Downton Abbey

by Emma Marriott

  ‘We had lots of pictorial references for the King so we could look at his outfits and their finer detail, from the kind of watch chain and cufflinks he wore to the type of stiff collar he favoured and his cravats. The cut of his trousers and the way he wore them was important – he disapproved of having a pressed seam – so we made sure we prepared and ironed his suits the right way.’

  Anna Robbins, costume designer

  The actor, Geraldine James, was admittedly chuffed to be asked to play the role and rose to the challenge wonderfully, almost magically transforming into Queen Mary.

  ‘I don’t think I was very good at being queen-like at first,’ says Geraldine in a typically self-effacing way. ‘We had an expert on hand who had to keep telling me not to walk so fast. “You must be stately and slow.” So I had to rein myself in as I do tend to whizz about a bit.’

  Added to this, there were many formalities that Geraldine needed to keep in mind when playing the Queen, not least when addressing servants. ‘When the King and I leave Downton Abbey, the servants all line up to say goodbye. I’m trying to be gracious and look down the line to thank them, and Jim Carter [Carson] had to remind me that the servants couldn’t look at the Queen but rather had to keep their eyes at knee height. I didn’t realise just how distant royalty was, which took some getting used to.’

  While Queen Mary could look rather severe in photographs, she was popular with the crowds and did a lot of charity work, so Geraldine was keen to give her a hint of humanity. ‘Unlike her husband, she was cultured and loved going to the theatre and I wondered if she felt like a bit of outsider and slightly out of place. I liked that element of her being a little bit out of her depth at those huge dinner parties.’

  At the same time, Geraldine was aware that George and Mary knew exactly how to play the role of King and Queen, a thought that struck her when she was sitting in the Daimler and giving the royal wave. ‘In a sense you are being what people expect you to be. They don’t necessarily want to see the inner person, they just want you to be King and Queen, smiling, accepting little gifts, and the like.’ In the movie, the Queen is clearly conscious of the role she must play and is determined to keep up appearances at the village parade, insisting to her daughter that they must only discuss her marital problems in private.

  ‘For the Queen’s day wear, her coats and hats, John [Bright from Cosprop] and I looked at hundreds of photos, analysing particular ones to figure out what kind of material was used and how a particular garment was finished – really taking it all down to stitch detail.’

  Anna Robbins, costume designer

  In order to transform physically into Queen Mary, a lot of work was put into Geraldine’s costume. As Geraldine’s body shape differed quite a bit from Queen Mary’s she wore padding underneath her undergarments and dresses, so she matched the silhouette of the Queen better. ‘We had hours and hours of costume fittings, which I actually loved,’ says Geraldine. ‘At one fitting, John Bright [from Cosprop] brought in a long box that contained three original dresses of Queen Mary’s. They were incredibly delicate and beautiful, and I actually got to hold one of the dresses. I can’t tell you how exciting that was.’

  Any fears Geraldine had of joining the Downton Abbey cast as a newcomer were quickly dispelled – all of the existing cast were incredibly welcoming. ‘I will forever be grateful to Hugh Bonneville [Lord Grantham] – being a Queen I was always sat next to him at dinner parties and the like and he couldn’t have been more sweet or charming.’ The role of Queen Mary was a hugely enjoyable experience for Geraldine, the stuff even of childhood dreams: ‘It was like playing dress-up as king and queen – and I haven’t played being king and queen for a very long time.’

  ‘Queen Mary’s look is well documented. She had a bit of a monster hair-do, a very tight wave that was kind of piled on top of her head in a rather unflattering way and which didn’t really change much, other than the colour, as she got older. We went for a slightly more steely-grey for her hair as it suited Geraldine’s skin tone.’

  Nosh Oldham, hair and make-up designer

  In the presence of royalty, gentlemen were required to match the King’s dress where appropriate. For the film this meant the male cast could have more changes than the women – creating plenty of work for the wardrobe department.

