He snatches up a fire bucket from the floor and runs towards Mrs Hughes’s door. He bursts in, ready to throw the sand.
MRS HUGHES: Oh! Are you going to tip that over me?
He stops, bucket in mid air. The room is rather smoky.
MRS HUGHES (CONT’D): I was just making myself some toast. You have to set the number on the dial and I had it up too high, but I’ve got the hang of it now. Would you like a piece?
CARSON: I was worried that Mr Branson might take it into his head to burn the house down. But I didn’t think that you would.
MRS HUGHES: No? You should never take anything for granted, Mr Carson.
A young man runs into the room with a fire bucket too.
CARSON: No, no, no — not now.
With a snort, Carson retreats, but Mrs Hughes just chuckles.
55 INT. SYBIL’S BEDROOM. DOWNTON. NIGHT.
Sybil is in bed. Branson undresses.
SYBIL: You never told me you went to those meetings.
BRANSON: I never told you I didn’t.
SYBIL: And what else haven’t you told me?
BRANSON: All I know is I can’t stay here. Not for long.
SYBIL: You must. And so must I. And you must let the baby be born here.
BRANSON: You’re very free with your musts.
SYBIL: But I will not be free with our child’s chances! We need peace and safety. Downton can offer us both.
Her tone makes him look at her. She is quite determined.
56 INT. DINING ROOM. DOWNTON. DAY.
Robert, Matthew, Branson and Edith are at breakfast.
ROBERT: God in Heaven… ‘Earl’s daughter speaks out for women’s rights.’
EDITH: What?
ROBERT: ‘In a letter to this newspaper today, Lady Edith Crawley, daughter of the Earl of Grantham, condemns the limitations of the women’s suffrage bill and denounces the Government’s aims to return women to their pre-war existence.’
He lowers his paper in amazement.
EDITH: You said they wouldn’t print it.
MATTHEW: Well done. That’s most impressive.
ROBERT: Don’t say you support her.
MATTHEW: Of course I support her, and so do you, really. When you’ve had a chance to think about it.
BRANSON: So I should hope, anyway.
This earns him a ‘harrumph!’ from Carson.
ROBERT: What do you think, Carson?
CARSON: I would rather not say, m’lord.
Which does succeed in amusing all the rest of them.
57 INT. PASSAGE/KITCHENS. DOWNTON. DAY.
Anna is on her way upstairs when Mrs Hughes hails her.
MRS HUGHES: Anna?
ANNA: Yes?
MRS HUGHES: There’s quite a packet of letters arrived for you earlier.
She holds out a real bundle. Anna takes them.
MRS HUGHES (CONT’D): Are they all from Mr Bates?
ANNA: Looks like it.
MRS HUGHES: Why so many at once?
ANNA: Oh, I neither know nor care, just so long as I’ve got them.
Smiling, she runs upstairs.
57A INT. KITCHENS. DOWNTON. DAY.
Daisy is at work when Alfred comes into the kitchen.
ALFRED: Thanks for sticking up for me last night.
DAISY: It won’t make any difference.
ALFRED: Oh, no. But it’s good to know you’re on my side.
DAISY: I am on your side, Alfred. In fact, there’s something I’ve been wanting to say, but I don’t want you to take it in the wrong way…
ALFRED: You’ve got my attention.
DAISY: Well —
MRS PATMORE: Ah. Here we are, Daisy! I’d like to introduce Miss Ivy Stuart, the new kitchen maid. And this is Daisy, my assistant cook.
She says it with a flourish, expecting Daisy to grin, and it should have been a great moment for her, but she sees Alfred look at the newcomer with undisguised admiration.
ALFRED: My, but aren’t you a sight for sore eyes, Miss Stuart?
MRS PATMORE: That’s enough of that. Alfred’s a footman, so you’ll know enough not to listen to a word he says. Shoo.
ALFRED: Tell me if you need any help.
But before he goes, he remembers…
ALFRED (CONT’D): Sorry, Daisy. What were you saying?
DAISY: Nothing. Doesn’t matter now.
