A Year in the Life of Downton Abbey: Seasonal Celebrations, Traditions, and Recipes (13 page)

Lady Edith Crawley

Bicycles, too, had changed the way the working classes got around. For the first time, it was possible to travel faster than walking pace in an affordable manner (only the well-off could afford to hire a horse and carriage; only the rich could afford to keep one). By 1895, bicycles were commonplace amongst the young and less wealthy and working-class families soon aspired to the new motor-bicycles and sidecars.

At the end of the nineteenth century, too, came the motor car: slowly at first (quite literally), but increasingly fashionable amongst the well-to-do after the Motor Car Act of 1903 allowed speeds of 20 mph. In 1904 there were 8,000 registered car owners. After the First World War, mass-produced and relatively cheap motor cars were made and ownership grew at a steady rate: from 132,000 in 1914 to 1,715,000 motor vehicles registered in 1926. There were also a high number of motor-car fatalities, thanks to novice drivers (and no driving test) and pedestrians unused to speeding hulks of metal coming round the corner: 2.9 fatalities per thousand vehicles in 1926. Today, there are 0.1 fatalities per thousand. One statistic could give an extraordinary view of technology if misinterpreted: in 1904, during off-peak periods, a motor-driven cab would travel in central London at an average of 12 mph. Today, the average off-peak vehicle speed is recorded as 10 mph.

While the rich initially employed chauffeurs to drive them around, as we saw with the Crawleys and Tom Branson, when cars became more affordable, driving became a leisure pursuit of the rather more sporting and daring. Edith’s ability to drive a car marks her out as very racy, in all senses of the word. Violet, however, refuses to sit in the front beside the driver.

There’s a touching description of a passenger new to motor cars by A. G. Street. He writes about taking his reluctant father out, a man who greatly preferred his horse and trap: ‘Anything over fifteen miles per hour was considered speeding, and I drove that car for several months to the accompaniment of “Steady! Steady!” For a long time he still sat forwards going uphill, and sat back with his feet braced against the footboards when going downhill.’

It’s Tom Branson and Edith who best encapsulate all that travel has to offer and it’s no coincidence that they are the two that drive the cars. For Tom, becoming a chauffeur enabled him to leave Ireland and find himself work other than the farm labouring that was probably his only real option back home. And then, of course, it meant that he met Sybil and was travelling not just in the physical sense, but across the classes too – up the stairs and through the green baize door, to live as one of the family. As we have seen, he learns that this is easier said than done. Tom suffers a dilemma – he lives above stairs’ but is unlikely to find another earls daughter who would want to marry him; nor can he find a nice Irish girl and take her back to live at Downton. As Julian says, ‘It’s all fine when he’s in the family circle, but the moment a stranger comes in, it’s revealed not to be OK. I think that’s always true of a mésalliance.’

Edith, meanwhile, is a young woman who has not enjoyed the best of good fortune in her life so far. ‘For most of us, our lives are a combination of good and bad luck,’ says Gareth Neame. ‘Some of our friends may appear blissfully lucky – they are charmed; some are incredibly unlucky. Edith is a bad-luck person.’ Edith is not alone in her generation in having her expectations of life turned completely inside out by the changes wrought by the war, but watching her navigate those stormy waters is blackly compelling. ‘Hers is not the journey of a star beauty,’ says Julian. ‘Every time she does something, they keep changing the rules. She got pushed around by the war, but she makes a progression in spite of herself.’

Laura Carmichael agrees with this assessment of her character: ‘She might have been the most conventional of the three sisters, but it didn’t work out that way for her,’ she says. ‘She wants something for herself and she has the confidence that being a “lady” affords you. I feel as if, when she was growing up, she was always excluded, in the background reading a book. But it made her thoughtful and smart. When it came to the newspaper column, she was intimidated at first, but she found herself a role.’

Learning to drive a car and a tractor (something of a challenge for the actress, who has yet to take her driving test), having an affair with a married man and becoming involved with a more avant-garde scene in London all demonstrate that Edith is living a life quite different from that of her grandmother. She doesn’t find it easy; given the choice, Edith would have happily settled for an utterly conventional life, running a large country house, with two or three children, and doing charity work. But she rises to the challenge of forging a different path for herself and, much to her surprise, finds that she enjoys it.

Many women found that, without marriage as an option, they were liberated to do other things that might not have otherwise been possible, whether it was studying for a degree, running their own business or simply going out to work. It was these women and their pioneering attitude that began to change the cultural and social fabric in terms of how the fairer sex was viewed, paving the way for gender equality several decades later. Edith is one of these women, although she hardly knows it. How brave she really is, is yet to be truly tested.

Anna Robbins, the costume designer of series five, reflects Edith’s point of difference in her wardrobe: ‘In series four she was dressed in primary blocks of greens, oranges and peaches. We’ve followed on from that [in series five] and kept her look very positive. I always like to have a coat that represents a character, so we’ve given her a cashmere turquoise coat with a funnel. I think Edith’s really found herself and she’s become beautiful. Yet she’s more internalised than the others. Also, now she’s not in London so much, we can’t do as many of the avant-garde looks – she has to dip down and come back up again in terms of having an edge to her style.’

Laura’s been enjoying the clothes too: ‘They’re beautiful – there’s a velvet dress which is stunning. Everything feels more modern and the hemlines are still coming up. Edith’s been wearing more practical clothes for this series, as she’s going down to the farm and is outdoors a lot. But she’s got style.’

HOW TO DRIVE

FROM THE BOOK OF ETIQUETTE BY LADY TROUBRIDGE (PUBLISHED IN 1926)

There is very definite etiquette in motoring. First, there are the rules which the driver of the car should follow … An uncourteous and unkind habit is to sound the horn wildly and for no other reason than to frighten less fortunate people who have to walk … Another point too often ignored by motorists is to dash at high speed through muddy streets, entirely regardless whether passers-by are bespattered or not. Considerate motorists, in passing through villages in hot weather, will slow down in order to raise as little dust as possible. Inconsiderate ones drive through with no slackening of speed, leaving a whirlwind of dust behind them to find its way into shops and houses.

The people inside the car also have some rules of good conduct to observe. It is bad form to stand up in the car, to sing or shout or make oneself conspicuous; and equally bad form to throw paper bags, used sandwich boxes, or anything else from the car on to the road.