Downton Abbey

by Julian Fellowes

  † I don’t really understand why Michelle Dockery said ‘arms’ instead of ‘muscles’, which I originally wrote, but anyway that story comes from an experience of my grandparents – my mother’s parents – who were once at an incredibly boring dinner party. Afterwards, they were sitting in the drawing room with this woman who was banging on about going to North Africa to get away for the winter, and she pulled up her sleeve and said, ‘Just look at the colour I picked up,’ and she pushed her arm under my grandmother’s nose. At that moment, my grandfather, who was sitting next to his wife, suddenly woke up, saw the arm and shouted, ‘By Jove! Jack Johnson!’ because Johnson was a heavyweight boxer at that time. Of course, the woman was mortally offended, but the story always made me laugh, so I put it in as a memento of him.

  2 INT. SMALL LIBRARY. DOWNTON. DAY.

  Carlisle watches them from the window. Robert is with him. Carlisle asks his question under his breath.

  CARLISLE: Ought I to be jealous?

  ROBERT: You won’t ever have to be jealous.

  He is aware of Edith reading. Now he raises his voice.

  ROBERT (CONT’D): I’m sorry. What were we talking about?

  CARLISLE: I was asking about Haxby Park. I’m taking Mary over there tomorrow.*

  EDITH: Our Haxby Park? Why? Are the Russells selling?

  CARLISLE: Not officially. But I’m told they’re open to offers.

  ROBERT: Sad. The Russells and the Crawleys have been neighbours for centuries.

  CARLISLE: They’re not living there any more.

  ROBERT: It’ll be strange for Mary. She’s been going to that house ever since she was a little girl in a party dress.*

  EDITH: We all have.

  CARLISLE: There’s nowhere better near Downton.

  ROBERT: Well, Haxby’s nice enough and very grand, of course. The shooting’s good, or could be with a little money spent judiciously.

  CARLISLE: I intend to spend a lot.

  ROBERT: I’m not sure how comfortable it is.

  CARLISLE: Well, it’ll be comfortable when I’m finished with it. Central heating, modern kitchens, bathrooms with every bedroom. It’s all possible.

  ROBERT: Sounds more like a hotel.†

  Carson opens the door. Clarkson is behind him.

  CARSON: Major Clarkson.

  CLARKSON: Good morning, Lord Grantham, Lady Edith, sir. We’ve had a request. A Canadian Major has asked to come here because of a family link with the house. We’ve taken officers from his regiment before, but I wanted to be sure you’d no objection.

  For some reason, this interests Edith.

  EDITH: What’s his name?

  CLARKSON: Gordon. Patrick Gordon. He was with Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry at Passchendaele. Caught in a blast and burned rather badly, I believe.

  ROBERT: Ah, poor fellow. Well, he’s perfectly welcome. I’m not aware of how we are connected, but you never know.

  CLARKSON: Sir.

  EDITH: How strange he should be Patrick.

  ROBERT: Yes. Yes, I suppose it is.

  * For this sort of thing, I stare at maps of Yorkshire, and I try to avoid any place name that might land me in the soup, because I was caught out on Titanic. I wanted to call someone the Earl of Manton, and I put ‘the Earl of Manton’ into Google and clicked ‘Search’, and there was nothing, so I thought, well, good, that’s safe. But in fact there was a Lord Manton. He just wasn’t an earl. I should have known this actually, because his sister married a chap I was at school with, and you’d think that would have rung a bell, but it didn’t. Anyway, sometime later I found myself at his house, where he was hosting, very charmingly, the wedding of a mutual friend. When we were alone, I said, ‘Look, I’m most frightfully sorry, but I have actually put a couple into a series about the Titanic and they’re called the Earl and Countess of Manton. They’re terribly nice, you needn’t be afraid that they’re horrible, but I expect it will be a bit irritating.’ In fact, he and his wife couldn’t have been nicer, although, when the show aired, his mother was rather annoyed. So, now, when I want to invent someone, I type in ‘the Earl of’, ‘the Duke of’, ‘Lord…’ And it’s only when I’ve drawn a blank on every possible alternative that I dare to put it into the script. With Haxby, I remember I found the village, and then I put in Haxby Park and Haxby House and Haxby Grove, and Haxby everything, until we knew we were safe. But, having said that, when this is printed there’ll probably be a flood of letters.