Alfred nods and goes. Ivy looks at Daisy.
IVY: I hope we’re going to get on.
DAISY: We don’t have to get on. We have to work together.
Even Mrs Patmore notices Daisy’s voice is very severe.50
58 INT. MARY’S BEDROOM. DOWNTON. DAY.
Anna is dressing Mary.
MARY: And does he explain why the letters were withheld?
ANNA: Not really. In the latest one he says there’s been a spot of bother but he’s sorted it out. I suppose the reason’s tucked inside that.
MARY: You’re finishing your husband’s ‘spot of bother’. I suspect I may just be beginning mine.
ANNA: Why? I thought everything was settled now, and back to normal.
MARY: But Mr Crawley’s idea of normal may not be the same as his lordship’s.
ANNA: But they won’t fall out, surely?
MARY: I don’t know. I don’t think so. It rather depends on Mr Crawley.
Her tone is not reassuring.
59 INT. DRAWING ROOM. DOWER HOUSE. DAY.
Violet is writing letters when the butler announces Matthew.
MATTHEW: Good morning, Cousin Violet. I’m sorry to barge in on you like this.
VIOLET: Then sit down and tell me why you have.
Matthew chooses a chair. He is getting his nerve up.
MATTHEW: A situation has arisen, and I’m not quite sure which way to turn.
VIOLET: Well, obviously. If you’ve turned to me.
MATTHEW: Robert won’t discuss the matter, and Mary is affronted by the very mention of it… But, given that I’ve sunk my own fortune, alongside everyone else’s, into —
VIOLET: Into Downton.
MATTHEW: I feel a duty, apart from anything else, to do what I can.
VIOLET: About?
MATTHEW: Downton is being mismanaged, Cousin Violet, and something must be done. The thing is, how do I do it without putting people’s noses out of joint?
VIOLET: Oh, my dear. Oh, I doubt there is a way to achieve that. I mean, you must do what needs to be done, of course. But I think I can safely say a great many noses will be out of joint.
This is not what Matthew wanted to hear.51
60 INT. BATES’S CELL IN YORK PRISON. NIGHT.
Bates sits on his bed, reading his pile of letters.
61 INT. ANNA’S BEDROOM. DOWNTON. NIGHT.
In exact parallel, Anna lies on her bed, reading her pile of letters, too.
END OF EPISODE FOUR
1 We decided to bring back Amy Nuttall, who played Ethel in Season Two. Originally I think I had seen her as simply the girl who was going to be seduced and then wronged by the handsome officer. But this situation, on review, seemed to have legs. Because it was very tough for a young woman in those days, with an illegitimate baby. She was essentially an outcast. How would she earn her own living? The number of things she could do was severely limited. Besides which, Amy was very good in the part and nice to work with, and I think everyone enjoyed having her in the show, so it gave me the idea of another Isobel story, because we have these different strands that need to be maintained. We have the main house, the Dower House, Crawley House and then Doctor Clarkson is a sort of floating piece who goes between all three according to the demands of the different plots, which I imagine can be slightly irritating for the actor, David Robb. Obviously in Season Two he was never off the screen because it all took place during the war, and he had to deal with the soldiers who came home wounded. He has been less ubiquitous since then, but on the other hand he does still have pretty strong stories, as we shall see in Episode Five, when he has a tremendous one.
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bsp; 2 We’ve established Isobel as a liberal-minded, benevolent intellectual who doesn’t look down on the Crawleys, exactly, because she appreciates that they have taken her in, but who does not regard herself as one of them. She sees their philosophies and the world in which they live as essentially limiting. This is a Downton situation, as one can see both sides. Anyway, Ethel’s plight gave me an opportunity for her to have a consciously liberal story where she would be able to give a fresh chance to this woman who would probably not be touched by a barge pole if Mrs Hughes had anything to say about it. Actually, Mrs Hughes is a kind woman, but, in real life, she would have had to think of the example being set to the other maids. In those days, service was a sort of finishing school where young men and women were trained in various skills, and when the women married and left service, as many of them did, they would take those skills into their married life. For the ones who didn’t marry, these skills allowed them, if they were ambitious, to become a lady’s maid or a housekeeper and acquire a decent position.
