A Year in the Life of Downton Abbey: Seasonal Celebrations, Traditions, and Recipes (14 page)

One place where chic flourished in abundance was at sea. The advent of vast ocean liners in 1870, with first-class cabins, electricity and running water, changed long-distance travel significantly. One no longer had to be a sailor, pirate or stowaway to travel the seven seas, as you could now journey between America and England in a manner to which the rich were accustomed on land. Even the poor-but-hopeful were able to cross the oceans as far as Australia in search of a new life, although they were not privy to the comforts of the casino, dining room and elaborate dances that took place on the upper decks.

Nor was it just the working classes that used ocean liners to improve their lives – they were a helpful step on the social ladder for the upper-middle classes, too. Lady Troubridge’s strict book of etiquette states that ‘the rule of social etiquette … is relaxed on board ship to the extent of permitting the passengers to talk to one another’.

Julian explains that this was part of the attraction of travelling on cruise ships: ‘It was somehow easier to fudge one’s own background. The great appeal of cruise ships – like the appeal of Empire – was that when you went to these far-flung places, the rules were relaxed. Not abolished altogether, but you could get into relationships that would have been more difficult back home. In the colonial outposts it was possible to achieve a level of greatness that couldn’t be matched back home if you only had your pension to live off. Those cruise ships brought possibilities, like the ‘fishing fleets’ of India [when English women sought husbands in the Raj if they couldn’t find one at home]. My aunts Isie and Ierne, however, went on the fishing fleets and returned empty-handed!’

With the sumptuousness awaiting them on the ships, it was only right that the rich should travel in style. Mrs Wichfeld, a rich American living at Blair Castle in the early 1920s, was remembered by her husband’s former valet as one who travelled in a regal state, taking with her seven or eight trunks and some twenty-nine pieces of hand-luggage: ‘All these trunks were specially built, with or without drawers. One contained nothing but her stationery, several contained underclothes only. There were special shoe trunks, fitted with trays, each tray sub-divided into baize-lined compartments. First the shoes were put into matching bags, black in black, brown in brown, whatever the colour of the shoe it had a corresponding bag made of moiré silk and lined with a fine chamois leather, and these, of course, were further divided into day shoes, evening shoes, town and country shoes.’ For the jewellery, ‘some of the Vuitton trunks contained safes and there was one bag which, on trains, never left her Belgian maid’s hand’.

Watercress grows all over the British Isles in streams and wet soil – but even in the 1920s it was being grown commercially to meet demand. Sorrel or spinach may be used if watercress isn’t available.

SERVES 4

Melt the butter in a heavy-based saucepan, then add the onion, leek and potato and stir to coat them in the butter. Season with salt and pepper and let the vegetables sweat with the lid on over a low heat for about 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. When the vegetables are tender, add the hot stock or water. Bring back to the boil, then add the watercress and cook for a further 5 minutes. Season with salt, pepper and nutmeg. Take the pan off the heat and liquidise the soup. Stir in the cream and pour into bowls to serve.

Sole was a popular choice on hotel menus: this recipe is adapted from the dish that the French chef Adolphe Dugléré invented for the Rothschilds in the nineteenth century. Serve with crusty bread or new potatoes and a green salad.

Rinse the fillets and pat dry. Season well with salt and pepper. Roll the fillets into loose parcels.

Put the tomatoes in a small bowl and cover with boiling water. After a couple of minutes, remove them with a spoon and place on a board. When cool enough to handle, peel the skins off and scoop out the seeds, discarding both. Finely chop the flesh and set aside.

Melt the butter in a wide, shallow pan that will take the fillets in a single layer. Add the onion and cook gently until softened – about 10 minutes. Add the chopped tomatoes, parsley and dill. Season and cook for a couple more minutes, then place the fillet parcels on top of the mixture. Pour the stock and white wine over them. Cover the pan and simmer for 8–10 minutes until the fish is cooked.

Remove the fillets to serving plates and keep warm. Add the cream to the mixture in the pan and stir well to incorporate, cooking over a gentle heat for a few more minutes. Spoon this sauce over the fillets and garnish with dill to serve.

Valets and lady’s maids were considered essential for such trips and were expected to know everything that would be needed on a journey without being told, whether it was to dress the master or mistress for a funeral or fancy-dress ball. ‘He must never be caught napping,’ wrote Ernest King in
The Green Baize Door,
a memoir of his butler years, ‘he must be able to produce everything, even shoes so well polished they may be used as a mirror in an emergency!’

The sinking of the
Titanic
in 1912 – the iconic moment in history which opened the very first episode of
Downton Abbey
– was not the greatest advert for cruise travel, but it seemed not to stem the flow too greatly; besides, for many more years, there were no other options if you wanted to leave Britain.

Until aeroplanes. The first flight by an aeroplane – twelve seconds long – was achieved in 1903 by the Wright brothers; by the time of the First World War, aeroplanes were in force as machines of combat. By 1919, passengers could fly from London to Paris and just five years later, in 1924, Imperial Airways had begun. One of the world’s first commercial airlines, it served the British Empire routes to South Africa, India, Malaya and Hong Kong, as well as Europe. Passports, too, were a new introduction, changing the way people travelled. The first travel document, introduced in 1914, was a piece of folded paper covered with a card, describing the passenger’s distinguishing features (‘Nose: Large. Moustache.’), with photograph and signature. By 1920, following an agreement with the League of Nations, something similar to the standardised passport book we know today had been brought in.

It’s no surprise that Hollywood had a boom time in this period – there were new heroes and heroines in town and they weren’t the soldiers or aristos of old; they were pilots, movie stars and explorers. Cinema brought the masses closer to these stars, with the aid of magazines and the radio.

The radio, known as ‘the wireless’ (so-called because they ran off huge batteries before the National Grid came in), was a brand-new contraption that some found exciting, others found bewildering and still others found frightening. Just as the internet has made our world smaller in bringing news and images from across the globe on to tiny screens held in our hand, so the radio brought famous personalities, politicians, even royalty, into the homes of the ordinary man and woman as never before.

On 23 April 1924 King George V and his son, Prince Edward, opened the British Empire Exhibition and made the first royal radio broadcast. Over ten million tuned in and many events were suspended in order that people could listen in. The excitement for every subject of being able to hear their king speak was very real and it was the first tangible moment when the high barriers erected around the royal family started to come down. For some, this signalled a bright future. For others, it could only mean chaos, the total breakdown of everything that had held their world secure.