  At the parade we see the King in his scarlet field marshal full dress uniform with full-sized medals and a cocked bicorne hat. He also wears the Most Noble Order of the Garter Breast Star; the Most Honourable Order of the Bath Breast Star; the Lesser George on his garter sash; and the Royal Victorian Chain at his neck.

  When he arrives at Downton the King wears a tweed suit but for the tea after the parade he changes to a non-ceremonial blue serge frock coat, with medal ribbons. Robert follows suit while the non-uniformed gentlemen wear morning suits.

  There were fifty-two elements to the King’s costume, made up of his clothes, medals, boots, hats and other accessories, all of which had to be made. There were so many that the wardrobe department had to make spreadsheets for them all and tick them off as they went along.

  ‘The gown that we made for the Queen for the ball has a skirt made from a silver lamé that actually belonged to Queen Mary. I had found some 1920s metallic lace as a starting point and John Bright added a piece of beaded cobwebbed lace that formed the sleeve. The whole piece came together really well – it was a career highlight for me.’

  Anna Robbins, costume designer

  At the ball, Queen Mary wears the sash of the Order of the Garter, a diamond garter star and a diamond garter on her arm.

  The Order of the Garter (which dates back to 1348) is the most prestigious order of chivalry, limited to the sovereign, the Prince of Wales and various chosen royal members, as well as no more than twenty-four living people appointed by the monarch on the advice of the government. The ‘garter’ is a piece of clothing worn either around the left calf by knights or around the left arm by ladies, with the motto ‘Honi soit qui mal y pense’ – Middle French for ‘Shame on him who thinks ill of it’.

  Pinned on her front the Queen has the Order of the Crown of India, the Royal Order of Victoria and Albert and the Royal Family Order, bestowed on her by her father-in-law along with other female members of the royal family and considered more a personal memento than a formal decoration.

  A huge amount of research was put into exactly which medals and decoration should be worn and Anna worked closely with Alastair Bruce. The wardrobe department sourced the originals or had replicas made as many of the medals were one-offs, worn only by the King. At the ball he wears miniature medals, along with a garter sash with the Lesser George; the diamond Most Noble Order of the Garter Breast Star on his chest; and the Order of the Garter around his left leg.

  The King’s Daimler

  Cars are an increasingly common sight in Downton Abbey, as private ownership of motor cars steadily grew in the years after the First World War. In the 1920s, William R. Morris introduced to the UK the American techniques of mass-production to manufacture more affordable cars; at the same time his main British competitor, Herbert Austin, was producing the Austin Twenty, which proved to be one of the most popular cars of the day.

  In the film, the King and Queen arrive at Downton in a Daimler, this particular model a 20HP limousine. King George’s father, Edward VII, had favoured Daimler motor cars, having first ridden in one in 1896. The cars were manufactured under licence from Daimler in Germany and were awarded their first Royal Warrant as suppliers to the royal household in 1902. Daimler also supplied cars to various other royal families around the world, from Spain and Sweden to Malaysia and India. King George V continued patronage of the Daimler and it wasn’t until the late 1940s that the royal family started to use Rolls-Royces and Bentleys as well. Daimlers are still used by the British royal family today.

  Production designer Donal Woods and his production team wanted to source an exact version of the car that George V himself would have used. The car is pa
inted in the royal colours of black and maroon, and the team added the royal standard above the windscreen and even recreated the mascot on the bonnet, featuring Britannia sitting on a globe (a mascot still used by the current Prince of Wales, Prince Charles, on his Rolls-Royce).

  The Real King George and Queen Mary

  Throughout the period in which the drama is set, King George V and Queen Mary have ruled as the heads of state, the King succeeding his father, King Edward VII, in 1910. As King and Queen Consort, as well as Emperor and Empress of India, their reign has encompassed the war years and the turbulent post-war period of the 1920s. The royal couple are popular with the crowds and well-versed in the public duties of monarchy.