  * That really came from a memory – I’ve never forgotten this – of a very old friend of mine. She was, in fact, the Countess of Gosford, and she was the person I named Gosford Park after. A wonderful, very interesting woman, Francesca Gosford was a great patroness of my youth. She told me a story about a party that someone had given for her, in a London park or a garden, or at any rate somewhere open. Suddenly, through the guests came this woman – a tramp, really – dressed in rags, with a dirty raincoat tied with string and a battered old hat. Anyway, she walked up, with everyone shrinking back slightly, and she said, ‘Hello, Francesca, I hope you don’t mind my coming.’ To which Francesca replied that she was sorry, but she didn’t remember who this woman was. So the new arrival gave her name, and she said, ‘You used to come to my parties when I was a little girl.’ And then Francesca remembered. That was the extraordinary thing. She could remember going to a great country house, to parties given for a spoiled, pretty little rich girl, and there was this dirty bag lady, sleeping in the doorway of the Underground. How time changes things. Anyway, that was a slight trigger for Robert’s speech.

  † This line was inspired by a remark of my stepmother’s father, who was letting his house in Rutland, and he was halfway through arranging the contract with an American woman when she said, ‘Oh, and I’ll put in a bathroom for every bedroom,’ and he immediately cancelled the whole thing. Naturally, his wife was furious, because she was half-American and she loved the idea of all these new bathrooms, so she asked why he’d done it. He replied: ‘I didn’t want it turned into a ghastly hotel.’ Another instance I remember from my school days. I was in French Literature class with a chap called Fenwick when he remarked that he’d ‘just had a letter from my father, and he’s bought a new house for us in the country. He says it’s got eight bedrooms and six bathrooms.’ Now, in those days, this was really wild; practically no one had more than two for the family in that sort of house. And I said, ‘Wow, that’s amazing.’ And he said, ‘I suppose so, but he’s taking three of them out.’

  3 INT. SERVANTS’ HALL. DOWNTON. DAY.

  Anna, Bates, Jane and O’Brien are performing various tasks.

  JANE: I’ve never worked in a house where a valet and a housemaid were wed.

  ANNA: It’ll be unusual, I agree.

  O’BRIEN: I hope it doesn’t break us up. Having you two set apart in a home of your own, all special. While the rest of us muddle on for ourselves.

  ANNA: You sound as if you’re jealous.

  O’BRIEN: Oh, I’m not jealous. I just don’t want it to spoil things.

  BATES: Why? Because we’ve all been such pals until now?

  Daisy has brought some tea things. She sets them down and leaves without a word. The others exchange glances.

  ANNA: Give her time.

  4 INT. DRAWING ROOM. CRAWLEY HOUSE. DAY.

  Isobel’s having tea with Violet and Cora, served by Molesley. During the scene he clears it all away onto a tray.

  CORA: Matthew’s making such progress.

  ISOBEL: I think so. But are we doing enough for him, for all of them, when it comes to rehabilitation? They’re going to have to face a very different world after the war.

  CORA: I agree, but they’ll all be leaving Downton soon.

  ISOBEL: Leaving?

  CORA: Well, Turkey’s about to capitulate and Robert says Vittorio Veneto will finish Austria.* So it’s only a matter of weeks, even days, before it’s over. We wouldn’t send anyone home too soon, of course, but sometime in the New Year we
will have our house back.

  ISOBEL: So you want it just to be a private house again?

  VIOLET: Well, shouldn’t she? Or would you like to abolish private houses?

  ISOBEL: Well, that life of changing clothes, and killing things and eating them… Do you really want it again? Wouldn’t you rather Downton was useful?

  CORA: But the house is useful. We provide employment, and —

  ISOBEL: Oh, please, let me look into keeping it open as a centre of recovery. I could run it. The house could be so much more than it was before.

  VIOLET: What about you, Molesley? Are you looking forward to this brave new world of Mrs Crawley’s imaginings?

  MOLESLEY: I’m glad of my job, m’lady, and I should very much like to hold onto it, with Mrs Crawley’s permission.

  He has opened the door and now he leaves. Isobel laughs.

  ISOBEL: Servants are always far more conservative than their employers. Everyone knows that.

