The Chronicles of Downton Abbey: A New Era (20 page)

Robert
She’ll be a nurse, Cora.
And by the time she’s 50, she’ll be
wheeling around a one-armed old man.

Whether marriage is Edith’s fate or not, we cannot yet know. We do know that despite what she thinks, a husband is not her only lifeline. Edith may be an isolated character but she is not unpopular. She plays the piano well, she makes an effort with her dress, she has a sense of class and position (while she is friendly with the servants, she doesn’t confide in them). Most importantly of all, she is always able to pick herself up, dust herself down, and carry on with her head held high. Of all the characters, she is the one who stands to gain the most from the new opportunities on offer. If Edith takes them, she could create real change for herself and break free of the traditions of the past to give herself a completely different kind of life from the one she has been brought up to expect. As Brian Percival, director, comments, ‘Edith is a wonderful character, one of my personal favourites … she has a complexity which has yet to be explored. Now is the right time for her to come of age and develop into a strong-willed young woman in a time of great change for women generally.’ For Edith, the end of the war is just the beginning of her future.

The bedside biscuit barrel was a symbol of leisured upper-class
living. The biscuits – usually
petit beurre
– were supposed to stave off
‘night starvation’. But, as one newspaper article suggested, they
were ‘a dentist’s delight’: ‘There are few things worse for the teeth
than the growing habit of nibbling a biscuit last thing at night.’

Mrs Beeton’s
All About
Cookery
(‘Containing over
1,200 specially selected
recipes and comprehensive
instructions on the various
branches of domestic
economy’) would have
been the bible for cooks.
A copy of the 1913 edition
stands on the kitchen shelf
at Downton and would
have been an invaluable
source of inspiration
and information for
Mrs Patmore and Daisy.

Mrs Patmore
Go to bed when you’re done.

Daisy
I’ll go to bed when I’m ready.

Mrs Patmore
What’s happened to you?
Have you swapped places with your evil twin?

Daisy
I’d like to know where the new
kitchen maid is, that’s what you promised.

C
hanges are occurring below stairs at Downton as the drums of war cease to beat. Gareth Neame, executive producer, wants to show that new opportunities are arising for Daisy and her like, too: ‘Right from the first series we have tried to show that while the family are part of the Downton establishment, many of the servants, particularly the younger ones, are searching for love or advancement or are merely passing through. From a dramatic point of view, not only might the characters show ambition and seek promotion, but in fact we also like to make use of their changed roles to vary the stories from what’s happened before.’ As the meek protégée of the cook, Daisy, fuelled by a desire to improve her situation, has started to find her voice and is defiantly answering back to make sure she gets what she believes is her due.

Daisy is treated as an inconsequential junior by the other servants. ‘She would have had a tough childhood’, says Julian Fellowes, ‘so low in class that there is a greater distance between her and Carson than there is between him and Lord Grantham. They’re from the functioning upper end of the scale and she’s from the dysfunctional lower end.’ In fact, she would have been almost rescued by Mrs Patmore. ‘We know she has hardly any family at all and Mrs Patmore may have taken pity on her and brought her into the house,’ says Julian. But it’s the tendency of the rest to ignore her, almost hardly see her when she is in the room, that has meant Daisy has ended up being privy to some of the darker secrets of the house, tormenting her superstitious nature.

In the future, Daisy hopes to be working more closely with Mrs Patmore, taking on a greater proportion of the cooking and leaving behind the drudgery of the last few years. This is reflected in her dress, as the costume designer, Caroline McCall, explains: ‘Daisy is trying to be more grown up. We have got her into a more serious dress, moving out of pale fabrics into darker colours.’ But her efforts may be in vain. ‘You probably don’t notice it,’ reveals Sophie McShera, the actress who plays her, ‘but Daisy is never allowed to sit down. She is always standing. It gets very tiring. Sometimes a new third assistant director will say, “You sit down over there,” and I think, “Yes!”, but I know it won’t last.’ While a few country-house cooks had been trained in the kitchens of international hotels – Mrs McKay, the cook at the Dashwoods’ house, West Wycombe Park, had trained at The Ritz – most rose through the ranks. Daisy is on a path that can go onwards and upwards, should she not leave to marry.

She is, of course, technically called Mrs Mason, having married William on his deathbed, but she sees that as a fraud – she didn’t love him and is ashamed that he loved her. Poor Daisy, so innocent and naive in her view of humanity. She’s a romantic, prone to crushes: Thomas (futile, for obvious reasons) and now the new footman, Alfred Nugent. We can see that it’s hard for her to conjure up the courage to do anything about it. But a trip to the picture house in York on her day off would have encouraged Daisy, had she seen
True Heart Susie
, a 1919 film starring the famous Hollywood actress Lillian Gish with Robert Harron. In this popular film Gish plays the self-effacing girl next door, in love with the dashing Harron. He goes off to college and subsequently marries a sophisticated young woman, who then dies, and Gish finally gets her man.

Such heady notions do not bother Daisy’s boss, Mrs Patmore. Having worked at Downton for many years, little fazes her. The Boer War and the First World War have taken men she knew and there has been, doubtless, a succession of kitchen maids. The cook has learned to confine her worries to the kitchen, only getting hot under the collar when a soufflé fails to rise or the footman takes the wrong sauce to the dining room. The outside world and its changes only rarely affect her. ‘Mrs Patmore is a product of her time,’ says Lesley Nicol, the actress who plays her, ‘loyal to the family, and to the household. She is very proud of her job and good at it, too, I think.’

This is not to say that she – nor any of the servants – is able to live on the estate completely shielded from the world beyond it. The war, particularly, made a great mark on their lives, with Mrs Patmore suffering considerable grief over the death of her nephew, Archie. Having left their families behind many years ago and only seeing them perhaps once or twice a year, if that, one can imagine that they would be affected by thoughts of their childhood. Nostalgia is a powerful emotion, and perhaps explains why the older servants appear to prefer the lifestyle of the past and the old way of doing things.