22 It’s always quite nice when we have a day out, although I remember with the picnic we were going through that terrible wet summer and I think we cancelled it five times. If it didn’t look marvellous, it wouldn’t look truthful, because if Violet woke up expecting to go to a picnic and it was pelting, she just wouldn’t come. We found an incredibly pretty house for it, actually. In the script, I made it Elizabethan because the original house at Eryholme was Elizabethan, but in the event it was just a frightfully pretty Georgian house that the location managers found. The scene opened with a very charming wide shot, which I loved. They say they’re going to call it Downton Place if they move in, although I’m not sure that they would have, because most people find it rather unlucky to change the names of houses. They might have done, I suppose.
23 Violet is teasing them, but her situation was inspired by that of an old acquaintance of mine who rather unfortunately had to sell everything. His mother had been one of my early patronesses and was very, very kind to me, so I was sad that she had actually read in the paper that her own house had been sold, because the whole estate had gone under the hammer and he hadn’t told her. We don’t accuse Robert of that quite, but I wanted the audience to realise that when an estate goes it affects a lot of people – the whole set-up, in fact, of the neighbourhood.
When Violet refers to Eryholme needing, like anywhere else, good manners and some decent conversation, it is a slight reference to the musical of Mary Poppins, for which I wrote the script (more properly called ‘The Book’ in a musical), where Mrs Corry has the conversation shop. She appeared in the original books, but didn’t feature in the film after the opening titles (a slightly odd sequence when you watch it now), but in the musical we worked her in to give an excuse for the famous ‘Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious’. In the film, the song comes out of left field really and doesn’t have any kind of narrative trigger. We wanted to avoid that, so the shop where you go to buy conversation, which was run by Mrs Corry, made its way into the show. And thence into Downton.
24 Swire left one letter for each of his heirs. I don’t find that unbelievable, nor do I find it hard to understand the reluctance to divide his fortune, because the desire to hold a fortune together was not uncommon. The most extreme case concerned a house, Brodsworth Hall, in Yorkshire where the owner, Peter Thellusson, in 1797, was determined that nothing should split the fortune, which would be allowed to grow for three generations before the heirs could fully own it. He wanted his descendants to be among the richest in the land, and they might have been if his own children hadn’t taken the estate to court and ensured that the principal beneficiaries were the lawyers. It was supposed to have been one of the inspirations for Dickens’s great Jarndyce v. Jarndyce case in Bleak House. It went on and on and on and, of course, consumed practically all the money.
The point was, it has long been recognised that if you can keep a fortune together then the status of your family will rise because there would be a heavyweight player at the head of it, whereas if you divide it with each generation, then within two you’ve just got people who are quite well off but by no means a force in the land. This is why Swire has chosen to have successive, rather than joint, heirs. Naturally, Matthew doesn’t want to read the letter. He doesn’t want to read how Lavinia couldn’t have found a better man, because he knows he betrayed her. But it is deliberately taunting, and what we are doing is playing with the audience.
25 In those days, before any adequate poor relief, there weren’t many options open to someone like Ethel. Most of the workhouses had closed, which could be seen as an improvement, but what was the alternative? Many women were trained for nothing, and if you had an illegitimate child you either put it out to a baby farm or just survived the best way you could. The baby farms were far from ideal. In Victorian times, there was a real danger that children would be sold for adoption or killed for their clothes, while the ‘carer’ kept the shilling per week. If they weren’t prepared to do that then going on the game was more or less Hobson’s Choice. It’s a harsh truth that Ethel was not alone.
26 We sometimes forget that the decade of the Twenties was a great drug era, with the so-called dope fiends puffing and snorting away in every night club in London. Most of it was not yet illegal, because the government at that time didn’t really make a distinction between drugs and drink (which some would argue now). Although the drug addict was a social type about whom Noël Coward would write in The Vortex, and, then as now, drugs were the one thing all parents wanted their children to avoid, nevertheless it was not yet seen as a proper province for the law. The dope fiend more or less died away during the Fifties, not that there were no drugs and not that no one was taking them, but it wasn’t on the same industrial scale as it had been. Of course, the Swinging Sixties brought it all roaring back.