  VIOLET: Then I must be the exception that proves the rule.*

  * This is a real battle, one of the last in fact, which did take Austria out of the war, and that’s why I used it. By this point, the whole thing was beginning to shut down.

  * The end of any war is always an opportunity for great change, whether one approves of it or not. This is why all regimes dread war, because when peace comes the public will want to feel that something is different. They’ve given up their lives, and often their sons (and daughters, these days), and they want to know that something has changed. That has to be bad news for a monarchy, but it also means change at a more domestic level. There was a lot of feeling, in many families, that they couldn’t just go back to an Edwardian way of life. Not least because a great many of them, from the 1880s onwards, didn’t have enough money to live as they had been living.

  The young, particularly, had survived four years of war, and they wanted a new life, not just to return to changing their clothes all day and observing the rules. This was true of many older people, too, and as a result certain houses were turned over to other uses. We go on with this idea in the next series. Violet, of course, decides it is her job to put Isobel off.

  5 INT. MRS HUGHES’S SITTING ROOM. DOWNTON. DAY.

  Mrs Hughes is packing food into a basket when she is disturbed by Carson holding an envelope.

  CARSON: What do you think this means? ‘I would be grateful if you could come to my room when you have rung the dressing gong. Richard Carlisle.’

  MRS HUGHES: He wants you to check his tails.

  CARSON: You don’t like him much, do you?

  MRS HUGHES: I think he’s a hard man. But then she’s a hard woman, so I suppose they deserve each other.

  His look admonishes her. Then he notices the basket.

  CARSON: Who’s that for?

  MRS HUGHES: Oh. You know. One of my causes.

  6 INT. DRAWING ROOM. DOWNTON. DAY.

  Edith watches as the new arrival is settled in. He looks up.

  EDITH: Hello. My name’s Edith Craw—

  GORDON: Lady Edith Crawley, I know. Second daughter of the house.

  There is something strange in this. She starts again.

  EDITH: In charge of non-medical welfare. So whatever you need in the way of errands run or books to read, then I’m your man.

  The man gestures at the bandages half covering his face.

  GORDON: Thank you. I hope this doesn’t put you off.

  EDITH: I can assure you, at this stage, there isn’t much that puts me off.

  GORDON: Did they tell you we’re related?

  EDITH: Er, yes. But I’m afraid I’m not much good at family history, although Papa’s found an aunt in 1860 who married a Gordon. Perhaps that’s a clue.

  GORDON: No. That isn’t it.

  EDITH: Well, as I say, I’m hopeless.

  GORDON: I thought you’d recognise my voice, but of course I sound Canadian now.

  This is really odd. She was going, but she stops.

  EDITH: You mean we’ve met before?

  GORDON: It was a long time ago.

  Sybil comes in.

  SYBIL: Edith, I need you.

  EDITH: Funnily enough, you do seem… When was it, exactly?

  GORDON: Perhaps it’ll come back to you.*

  * The Gordon plot, and Edith’s falling for it, begins here, and she is the one he targets. Does he choose her using that curious instinct that all true bullies have? Because bullies have a nose for a victim. They will smell out the people who will accept their bullying. I think this is why it is so incredibly difficult to be the victim of a bully, because you half hate yourself for having been chosen. I speak as one who knows. It is an incredibly complicated situation. I feel very strongly that we must all take a stand against bullying. And this exchange, ‘We’ve met before,’ and so on, is a kind of bullying.

  7 INT. KITCHENS. DOWNTON. DAY.

  Daisy and Mrs Patmore are preparing vegetables. Daisy wears a black band round her left arm. Jane has a pamphlet.

  JANE: It just explains what you’re entitled to.

  DAISY: That’s kind, but let’s face it, I’m not a widow, am I? Not really.

  JANE: Of course you are.

  DAISY: No, I’m not. How long was I married? Six hours? Seven? I shouldn’t have taken his name, except it were what he wanted.

  JANE: Well, I’ll leave it with you…

  She walks away. The other two are alone.

  MRS PATMORE: Daisy, it wouldn’t please William if you don’t take what’s owing. He wanted you to be looked after —

  DAISY: Because he thought I loved him, when I didn’t. And I’m not going to use his name to steal now!

  MRS PATMORE: I only meant —

  DAISY: No! You made me a liar while he was alive. You made me swear dishonest oaths as he lay dying. You’ll not make me be false to his memory!

