Last week I was lent the complete first series of Downton Abbey on DVD. It has not been shown here in South Africa, nor do I expect it to be, but I was aware that it had caused a bit of a stir in Britain when it was broadcast there earlier this year and so I was delighted when I was given the opportunity to watch it. I have to say that I enjoyed it immensely and eagerly anticipate the second series.
It is easy to see why it should have met with such favour. The show is costume drama at its best and is British to the core. Talented actors in beautiful costumes act out a convincing story. The setting, a magnificent stately home belonging to an aristocratic family in the years leading up to The Great War, provides ample opportunity for the script to be refreshingly free of the tedium of Political Correctness that is so pervasive in modern drama. There are no token immigrants occupying unlikely positions of authority or affection within the household. While a nod is given to the existence of homosexuality, it is kept discreet, not paraded as a badge of honour, as would be the case in a more current setting. Language is tempered and good manners are enforced. People of different backgrounds and education respect each other with out feeling the constant need to be rude, unpleasant or unduly resentful. The Great British Chip has yet to descend on the shoulders of hoi polloi and the upper classes have not become ashamed of their privilege but recognise and accept the tremendous responsibilities that are attached to it. Unbridled self-indulgence is not tolerated.
On either side of the baize door, dramas and intrigues unfold. In the servants’ quarters, all the staff from butler to kitchen maid, struggle to seek happiness and improve their lives. While ambitions to progress beyond a life of service exist for some, they all recognise their good fortune to be able to work and live in a house such as Downton Abbey which offers them a home, a job and a community.
Meanwhile the Crawley family, which has produced daughters but no sons, has to deal with the fact that the estate is entailed to the heir to the title, a distant and unknown cousin, whose background is very different to their own. In a male-dominated society where women do not yet have the vote, it is the role of an aristocratic female to marry and produce heirs so that estates can continue to prosper. Lord Grantham declares that he does not own Downton Abbey, in the usual sense of the word, he is merely its caretaker on behalf of the wider Crawley family. Primogenitor dictates that only a male who carries the Crawley name and bears the title can inherit. He tells his daughter that it was his ancestors who created it for future generations of Crawleys. She is not the only descendent and when she marries, she will lose the name and there will be no title.
This classic bit of theatre holds particular interest for me because the household is very like that into which my father was born in 1914. In a vast stately home, staffed by a full complement of servants and set in parkland, designed by Humphrey Repton, the life of my grandparents and my father’s older siblings would have been very similar to that of the Crawley family. Of course, The Great War changed everything. The family moved out for its duration and the house was turned into a hospital for wounded soldiers returning from Flanders. Fortunes were lost, new generations emerged and the old political order changed giving place to new. The house was eventually pulled down after the second war to avoid punitive death duties and because the estate could no longer manage to maintain the enormous staff that was necessary to run it.
Below is the house during a parade which took place the year following the birth of my grandfather.
Boadicea's Chariot 
Hoi polloi is an ungracious term, but perhaps an inevitable one, given the circumstances.
Many were pulled down sad to say. In Wales, the speciality was ‘Jewish Lightening’ so the insurance could be collected. I know of half a dozen ruins in North Carms that all died in the 20s.
I haven’t seen Downton Abbey yet but the BBC did some Anthony Trollope a few years ago. The Barchester Chronicles, The Way We Live Now and He Knew He Was Right in a boxed set for a very reasonable sum from Amazon. I suspect you would be amused by them. The Way We Live Now could have been written last week , a ponzi scheme a la Madof! Very satirical.
Hi, Sipu.
Haven’t watched ‘Downton Abbey’ myself but have heard good reports about the series. Glad you enjoyed it. Still have to say that it sounds to me to be a bit like ‘Upstairs Downstairs II – Escape to the Country.’
CO is, of course, very rarely wrong and she is, in my opinion, incredibly right about Trollope and the Beeb’s productions thereof. Alan Rickman was superb in ‘The Barchester Chronicles’ as ‘the man Slope’ -memorable and superb venom injected into that one phrase by Geraldine McEwan as Mrs Proudie.The whole thing was a joy.
‘The Way we Live Now’ is, of course, a chilling tale. Proof positive that the whole of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (latterly Northern only) had gone completely to the dogs and that everybody with any sense should get out of the country before everything slid into terminal decay. Set in 1870. Just grateful myself that those of us who stayed on have managed to hang on as a nation for just a few more twilight years since then.
I haven’t watched it either, Sipu, but friends have very much enjoyed the series.
What a pity about the house, but yes, many didn’t survive, more’s the pity.
Hi Christina, JM and Araminta.
I watched ‘The Way We Live Now’ and CO, you are so right about the financial shenanigans. I would love to see the Barchester Collection. I read The Warden and Barchester Towers a couple of years ago and really enjoyed them.