27 I first heard this phrase on Coronation Street from Audrey Roberts’s husband, Alf. He was building up to his proposal, when she complained that he’d upset her in some way, and he replied, ‘Oh, I wouldn’t do that. Not for a gold clock.’ It’s been parked in my brain ever since and I thought it would be nice to give it to Daisy.
28 Sybil is not a confrontationalist. I am a moderate, in the sense that I admire people like Sybil, who live their own life but don’t feel the need to beat everyone over the head with it all the time, as opposed to the type who rants and raves: ‘I’m not having this! I can’t put up with that!’ Tom Branson is torn between these two positions. He arrived in the house much more of a confrontationalist, but he is exhausted with it and has started to come over to the dark side. He will eventually pay the price, which is to feel that his own personality has been eroded and he is living by standards that he doesn’t completely endorse. I suppose this is to show that nothing is simple. There is an upside and a downside to most philosophies.
29 Mrs Hughes is slightly wrongfooted by Cora’s generosity, because she isn’t a great worshipper of the family. But in life there are moments, in dealing with the important things like illness or death, which transcend class or political difference, and this is quite deliberately constructed to be one of them.
30 Edith is the happiest here we have ever seen her, because she thinks her whole life is about to unfold, and also that she can face not just Mary but her contemporaries, having fulfilled her pre-ordained destiny. Very few of us are in control of our own future entirely, we all need a bit of luck, and at last Edith has had a bit of luck. ‘It’s not too bad downstairs. The bedrooms are killers.’ I thought we needed one sharpie from Mary. As for Isobel’s advice, this is my own feeling: don’t do anything fast, it takes time to know how a house works.
31 I was sorry this was cut because it came from quite a vivid moment in my own early years. We were living in Sussex, and my parents’ greatest friend there was killed in a car crash. My mother went with the widow to identify the body, as she felt she couldn’t let the widow see him first, in case he was too smashed up. They talked about it with the police and Mummy was allowed to go in and identify the body. So she entered the room alone and, as she had feared, the whole of the side of his head was pushed in and horribly damaged. Anyway, it was clearly him so she came out and officially identified him, but she was never able to shake the terrible image from her brain, not for the rest of her life. She didn’t regret it – in fact, she was very pleased to have spared the widow from seeing him in that state – but she wished later that they’d taken a professional colleague with them, or a member of staff, to identify him – someone who didn’t love him. I’ve never forgotten that.
32 Carson’s fear of the postwar world is that somehow, now that change has begun to gather momentum, these funny, arbitrary rules that had been observed for so long, like the kitchen staff eating separately, are all going to start to fragment, which of course is exactly what happened.
33 We learn later that Swire left Matthew as his heir, even though he knew the engagement was at an end, but we can hardly blame Matthew for not believing it at this stage.
That said, Swire didn’t have anyone else and Matthew was only the third heir. More to the point, we need a lot of money to save Downton. Which is all there is to it. But obviously Matthew thinks Lavinia couldn’t have written a letter while she was ill in bed upstairs without their knowing.
34 It’s always an event when someone from upstairs comes downstairs. We try never to lose that.
35 It’s completely truthful that Daisy would have gone in to make up the fire in Lavinia’s sick room. Normally she would only make up a bedroom fire before the occupant woke up, which was the particular skill of that job, and the maids would do it with very thick gloves so that the fire was burning when they woke up. Then the grate would be emptied and cleaned when they did the room. After that, it would be relit before they changed for dinner and then it would be saved and rebuilt again before they came up for the night. In other words, all the fire duties were done when the family and their guests were either asleep or not in the room, but the exception to the rule was the fire of an invalid. In that case, the person in the bed would be awake and able to watch whoever was making up the fire. I have only ever had the fire lit in my bedroom before I woke up once in my life, at a country house in the North. In fact, I did wake up in time to see the maid finish the job. I think it was the single most luxurious thing I have ever enjoyed.