  Mrs Patmore doesn’t try again.

  8 INT. ROBERT’S DRESSING ROOM. DOWNTON. NIGHT.

  Robert is being dressed for dinner by Bates.

  ROBERT: So the war’s going to end, and I will never have been in it.

  BATES: Haven’t we all been in the war in our different ways?

  ROBERT: You sound like her ladyship.

  BATES: Then I agree with her, m’lord.

  ROBERT: How about your war? Yours and Anna’s?

  BATES: We’re winning, I think. But like the Allies, it’s taking its time. Which I don’t quite understand.

  ROBERT: Perhaps we’ll all come into port together: Europe, America and you.

  BATES: I very much hope so, m’lord.

  9 INT. CARLISLE’S ROOM. DOWNTON. DAY.

  There is a knock and Carson comes in to find Carlisle being dressed by his valet. He only has his tails left to put on.

  CARLISLE: You can leave me, Brooks.

  BROOKS: Yes, sir.

  CARSON: Mr Bates said you wanted to see me, sir.

  The valet picks up the linen and goes.

  CARLISLE: Ah, yes. I asked you up here because I want to offer you a job.

  CARSON: I have a job, sir.

  CARLISLE: Yes, of course you do. I’m sure you enjoy it. I don’t mean to suggest I am offering a better one.

  Carson acknowledges that this is a little more polite. Carlisle takes the tail coat, but Carson relieves him of it and holds it open.

  CARLISLE (CONT’D): Thank you. Although it would mean a considerable increase in salary.

  Carson mentally withdraws his momentary sense of approval.

  CARLISLE (CONT’D): Lady Mary and I intend to buy a home near Downton. It’s a long way from London, but I’ve made enough money to please myself these days. I know she holds you in high regard; I believe she would very much appreciate your help when she first sets up house as a bride.

  CARSON: You mean you wish me to leave Downton Abbey and transfer…?

  CARLISLE: Tomorrow we go to see Haxby Park. If we buy it, we’ll take on the whole 12,000 acres.*

  This time Carlisle is determined
on a vocal response…

  CARSON: No doubt, you will discover many interesting walks to enjoy.

  CARLISLE: Of course it’s run down, but there’s nothing wrong with it that money can’t fix… So? What do you think?

  CARSON: One thing I must ask: is Lady Mary aware that you have approached me?

  CARLISLE: Not yet. I wanted to surprise her.

  CARSON: I could not discuss it with his lordship before I knew her wishes. And I must discuss it with him before I could give you an answer.

  CARLISLE: She thinks highly of you, Carson. I hope I won’t be taking on a rival.

  CARSON: I await Lady Mary’s instruction.

  He goes, leaving Carlisle feeling rather flat.†

  * For me, this is a key moment. We begin a theme here that we play on through the third and fourth series. It is charting the beginning of the decline of these families. After the war, although this way of life did survive – more, in fact, than many people think – nevertheless the writing was on the wall for those who could read it. Despite most of the upper classes going on in the old way until the Second World War, albeit on a reduced scale, there were families that threw in the towel even at this point. In the early Twenties, when Lloyd George removed the agricultural grant, with no warning at all, for food-producing estates, that proved a breaking point for many. What made it more difficult for them was that you could still sell an estate as a capital gain, which would be tax free, while the alternative was to continue farming it with erratic returns and severe income tax, which had risen steeply. Predictably, weighing a lovely lump of tax-free capital against struggling on with a house where the estate wasn’t really paying its way any more proved too great a temptation for quite a lot of people. And at the same time, the new rich were buying these estates, because they still represented the way of life with the highest status, so there was a transition going on. We used Haxby to mark this. The Russells have been neighbours for centuries, but only Carlisle can afford to live there.

  † My father had some cousins in Yorkshire who famously poached a butler and a cook. Normally, with a couple, one of them is great and the other less great, but in this instance an absolutely fantastic butler was married to an equally fantastic cook. They were working for a family, and, I blush to say it, these relatives of mine found out what they were paid, offered them more and poached them. The county rightly thought this was totally reprehensible, but they wouldn’t ever address how ghastly it had been. I adored them, but they wouldn’t face their own guilt. I suppose it must have been tempting to offer an extra fiver and, in so doing, transform your life, but it still wouldn’t do. It’s a good Downton moment, though, because again they’re all torn.