The Chronicles of Downton Abbey: A New Era (3 page)

It was this feeling of impotence that led to Lord Grantham’s kiss with the maid, Jane, believes Bonneville: ‘During the war there was a sense of him losing confidence; of having a dose of the Black Dog. He feels a loss of purpose while Cora and the girls are throwing themselves into war work. His old regiment only want him as a figurehead. And this is what leads to him coming off the rails a bit, morally.’ Happily, he gets himself back on track quickly. ‘I remember Julian once saying that his default position when writing was that people essentially want to be good,’ says Bonneville. ‘They can end up doing bad things, but they rarely start with that intention. That is very true of Robert.’ He’s fortunate, too, in that he and Cora generally have a loving, intimate marriage, unusually sharing a bed every night. As one peeress of the time wrote: ‘In a big house, husband and wife could live their own lives without treading on each other’s corns. Intimacy was not considered a necessary ingredient of a happy marriage: there is the story of a girl who remarked, on marrying a dull man, that at least she would never have to sit next to him at dinner again.’

At least if Robert bumped into any of his fellow peers at his London club he would have soon realised that his situation was not unique. Almost all members of the aristocracy were feeling the pinch, thanks to massive increases in income tax and death duties (the latter, introduced in 1894 at 8 per cent, had risen to 40 per cent in 1919). Land, the traditional basis of aristocratic wealth, continued to offer poor returns. Agricultural revenues and rents had been declining since the 1880s because of cheap imports from around the world, while agricultural wages had risen steadily. The process had been exacerbated by the war. Many small estates went to the wall. The old Landed Gentry was decimated. But even large estates struggled. Many aristocrats decided to sell off some of their land in order to raise money to pay off debts or for investments. The years immediately after the First World War saw land sales on an unprecedented scale. Over a million acres changed hands in 1919 and the following year even this record was surpassed, with vast estates sold off by the Dukes of Leeds, Beaufort, Marlborough, Grafton and Northumberland. The Duke of Norfolk sold some
20,000
acres of his Yorkshire estate.

Robert
I have a duty beyond saving
my own skin. The estate must be a
major employer and support the house
or there’s no point to it. To any of it.

To lose land meant more than losing face or being embarrassed at having failed where ancestors had not. It meant that one was no longer able to serve the local county as a significant employer and landlord, which was the main purpose of a great house. Robert feels the responsibility keenly – his sense of duty towards his tenants and workers is one of the reasons the state of his financial affairs matters so much. It may also be the reason it is in disarray; benign landlords would not be keen to force rents up and thereby push their tenants into hardship. It is Robert’s duty as keeper of the estate that shores up his belief in himself and gives meaning to his relationships: he has a deep respect for Carson, with whom he practically shares the responsibility of the house, and in Bates he believes he has crossed the class divide to achieve real friendship. (Although I am not always convinced that Bates shares this feeling in equal measure.)

Besides land and wealth, the British aristocracy had also traditionally enjoyed prestige and political clout. These, too, however, were being fatally undermined. The power of the House of Lords had been greatly reduced by the Parliament Act of 1911, which abolished the right of the Lords to veto bills passed by the House of Commons. The social prestige of the Lords had been compromised by the massive increase in the number of new peers. Lloyd George, the Prime Minister, an implacable foe of the landed aristocracy – together with his fixer, Maundy Gregory – shamelessly sold off titles to wealthy individuals. The going rate was £
10,000
for a knighthood, £
30,000
for a baronetcy and £
50,000
-plus for a peerage. Plutocrats who had made vast fortunes in industry, the City or the Press – and whose wealth now surpassed that of all but the largest landowners – were quick to take advantage. The arrival of such ‘new men’ was a challenge to the old order. Britain might be becoming more meritocratic and more democratic, but these were unsettling changes for Robert to come to terms with.

Cora
A lot of people live in smaller
houses than they used to.

Mary
Which only goes to show that
you are American and I am English.