JM, Upstairs Downstairs was required viewing when I first arrived in England from the wilds of Rhodesia in December 1974. I am not sure that it served as a useful introduction to the British way of life. Nevertheless I was as captivated as the rest of the country. I see that the BBC has remade the series. It premiers on the 26th of December.
As for the world going to the dogs, you are right to point out that it was ever thus. Dickens certainly says as much in some of his novels, or at least his characters do.
Ara, in some ways it is surprising that there are so many stately homes still around. They must cost a fortune to maintain. But I do wish I had been able to visit the house before it was destroyed. My cousin talks about rebuilding it, but I doubt that will come to anything.
As for the series, there has apparently been a fair amount of criticism in the Spectator and elsewhere, I imagine, about its accuracy. One person seems to have informed readers that ‘in the belle epoque no gentleman would have dreamed of riding a skewbald horse to hounds. Only gypsies did that.’ But it must be difficult to get everything right.
Sipu while you lament the loss of fortunes among your peers, I lament my grandfather’s loss of his health and mobility in a pit disaster when he was in his prime, enjoying no compensation or pension afterwards. The pit was of course privately owned and run in those good old days.
Janus dear chap, your chip is showing. Your tone and talk of victims, implies there was a conspiracy by the aristocracy to create poverty amongst the working classes. That is not the case. Poverty occurred as a result of the law of unintended consequences. Let me enlighten you. Following the end of the Napoleonic Wars, there was huge pressure to repeal the Corn Laws which had until then guaranteed high grain prices to the great benefit of landowners and, to a lesser extent, the agricultural workers. It was argued, by many, not least the factory owners, that lower prices benefited the majority as opposed to the few. Food prices plummeted as cheap grain was imported from America and elsewhere. The result was that agricultural jobs were lost. Peasantry gave way to urban dwellers as a mass migration from the country to the cities led people to work in the factories. Low food prices meant that the emerging middle class, the nouveau riche if you will, were able to most exploit the situation by paying correspondingly low wages.
Of course there was a period of great poverty suffered by many, but that was a natural consequence of rapid transformation. Such occurrences are referred to as ‘Black Swan Events’. One has to look at the long term consequences of the Industrial Revolution? Britain became the wealthiest country in the world. The population grew dramatically. Innovation thrived and standards of living soared. Schools and hospitals were built. Railways enabled mass mobility and opportunity. Democracy flourished as the franchise was extended. The only class that really saw a long term decline in wealth and standing were the landed gentry. They were the victims of the Industrial Revolution. As a section of British society ,they lost vast fortunes. That is why people such as the Crawleys of Downton Abbey had to marry American heiresses. I do not expect you or anybody else to show any sympathy for them, even I recognise that would be ridiculous, but if you are going to start pointing fingers, perhaps you should look beyond your own sphere of prejudice.
Oh boo bloody hoo. Get over yourself. Are you suggesting that communism is the way to go? Do me a favour. Describe for me your Utopia and explain just how we could achieve it, otherwise put a sock in it. Life is not perfect and it never will be. You, have an infinitely higher standard of living than you ancestors, but I guarantee that you do considerably more whingeing than any of them, including your invalid grandfather.
Sipu, although I spar regularly, and in good humour, with Janus, on this occasion I am right behind him, metaphorically speaking, of course. Your continual banging on about your privileged ancestry becomes boring after a while.
Zen,
Stop being a grumpy old bugger. 😉
Moi?
Sipu, you are as always right. I am prejudiced against your pathetic defence of immoral business conducted to the detriment of working people and to the benefit of your lot. I am not a communist – an old fashioned jibe aimed by your sort against anyone with any ethical backbone. You are to be pitied for squaundering the potential value of privilege and education and remaining a brainless toff. 🙂
Sipu
I think you might find that the migration of rural workers to towns had far more to do with the Inclosure Acts (1750s onwards) than the repeal of the Corn Laws. The Inclosure Acts removed the rights of the peasantry to pasture animals on the Commons and took away the right to use wood and other resources. The Open Fields and Commons were enclosed so that the larger land owners had more land to grow corn, keep sheep or whatever and make greater profits. Without those rights from ‘time-immemorial’ there was no way that the poorer families could survive and they left to try to find work in urban areas.
I don’t have a lot of sympathy for those ‘poor’ landlords who turfed the peasantry off their land, got legal backing for removing their rights, made huge profits behind protective tariffs and then found themselves in trouble when those tariffs were removed…
The virtual forcible removal of agricultural workers away from rural areas may, in the ‘Great Scheme of Things’, have enabled Britain to be first in the ‘Industrial Revolution Race’ – but a lot of individuals suffered and died for that prize. Their suffering should not be made light of.
Thank you. Boa.