The housekeeper was in charge of these young women and she was expected by their mothers to be strict. Today, we can still see how things were arranged, with a stout locked door between where the maids slept and where the footmen slept. In some houses the footmen even slept out in the stable yard, while the maids were at the top of the house. There was a strong imperative in all this and if a housekeeper got a local reputation for running a sloppy house where a girl could get into trouble, the girls’ mothers would not let their daughters go there to work. As with any system, there were reasons why certain practices became established, and when you think of the age of these girls – many of them started service at fourteen – you don’t wonder at the rules being so strict. Rather like the schools of today, where one scandal can set back the work of years.
3 An underlying theme of the show is how people deal with change, and whether a particular change is here to stay, or is it a blip and things will go back to normal? So all the characters will be increasingly involved in the changes that are coming. The difference here being that Isobel is thrilled by change and she thinks that if this ghastly, unjust world can be made better then all well and good. The others mainly have mixed feelings.
4 The world has got better for some people and worse for others. Some aspects of our society work and some don’t, but one group for whom it has definitely improved is the single woman, the spinster, particularly the well-born spinster like Edith, because even in my lifetime she really was spare in almost every family. She might be useful. My mother’s unmarried sister was charged with the care of their mother who lived to be ninety-nine, but she was essentially under a kind of house arrest, doing community service for the rest of her days. She might be handy for looking after the children or taking them to a museum, but the idea that she had a life that others should respect was simply not there. If such a woman was even upper middle class, never mind posher than that, most careers were closed to her, or at least she closed them to herself. There were women who did do interesting things throughout this period – writers, administrators, some journalists – but I am talking about the majority. They might get a flat in London, but a proper job, a real grown-up career, just wasn’t an option for Lady Louise Someone. And so they hovered on the fringes of their family, doing good works, breeding dogs, being helpful, until death claimed them. Even at the end of the 1960s, when I was sampling the delights of debbing, a lot of girls were essentially waiting to marry. They would get jobs but they were ‘waiting jobs’ – arranging flowers in offices, serving executive lunches, helping at little galleries that belonged to friends of their mothers. Nobody seriously thought they would be doing these things in a few years’ time. It was a question of pin money until Mr Right, or preferably Lord Right, came along. In my generation, who are now in their sixties, the women who never did manage to marry are a slightly sad bunch. The daring ones, who trained for medicine or the law or even went on the stage, are fine, married or not, but those who never found an alternative way break one’s heart. Whereas the unmarried girls in the next generation, who are now in their forties, seem much less sad – in fact, not sad at all. Edith is someone who is threatened by the spinster fate, which drives her to try new frontiers, to be a writer, to meet new people, and she ends up generating a life. Her future may not be terribly satisfactory in some ways, but still she has a life, which I feel is an improvement on no life.
5 Even though it was cut, this is me trying to avoid basing a scene around information the audience knows, but sometimes you have to. When this is the case, you don’t dwell on the narrative details that are being given out (which the audience already knows), but on the variety of the characters’ responses to it. How is Violet going to take it? Or Isobel? Or Cora?
Cora, in fact, has mixed feelings when she hears that they are going on with this way of life. As an American she’s not bound by the past in the way that her husband and daughters are. I am corresponding with an American at the moment: his great-grandparents built a house at Newport; his mother died a couple of years ago; it’s been empty since then and they will probably sell it. As it happens, there is no pressing need for anyone to sell anything, but they just don’t feel like going on with it. Whereas, were an Englishman to make this decision, he would feel that he was the failure who had dropped the torch. The one member of a gentry or noble family whom everyone feels sorry for is the one who has to make the decision to sell. When you are the great-grandson of the one who sold, the decision no longer bothers anyone. But to be the one to make it, for the English, is a tough one.