36 The business of wearing tiaras always interests me because very few modern hairdressers have the skill to put them on. They’re always made with a raised gallery with a padded bit at the bottom and straight upright struts supporting the proper jewelled bottom band. The padded bit sat on the brow and the hair was trained through the gallery so that the hair was still raised off the head but the tiara seemed to skim it. There’s quite a skill involved, and I notice now at the opening of Parliament, when the peeresses come in wearing their tiaras, very few of them know how to do it properly. Almost all of them are worn, plomp, on top of their hair, as if you’re supposed to see the gallery, which of course you’re not. The problem is, the wives have to be there so early, by about nine in the morning at the latest, and the thought of shaking your hairdresser awake at dawn to fit a tiara is a bit hard. Of course, when they are put on correctly they look marvellous.
37 We nearly lost this bit – I can’t remember why – but it was important for me that we should see that Strallan is beginning to realise he was doing something wrong, because otherwise his dawning awareness would have come too suddenly. I don’t remember getting it back being a tough argument, though. I think the consensus was behind it.
38 Robert Bathurst played all this terribly well, because it was not funny. It was completely real. In fact, I always admire people who stand their other halves up at the church or turn the car around on the way. I remember when Emma came to our wedding, her father was dead and she was given away by her uncle, Henry Kitchener. He just said to her that everything would be all right as long as she was sure but she didn’t have to go through with it, and my mother-in-law the night before told her she could still get out of it if she wanted to. I agree with them. It may sound odd, but I do. I think you should always give a bride or a groom an out. It’s an important duty. I don’t think Robert is right to say that it’s too late for Anthony Strallan to cancel the wedding. I believe one of your jobs as a father of the bride or groom is to say it doesn’t matter what it’s all cost.
39 My favourite line in the episode, and one of my favourite lines in the whole show.
40 I believe it is completely believable that Robert would not accept the gift of any money. He is prepared for them to be joint Masters, which, of course, is a hunting image, but it is one that again I think is truthful psychologically.
41 We define Mrs Patmore here as a pretty superior cook. In real life they would almost certainly have had a chef and so, despite the fact that Mrs Patmore is a homely body, she must be presented as a very skilled cook or she simply wouldn’t have this job. There would probably also have been a sous chef and various other members of the kitchen staff – vegetable maid, still-room maid, and so on – or they might have brought in outside help for a wedding, but we never wanted to do that, because if they come in they’ve got to have a story.
42 Female suffrage came in gradually. First, in 1919, it was only for women who were over thirty, property owners, not domestic servants, and so on. These categories were expanded and loosened during the decade until, by 1930, women were enfranchised by the same rules as men. As with so many other things after 1919, it became increasingly obvious to everyone that full suffrage for women was coming, and why they didn’t just get on with it must have been puzzling to some people, but anyway they didn’t.
43 One of the greatest tests about being publicly humiliated is being obliged to deal with it afterwards. The moment of humiliation is bad enough, but it is facing everyone, when they all know what has happened, that is so hard, and I admire Edith for not trying to hide. Because you do feel that everyone in the world is talking about you. Later she will say to Michael Gregson how nice it is to realise there’s someone out there who hasn’t heard her story.
44 We all think that Carson is in love with Mrs Hughes, albeit in a very discreet, Carsonesque way, but we also feel it has to be played out. ‘Dashing Away with a Smoothing Iron’ was a song my maiden aunt, Betty, used to sing to me when I was a little boy. She also used to sing ‘Early One Morning’. She is dead now and the songs are forgotten, but I remember both of them well. How strange time is.
ACT ONE
1 INT. SERVANTS’ HALL. DOWNTON. DAY.
Carson is distributing a few letters.