Zen, I hardly bang on about it. When I first joined MyT I wrote a series of posts on the subject. That was over 3 years ago. As I recall it was well received. Since then I have scarcely mentioned it apart from the rare occasion when it has been relevant to the topic being discussed or to poke fun at Janus when he attacks those whom he deems to be snobs by virtue of the fact they do not behave like oiks.
In this instance, the post was about Downton Abbey. Not just the series, but the life style involved. On that basis it stands on its merits, as a subject, if not its delivery. My epilogue was added to provide a link between the past and the present. To some, myself included, that period was as a different world. But it was a world my father would have understood.
History interests me. It interests me still more if I am able to make a personal connection. Fortunately for me the history of my family is fairly well documented. Why should I not write about it?. I am well aware that many people do not enjoy what I write just as there is much written by others that I do not enjoy and so do not read, still less make disruptive comments .
Janus oozes prejudice but is incapable of backing up his venomous remarks with valid evidence rational arguments. It’s style of blogging he describes as ‘gadfly’. I describe it as puerile and nasty.
Janus, you remarked that the mine in which your grandfather worked was privately owned. For what reason would you say that other than to indicate that private ownership was wrong and that you were against it? That is view shared by communists. Hence my retort.
Why don’t you do as I ask and describe your Utopia? It is no good just talking about behaving ethically. Ethics are fine in theory, but in the real world exploitation is inevitable. It is the foundation of capitalism. Next time you purchase a Chinese made product, or eat a bar of chocolate or drink a cup of coffee or tea, just think about the people that have been exploited to bring you those things.
Boadicea I wont disagree with you that the (En)Inclosure Laws had as much or more to do with rural migration than the repeal of the Corn Laws. I certainly will not insult you by attempting to argue the merits of those laws, other than to reproduce this passage which is quoted by that most reliable of sources, Wikipedia. 😉 “W A Armstrong argued that this is perhaps an oversimplification, that the better-off members of the European peasantry encouraged and participated actively in enclosure, seeking to end the perpetual poverty of subsistence farming. “We should be careful not to ascribe to (enclosure) developments that were the consequence of a much broader and more complex process of historical change”.[4] “…[T]he impact of eighteenth and nineteenth century enclosure has been grossly exaggerated[…]”
I am sure that you are well aware of the impact that Napoleonic laws had on the property ownership in France and throughout Europe. Ending primogenitor meant that land was divided amongst all the children and with each generation farms became smaller and smaller and increasingly less efficient. Subsistence farming does indeed perpetuate poverty. Closer to home, if Zen will allow me to make a personal connection, the situation in Zimbabwe just goes to show how ineffectual that sort of agricultural production is. The economies of scale mean that small farms cannot compete with the large. In the US, where no such land grab occurred, the majority of arable land is held by a minority of corporations who produce food at a cost that even the most able small scale farmer is unable to compete with. If I were to argue the case, and as I said I wont, because I am a chicken, I would suggest that the Enclosure Laws led to large scale farming which while it cost some people their homes and livelihoods allowed that other less known revolution, the Agricultural Revolution to take place, which in turn brought greater efficiency and productivity as well as providing jobs for others. Indeed it helped power the Industrial Revolution and feed Britain’s booming population.
But leaving all that aside, I think you will not disagree that the repeal of the Corn Laws did lead to wide spread unemployment in the Agricultural Sector which in turn resulted in even greater migration to the cities as well as immigration to the US, Canada, Australia and the world. It also led to a decrease in land values and a reduction in wealth of the land owners. I do not ask for sympathy on their behalf, I merely make the point.
You are right, I should not take lightly the suffering of those who were victims of the Industrial Revolution. But what irritates me is the apparent conviction that all landowners were nasty, greedy money grabbing individuals without a shred of moral decency or as Janus would have it it, were unethical. The reverse is so clearly the case. The whole idea of good manners and etiquette and the class system generally stemmed from noblesse oblige. Of course there were exceptions, even the aristocracy were human, but the majority of landowners took their situations very seriously as I tried to point out in my post and which I think you picked up on. I came across a letter, the other day, written by my great grandfather, (sorry Zen) to a tenant farmer one of whose sheep had been killed by his dogs. My ggf apologised profusely and eloquently and asked that he be sent a bill which he would pay immediately upon receipt. I think it says something that the letter remained in recipient’s family for 140 years.
As I said, I was not looking for sympathy for the land owners, I was merely pointing out that as a class they suffered great financial loss. This post was simply a commentary on an old way of life.
Sipu, you are incurably blind to the reality of feudal behaviour. It might have been utopian for your family to exploit poor workers but you should not mock their rôle in feathering your nest. You began with the bechipped oi polloi. “…..Even the aristocracy were human.” Ha! Common humanity hasn’t survoived in your own gene pool.
