Yes, but it’s much less scandalous to adopt a poor motherless child than to admit publicly you’ve had a child out of wedlock. See film stars such as Loretta Young.
StG
Musing… back when this series started, “Isis” was just an Egyptian goddess. 
Well, in my mind “oogy/oogie” connotes disturbing with just a soupçon of revulsion. “Creepy” has a connotation of fear, “gross” is synonymous with “disgusting,” and “skeevy” has more of a flavor of squalid or low-class.
I therefore declare oogie* to be the perfect word describe a relationship between Tom and Mary.
- FWIW, Urban Dictionary uses this spelling for the word, although their definition is “extremely gross.” UD considers “oogy” a completely different word, describing a feeling of illness. I stand corrected on my spelling!
I don’t deny that there is an onus on Edith to come clean before any potential marriage. I just think it will be like Liberace coming out of the closet and expecting everyone to be surprised.
Edith: I have something to tell you – Marigold isn’t my family’s ward – she’s actually my daughter!
Bertie: Your family’s ward, in whom you seem to have such extravagant interest, and who appeared on your family’s estate shortly after your nine-month vacation to the continent? No duh!
[QUOTE=StGermain]
Yes, but it’s much less scandalous to adopt a poor motherless child than to admit publicly you’ve had a child out of wedlock. See film stars such as Loretta Young.
[/QUOTE]
But if she does formally adopt Marigold, the fact that Marigold’s birth certificate is names Edith as the mother is going to come out. Might as well just say “I adopted her” without going through any legal process and replace one fiction with another.
Would Edith really need to publically admit she’s Marigold’s mother for her new husband to adopt her? Obviously Bertie & the solicitors would know, but wouldn’t all of the paperwork be sealed by the court?
Another unwed pregnancy, probably.
But that would be Bates’ job. Shit on the carpet would be a housemaid’s problem. 
Surprised we didn’t eventually see Lord Grantham apologize to his sister for telling her to shut up at her own dinner table in her own house.
I don’t know about “sealed” per se, but the legal mumbo jumbo can stay behind the scenes. The cover story can be simply “my daughter was a ward of the family, but we adopted her when she was very young.” That’s a polite fiction that can easily be maintained even if somebody does know the true backstory - and actually is closer to the truth than the current story.
This is all speculation, of course.
Reminds me of “my nine-pound baby was actually born three months premature, probably caused by the residual stress from that very quick wedding (we were soooo in love that we had to get married right away, you see) after which he was immediately conceived”.
Well, they would at least have to tell people they were adopting Marigold, though there’d probably be no point in actually going through any legal procedures.
Moseley isn’t a valet, he’s a footman. He was a valet before with Matthew, and he considered a huge insult to become a footman. I would think going from Underbutler to footman would be even worse.
EDIT: Speaking of which, Bates has the cushiest job doesn’t he? It seems like he was very little work to do, and none of the responsibilities of having to run the show like Carson.
They all are shown to have an amount of free time which is wildly ahistorical. (It’s all part of the *‘life in a low-mobility class system is the most fun EVAH’ *message.) In real life, Bates would have been hovering around Grantham for all of the Earl’s waking hours, when not cleaning and preparing the Earl’s clothing, boots, etc. He’d have had little time for lounging about the servant hall (as he is so often shown doing).
If a woman remains a virgin until her wedding, God will sometimes reward her with a compressed pregnancy.
Yeah…I think the nuns told us that one. 
But the Crawleys are most emphatically not Catholic.
It seems to me that aside from meals, almost every time we see Bates in the servant’s hall he is polishing the Earl’s boots.
It’s an even bigger drop that you think; Mosley used to be a full fledged butler. His introduction was as Matthew & Isobel’s butler (he also valeted for Matthew). He followed Matthew to the great house after he married Mary; when Matthew died he ended up going into debt and working jobs like delivery boy and road construction worker before Carson hired as 2nd footmen (the lowest ranking male servant other than the nameless hall boys). When Carson had the flue Mosely even filled in as butler at Downton once (& made total mess of things when he got drunk tasting he dinner wine).
Whoops, that’s what I meant. 
I rather liked it; Violet is so often seen being mean for sport, but I honestly think her motivation this time was that she was affronted that Isobel was being invited under … not exactly false pretenses, but with an underlying motive that wasn’t very nice. And it was a good reminder that for all of Violet’s scheming, she really knows what’s up. Of course she still enjoyed it.
The puppy was indeed the best part!
For this whole storyline, even before Charlie’s rash/fire, I’ve felt sorry for Mary because everyone else seems to expect her to completely disregard her issues with cars due to Matthew’s death. Although I suppose that is historically accurate – I don’t think people then were understanding of the power those associations could have, and besides, they’re English and as a culture they’ve just been through WWI and seemed to have reached a national agreement not to harp on all that suffering, so why should Mary’s suffering be given any special accommodation? Still, I wish she would have told any of them to shove it, she wasn’t going to a car race.