  During much of George’s early life there was little expectation that he would be king. He was born in 1865, during the reign of his grandmother Queen Victoria, and it was assumed that his elder brother, Prince Albert Victor (known by the family as Eddy), would inherit the throne. All was to change in 1892, when Eddy unexpectedly died from influenza just after his twenty-eighth birthday, and George became king-in-waiting when his father assumed the throne in 1901.

  Just six weeks before his death, Eddy had been betrothed to Princess Mary of Teck. Deemed by Queen Victoria as a suitable candidate for royal marriage, Mary had agreed to marry the Queen’s rather wayward grandson. George’s sudden promotion in the royal hierarchy hastened the need for him, too, to find a wife and the Queen urged him to ask for Princess Mary’s hand in marriage. They were married in the summer of 1893 at the Chapel Royal in St James’s Palace, London.

  Mary of Teck was born at Kensington Palace in London in 1867 and grew up in England. Typically for a British royal, she was of German blood, the only daughter of Francis, the Duke of Teck, a member of the royal house of Wuttemberg (a former German state), and Princess Mary Adelaide of Cambridge, granddaughter of King George III and Queen Victoria’s first cousin. Mary was known by the family as ‘May’, after the month of her birth, although as Queen Consort she chose to be called Mary.

  Like many royal brides before and after, Mary found her new in-laws rather distant and unwelcoming. Nonetheless, George proved himself to be a loyal and loving (albeit dominating) husband, and the couple remained devoted to each other, the marriage a strong alliance on which George’s popularity as monarch rested.

  The wedding of George and Mary in 1893.

  King George V and family at Abergeldie Castle, 1906. Left to right: George, Princess Mary, Queen Mary holding Prince John, Prince Henry (seated), Prince George, Prince Edward and Prince Albert.

  From the age of twelve, largely at the insistence of his father, George received a naval education. From 1879, he and his brother served for three years on HMS Bacchante, touring colonies of the British Empire across the globe. George continued to serve in the Royal Navy, sailing in the Mediterranean and North American waters and received his first independent command in 1889. His naval career abruptly ended when his brother died, but his early years on the quarterdeck would have a lasting influence. Like his father, he was obsessed with protocol, punctuality and uniform, while his lack of academic schooling made him mistrustful of high culture and the creative arts.

  George also shared with his father an obsession with hunting game birds, and shot thousands on the Sandringham estate in Norfolk. There the comparisons end, as George was adamant he would conduct himself in a very different way to his father. Edward VII entertained on a lavish scale, gambled excessively and had a string of mistresses throughout his life. George’s mother, Princess Alexandra, was forced to accept her husband’s infidelities, focusing her energies instead on doting on her five children (not least George, to whom she wrote when he was in command of a gunboat ‘with a great big kiss for your lovely little face’).

  George preferred a quiet life as a country gentleman, initially living at the modest York Cottage on the Sandringham estate, where he also developed (alongside his love of shooting things) a love of stamp collecting. Mary was better educated than her husband, having been taught at home by a governess and her mother, and having travelled in Europe and lived for a short while in Florence. There she was able to visit museums and art galleries. Well read, she was fluent in French, German and English, and with artistic taste and intellect, she acknowledged that George ‘knew nothing about pictures or history’ or any foreign language, and she found his obsessions with shooting and yachting a little baffling.

  Six children followed – Edward, Albert, Mary, Henry, George and John – all of them put into the care of nannies, as was common practice in the period. When her children were very young, Mary seemed a detached mother, certainly by today’s modern sensibilities, failing to notice for three years the physical ill-treatment meted out by one nanny to her two elder sons. There was, nonetheless, a fun-loving, caring side to Mary, not perhaps seen in public – she taught her children history and music, and was greatly distressed at having to leave them for many months to tour the Empire in 1901. The future Edward VIII would write fondly of his mother in his memoirs (although he would also remark after her death that the fluids in her veins were ‘icy cold as they are now in death’.)