6 Up to this point, Mary, who is the strongest child, has not had a power base, but that has now changed. Her husband owns half the estate, which means that, in her mind, she herself owns half the estate. She has been the engine of change because she persuaded Matthew to put his money into Downton and, as a consequence, she has also persuaded herself that she is now in a position of authority. Matthew is more diffident. He didn’t want the money in the first place. If the cash has rescued the estate because he couldn’t finally win against Mary’s arguments, then fine, but as far as he’s concerned he doesn’t really want any further involvement. But as we see here, Mary isn’t going to have any of that, so now we are laying the ground for the struggle between Mary and Robert.
7 I am always quite careful to make the relationship between Isobel and Mrs Hughes slightly different from Mrs Hughes’s relationship with the family. Isobel does not observe the great social chasm that would be second nature to people like the Crawleys, however much they like Mrs Hughes, which they do. You know they would be unlikely to find themselves chatting away in her sitting room about anything. Whereas that is not quite true for Isobel. And when Mrs Hughes comes to Crawley House, she talks to Isobel in a friendly and relaxed way. Then again, she doesn’t actually sit down, which is a point always worth noting, because that was the great marker of social intercourse between different ranks. As late as the 1980s, if you were talking to your cook or your cleaner, they did not sit in your presence. That seems to have gone now, but it’s interesting that people carried on with it until so recently. Of course, real friendships did occur, like that between Carson and Mary, and in those cases the rules would often be bent or broken, but only in private.
8 Carson is unsettled by the joint ownership because, like a lot of people, he wants a clear chain of command, and it is true that the moment there is any kind of dual monarchy, as we are witnessing today with the Coalition Government, there is constant conjecture. You may remember the American writers’ strike a few years ago, when the Writers’ Guild were trying to promote certain reforms, most of which I agreed with. But I did not support the demand for writers to have the statutory right to be on the set whenever they wanted during filming. The reason I didn’t agree with this is that when a writer goes on a set there is a danger that he or she splits the chain of command and confuses it. An actor playing a scene, if the writer is sitting there, has a tendency to ask what they meant by a li
ne or a stage direction, and naturally you, the writer, can’t bear to say: ‘Don’t ask me, ask the director.’ Instead, you babble away about whatever childhood scarring has been the basis of the scene, which may not be what the director wants by then, which is fine. It is legitimate for him to wish for something different. You have only confused things.
Robert Altman wanted me on the set of Gosford Park because he was keen to get the details right, and I remember once, we were out at Shepperton studios and Charles Dance asked me a perfectly valid question about his role as Lord Stockbridge. I responded at length, and afterwards Bob said to me, ‘I can’t have that. I can’t have them seeing you as the authority on this set instead of me. I don’t want to witness that again.’ As you can imagine, at the very beginning of what had the potential to be my lucky break, the last thing I wanted was to put the director’s nose out, so I took his request seriously. From then on, although I knew several members of the cast and indeed had worked with a few of them as an actor, I always kept myself separate. I used to take a book in so I could hide behind it and I would have lunch with the make-up department or with the grips, rather than sit with the cast and risk upsetting Bob. That is really the emotional area we are mining here. Carson is quite caustic with Matthew. He’s sort of forgiven him for stealing Mary’s inheritance because he’s married Mary to put it right, but he still isn’t quite what Carson wants him to be, i.e. Robert Mark II.
We also use this exchange to show that, in real life, a well-established butler enjoyed a liberty of expression, just as ladies’ maids did when talking to their mistresses or valets when dressing their employers. Again, there were rules. If a lady’s maid ran into her mistress in the body of the house surrounded by the guests in a house party, she wouldn’t say anything. Here, because he is alone with Matthew and Robert, Carson can talk back to a certain extent. If there was a dinner going on, he would not.
9 It won’t be the last time Carson has to fudge it, because what none of them are really facing is that they are no longer in the pre-war world. It is not a question of just getting back up to scratch, but of whether or not they’ll be able to stay at scratch if they do manage to get back up there. The audience thinks, no, they won’t. And they’re right.
Downton Abbey, Series 3 Scripts (Official) Page 24