ANNA: Nothing for me, Mr Carson?
CARSON: No, Anna. Once again, I’m afraid there’s nothing for you.
He catches Mrs Hughes’s eye. They know this should not be.
1B INT. YORK PRISON. BATES’S CELL. DAY
Letters are being handed out to the prisoners. There is nothing for Bates.
WARDER: Come on.
The warder drags Bates away.
2 INT. SALVATION ARMY HALL. YORK. DAY.
Isobel is with a group of her women. One sits with her.
ISOBEL: Good. You begin on Monday. And you’re to come back and tell us how you’re getting on. Promise?
WOMAN: Oh, please promise!
She shouts this from the side and the others laugh, as the one with Isobel stands. Ethel comes in. Isobel goes to her.1
ISOBEL: Don’t run away this time.
ETHEL: No, I’ve not come to run away again.
ISOBEL: Good. Now once and for all sit down and tell me what this is about. I already know you don’t want to be saved, so what do you want? And why do you keep changing your mind?
ETHEL: I won’t this time.
She takes out a letter.
ETHEL (CONT’D): Can you deliver this to Mrs Hughes?
ISOBEL: Why not just post it?
ETHEL: Because I need to be sure she’s received it. Then, if there’s no answer, I’ll know what it means.
ISOBEL: That all sounds very mysterious. Oh, won’t you stay and talk for a moment, now you’re here —
But Ethel has risen and gone. Isobel stares at the letter. Then she looks at the others, wearily.
ISOBEL (CONT’D): All right. Mavis. You next.2
3 INT. DRAWING ROOM. DOWNTON. NIGHT.
Robert has assembled the Crawley clan.
ROBERT: So there we have it. I am delighted to say that our proverbial bacon has been saved by Matthew, and that consequently he is now as much the Master of Downton as I am.
MATTHEW: Which of course is not true —
MARY: It is true, and it’s wonderful.
VIOLET: And certainly a very great relief.
ISOBEL: So we are to defy the Age of Change and carry on as before.3
She says it pleasantly enough, but…
VIOLET: I hope you’re not too disappointed.
ISOBEL: Not at all. It’s an interesting challenge for Matthew. To wrestle Downton into the twentieth century.
&n
bsp; CORA: Well, if we are all really sure this is what we want —
MARY: Of course we’re sure.
ROBERT: Edith? You’re very silent.
EDITH: Don’t mind me. When you’re a maiden aunt it doesn’t matter much where you live. You’re always in the way.4
4 INT. CARSON’S PANTRY. DOWNTON. NIGHT.
Mrs Hughes is with Carson.
MRS HUGHES: So what’s it about?
CARSON: Good news, I think. His lordship seemed very jovial when he asked me to gather them together.
MRS HUGHES: Does it mean the Days of Austerity might be drawing to a close?
CARSON: I don’t know for certain, but I am cautiously optimistic.
MRS HUGHES: When were you ever more than that?5
5 INT. MARY’S BEDROOM. DOWNTON. DAY.
Mary is with Anna. Matthew, changed, is sitting on the bed.
MATTHEW: I’ve got enough on my plate, without going into every detail.
MARY: You’re co-owner of this estate. You have to get into the detail.
MATTHEW: Not to challenge Robert, surely?
MARY: You won’t have any reason to. But you have to pull your weight. That’s all I’m saying.6
MATTHEW: How is Bates?
ANNA: I’ve not seen him for a while, sir.
MATTHEW: Oh. Why is that?
ANNA: I’m not quite sure, sir. They’ve stopped all his visitors.
MATTHEW: Has he given you a reason?
ANNA: Well, he’s not written. In quite some time now.
MATTHEW: And you don’t know why?
ANNA: No… But I’m certain I will before too long.
She doesn’t sound certain.
6 INT. MRS HUGHES’S SITTING ROOM. DOWNTON. NIGHT.
Downton Abbey, Series 3 Scripts (Official) Page 20