  During the ten years of his father’s reign, George toured British colonies overseas with his wife and they were involved extensively in welfare and charity work. George was also given wide access to state papers, which he viewed with Mary as he valued her counsel. As wife to the future King, Mary understood that her prime task was to support her husband and thus the Crown. The pair seemed a solid and effective partnership in public and Mary provided George with the comfort and assurance he needed.

  On succeeding the throne in 1910, King George immediately faced difficulties politically as Lord Asquith’s Liberal government attempted to curtail the power of the House of Lords. The country at large was showing signs of division as trades unions grew, and dockers, railwaymen and coal miners went on strike. Fearing that such unrest could rock the political system, and the monarchy with it, the King was encouraged to meet the people and to tour the country visiting towns, villages and workplaces.

  The country was to face even harder challenges when war broke out in 1914. As monarch and commander-in-chief of the armed forces, George was aware of the role he needed to play in uniting the country as a strong and stable figurehead. Court rituals at Buckingham Palace and shooting at Sandringham were immediately suspended and George and Mary embarked upon hundreds of royal visits, visiting hospitals, munitions factories and dockyards. The King increasingly relied on the Queen’s support and advice as they both toured the Empire and attended royal engagements. He made at least 400 trips to see British and Imperial troops at home and on the Western Front (badly injuring his hip when he was thrown from his horse in France), while Mary was involved with many charitable institutions, enlisting the help of her daughter Princess Mary, and visiting wounded servicemen up and down the country.

  King George V (front right), at the Trench Warfare School, Helfaut, France during the First World War, 7 July, 1917.

  King George V and Queen Mary visit the Canbury Park Road airplane factory.

  In 1917, in a bid to distance himself from the German Kaiser Wilhelm II, his first cousin and now enemy of the country, King George changed the name of the royal house from the Germanic-sounding Saxe-Coburg-Gotha to Windsor, and any noble relatives were also required to relinquish German titles. In the same year, as monarchies across Europe toppled, fearing a similar uprising against the British monarchy, George vetoed the offer of asylum to another cousin, Tsar Nicholas II, who had been overthrown as a result of the Russian Revolution. To the shock of King George, the Tsar and his family were eventually shot and bayoneted by Bolsheviks in 1918.

  The trauma of war would be felt for many years after the armistice, and was still a raw memory for those living in 1927. The country had suffered huge loss of life, memorials to the dead were erected throughout the country, and Britain was impoverished, owing millions to the USA. The monarchy in Britain had survived but the m
ajority of King George’s royal relatives in Europe – in Austria, Germany, Greece, Spain and Russia – had fallen. The British Empire, so prized by George, was similarly showing signs of fragmentation as dominions demanded more say in how they were run, the gradual move towards independence unavoidable.

  In Britain, many of the settled, unchallenged patterns evident during the Edwardian era were increasingly under assault. The ruling classes, which had suffered disproportionate losses during the war, had lost political clout; the franchise had been extended in 1918 (and was about to be extended further in 1928) and the House of Lords had lost it political veto. Great estates, like Downton Abbey, were being put on the market and traditional class barriers had been weakened, as soldiers from all classes fought and died alongside each other.

  Tsar Nicholas II and George V in 1913.

  Socialism was also on the rise and in 1924 King George invited Ramsay MacDonald to form the country’s first Labour government. Although a natural Tory who loathed radical socialists, George was welcoming and conciliatory to the Labour government, which he hoped would steer a political middle path. It was short-lived though, as later that year the Conservatives were back in power under the helm of Stanley Baldwin and would remain so until 1929. Baldwin’s government wanted to return to the stability of the pre-war years and King George was similarly keen to return to normality. As a result, court life was fully resumed at Buckingham Palace and Windsor and shooting was back on the schedule at Sandringham.