinner party planned.
Or Daisy’s father-in-law could take up with Thomas (because the one good thing about his wife and son are dead is he’s finally free to be himself), Mosely could be the child’s nurse, Branson could go back to being chauffeur, Daisy could take Ethel’s place in whoretown, a second blackmailer could bring evidence that after leaving “The Cheerful Charlies” Carson had a drag act under the name Tuda Mannerborn, and the series ends with a scream from the servants quarters in which Anna’s found dead with her neck snapped as Bates stands over her saying “Oh… well… this must look bad indeed”. Meanwhile, the footman’s parents visit and are convinced that he’s the owner of Downton Abbey and the other servants have to make it appear so with the help of a new zany American nanny played by Reba McEntire.
THAT would be a finale worth watching.
Not to mention that even if they wanted to (and I don’t get that vibe from the show- it’s a father/daughter thing to me), Daisy CAN’T marry her father-in-law. Such a thing was and still is illegal in the UK, and probably in most other countries as well.
I think if you asked Robert if he wanted NHS for his employees he would take affront and tell you he’d rather provide for them himself. If his fellow aristocrats declined to do so, Robert might be slighly upset but he would shrug and probably not think about it anymore.
Yes, some upper class members were good employers. But many were not. Fellowes clearly has no problem with that kind of system where employees wind up depending on the benevolence of an upper class person with power rather than having government provided safety nets. He tries too hard to ignore the problems inherent with that kind of set up. The workhouse is never alluded to even thought that would have probably been one of Ethel’s few other choices to provide for her son. I wish he had at least touched on it as it is a clearly very much a fear that haunts some of the characters.
I cried and cried and cried. But it was just so well done I thought they found hope rather than sadness so that’s how I felt afterwards. The main character’s narration was wonderfully insightful.
When he and family thought they were going to have to switch to living in Downsized Abbey (with but 8 servants), how and whether the other servants would find situations elsewhere did not seem to be anywhere near his top concern. It probably wouldn’t be so bad for Mrs. Patmore, who could find a job any number of places, but it would be dreadful for Mrs. Hughes (the only non-villain of the downstairs staff who has said she doesn’t particularly love House Crawley) who is a bit old to take on a new great house or a job as maid somewhere and likely is hoping to serve out her time at Downton.
Does anybody know if elderly servants usually were or usually were not pensioned? From what I’ve seen of their wages, even assuming frugal living and putting as much as possible by during their work years they would have been S.O.L. after a few years.
Mrs. Levinson said that while she could not touch the principal of her husband’s estate, she had a generous enough income that she could help with clothing allowances and nice gifts. Perhaps they would at least have turned to her for this since the full pay of all of their servants combined probably would be less than Lady Mary’s dress budget for a season. (I’m surprised that a place like Downton would not have had a full time seamstress and wardrobe manager.)
Speaking of the"only needs 8 servants" scene, are we only seeing the Upper Servants in the downstairs scenes? We have
1 butler
1 housekeeper
1 chef
2 kitchen help
2 footmen
2 valets
2 ladies maids
So that’s 11. Laying off 3 of them wouldn’t save the family enough to pay their butcher bill for a month, plus which Daisy and Violet are about the only ones we ever see doing any kind of demanding labor other than on very special occasions (such as Edith’s wedding and aftermath which was more “all hands on deck”).
Presumably there’s a grounds staff we don’t see, and apparently Branson was not replaced, but does anybody know if there are other servants we don’t see who do the mopping and firebuilding and the like but eat elsewhere, or is the grunt work of the Abbey something done by the footmen and maids when they’re not attending the family members in more formal occasions? And regarding the ‘8 servants’ for the smaller Downton Place, would they have been referring to letting three of those mentioned (Thomas, Alfred, etc.) or the “unseen” other staff?
Sampiro - I’d assume they’d have at least 2 people working in the stables. Probably at least 3 groundskeepers/gardeners. From what I remember of Manor House on PBS, they’d have a “hallboy”, who did chores and slept in the hall to answer the door at night. In Manor House (which wasn’t as large as Downton and wasn’t nobility), they had 15 servants.
That and a connection to his son. I’m not seeing anything non-platonic there at all. It’s very sweet and one of the storylines I really like right now. I hope she takes the tenancy now, buys it out when it’s eventually sold, and becomes an independent farm owner someday.