Sipu, you seem to adopt a patrician attitude to the world, an anachronistic stance. This can rankle, especially with those who have had to claw their way from a lower strata. My ‘attack’ is by no means personal.
Janus, So I am blind. Illuminate me. All you do is criticise. You never offer alternative solutions to those situations and events that you detest. Please, describe a version of Britain that you believe should ideally have existed in the 18th and 19th centuries. Even with the benefit of hindsight it would be next to impossible to devise an equitable and just society. Society is not just, even now. As for those poor exploited workers feathering my nest, I gained nothing from their labour and inherited nothing from anybody. Any feathering has been done by me.
Zen, you make a fair point. I suppose I do it, probably deliberately at times. I like to provoke debate and reveal the prejudices of others; and boy, do they come out of the woodwork. But I am also making fun of myself. My own family lost everything as I have said before. I am not just talking about land, money, position, but our country as well. How the mighty have fallen, if you will. All one can do is laugh at the world. Whatever I am now, I am not a worse or better person for the wealth that was once existed in my family long before I was born. I am what I am because I got there on my own. I have been one of those ‘exploited workers’ and have done just about every job you can imagine including as a factory worker, (several times), office boy, dish washer, mini cab driver, cosmetic salesman, insurance salesman, film extra, apple picker, metallurgical technician, soldier, stockbroker, safari guide, farm manager, software support consultant, software salesman, corporate finance manager. There is an interesting and exciting world out there and I like to explore it. Sometimes it deals a bugger of a hand, but that is just the way it is. You deal with it, you don’t whinge about how unfair life is.
I recognise that your comment was not personal, but thank you for saying so.
Sipu, no amount of explanation would reach you. Considering you are self-made you are remarkably short on empathy for those without your supposed superiority.
Oh well.
Sipu, amen!
Janus,
Sticking a smily at the end of insulting comment doesn’t excuse or detract from the intended insult or rudeness.
I find it strange that you attack Sipu for what to me appears to be a very reasonable, well written and informative post. As Sipu has already pointed out, he has never ‘banged on’ about his personal family history. At the time he allowed others a little insight into his into his family history on MyT, that place was a lot friendlier and as he said it was well received. I enjoyed reading it along with many others. Since then, cyber world has become a lot rougher and it is others who continually bang on about his family history. He probably has your measure and that irks you?
I have had the benefit of meeting Sipu face to face. At the drop of a hat, he took the time out to travel some distance to meet up with my wife and myself. We spent a really pleasant couple of hours during which time the conversation never flagged. I would say that he is one of the ‘nice guys.’ My wife and myself both found him to be charming, humorous and knowledgable. Both of us would be delighted to call him a friend.
I must say, one cannot choose one’s parents, so I’m not sure why this should be an issue.
I enjoy any insights into family backgrounds; I wasn’t much interested in mine until it was too late. My grandparents died when I was quite young, and I wished I had taken a little more notice.
Sipu is lucky, in that his family left written evidence which has survived.
I know a little about my great grandparents but it is difficult now to go back much further.
Tocino, are you here for Xmas or what?
Sipu
There is, of course, no one single cause of the migration from rural to urban areas. I am a little opposed to the “Good Thing” view of history, since it tends to ignore the fact that there were real living – and dying – people involved. What may eventually turn out to be advantageous is often brought about by the suffering of the individual – and I don’t like that to be forgotten.
I think it fairly obvious that many of the ‘rich’ in former times had a social conscience. Without them there would have been no laws against slavery, and a mass of other similar legislation – and one must not forget the establishment of libraries (so dear to my heart!) and other Public Works. There are those, of course, who reject what they see as a ‘paternalistic’ attitude and find it demeaning to the recipients… but that’s just the way it was. I’m not sure that the present system whereby the State takes care of the poor is better. It is impersonal and has encouraged a mentality of ‘rights without responsibility’ – in both rich and poor alike. But that’s an entirely different subject!
I deliberately used the older spelling of ‘Enclosure’ to be ‘perverse’!
Thank you Toc, CO and Ara for your kind words and support.
Boa, thanks for that. I think one of the curious things about history is how well it pans out after the event depends on from what period you are looking back at it. The perspective can go from good to bad and back again. I understand your being anti the “Good Thing” view, but I suppose that since there is usually nothing that can be done about it, one might as well put a positive spin on it. The other point is that I sincerely believe that people have a tremendous capacity to adapt to harsh changes of circumstances. There is something remarkable about human spirit that offers hope in the depth of despair. I think dwelling too long on the injustices of the past does little good for anybody.
Yes, I did conclude that you chose the spelling deliberately. I am afraid I checked the origins.
Hi Boa, all this has taken me in the direction of Thomas Malthus. Do you know much about him and his theories of population growth? I would imagine with your background in economic history, he would have featured large.
All’s right with your world then, Sipu.