Cora may not be excited by these changes, but she is quick to react with a positive attitude. As an American, she has a different view of tradition, is less weighed down by the expectations of dead ancestors and is more concerned with ensuring her nearest and dearest are happy than with keeping the ancient roof over their heads. An upbringing surrounded by money has given Cora security and confidence, and having conquered her own realm, on her own terms, she is less frightened by the thought that it could disappear. If she has to do it all again, she will. In fact, she rather relishes the challenge: she, like her daughters Edith and Sybil, found a role for herself during the war and now that it is over, she misses it. When Robert turns to her, she is only too glad to be able to help and regain a more prominent position in her marriage and household. ‘She is unbelievably loving and patient with his shortcomings,’ says McGovern. ‘But then, she is very much in love with him. She fills in the cracks – as we all do with those we love.’

Cora would be glad of the distraction for other reasons. She would have been acutely aware that many of her friends were mourning their sons; one in five aristocrats who went to the war died – a far higher proportion than any other group. (Across the rest of the British forces the ratio was one in eight.) And although the conflict had ended, it was hard not to be haunted by its effects. As the Countess of Fingall recalled, ‘I used to think and say during the war that if ever that list of Dead and Wounded could cease, I would never mind anything or grumble at anything again,’ she recalled. ‘But when the Armistice came at last, we seemed drained of all feeling. One felt nothing. We took up our lives again or tried to take them up. The world we had known was vanished. We hunted again but ghosts rode with us. We sat at table and there were absent faces.’

There was another, unexpected side-effect of the war. Before, the aristocracy had seemed remote to those of the lower classes, but at the Front they lived side by side in the trenches, while the women worked alongside each other as nurses. Something of the mystique of the aristocracy had been lost. Cora, as an American, is unfazed by this, and perhaps even welcomes the softening of the old rigid hierarchies. But she is also aware of how disturbing such changes must be for Robert.

Like her husband, Cora can draw strength from the fact that she is not alone in her situation. In 1880 (some ten years before her marriage to Robert) there had been only four American peeresses in England; by the time of the First World War there were 50. What is more, the flavour of English social life was becoming increasingly American and informal, thanks to a new generation of transatlantic hostesses – women such as Elsa Maxwell, Nancy Astor and Emerald Cunard. The first ‘Buccaneers’ marrying into the British aristocracy had found Society intolerably stuffy, with its rigid hierarchies and formal rules. But in the post-war world, things were beginning to loosen up. Cora – in distant Downton Abbey – might be far removed from Lady Cunard’s artistic salon in London, but she would have saluted her fellow American’s style and achievement.

The prospect of leaving Downton and taking on a smaller house, while sad, gives Cora a satisfying occupation. Before the war, her leisure activities were few. Some women were accomplished painters or needleworkers, but many others passed time making ‘spills’ – old letters cut into
2–3
-inch lengths then folded, concertina-like, into tapers. They would be held in the fire to take light and used instead of a match. ‘It was such a pleasant and peaceful occupation to make unwanted letters into spills and fill the boxes,’ recalled Lady Hyde Parker. ‘The study and library, and also the boudoir, all had spill boxes on their chimney pieces at Melford.’

The war, of course, also changed fashions for women and the general preoccupation with dressing and changing for every small occasion started to lessen. Cora is elegant and sophisticated, maintaining more length to her hemlines than her daughters, so the costume designer looked for dresses that showed her ‘American openness to change, mixed with a certain formality’. For one evening dress, they drew up a design inspired by Lanvin, a 1920s designer whose looks harked back to the eighteenth century. ‘We used that idea and created a soft pannier effect with netting over a silk under-dress in a dark cherry colour,’ explains Caroline McCall. ‘I had a beautiful old beaded chiffon panel which had been found by a textile dealer and had the dress made up to incorporate it.’

Robert is more conservative and less responsive to changing fashions, although he would take the lead of his Savile Row tailor. His black tie was made there by Huntsman and doesn’t have the narrow waist fashionable in 1920. ‘But even so, we’ve tried to make him move with the times a bit,’ says McCall. ‘His suits aren’t as high-fastening as they were. They have three buttons now, rather than four. He sometimes wears soft collars in his country gear, but usually sports a “double round” and “Albany” or, on formal occasions, a “tipped imperial”.’