A Year in the Life of Downton Abbey: Seasonal Celebrations, Traditions, and Recipes (26 page)

Scotland

THE DOWAGER COUNTESS OF GRANTHAM
(Violet)

As the world changes around her at a rate she can neither understand nor keep up with, there is always one haven for the likes of Violet, our Dowager Countess: Scotland. Whether it is the ancient traditions, the centuries-old heather growing on the sleeping hills or the reassuringly cold comforts of a Scottish castle, a retreat among tartan-clad relations is to be relished; a charming reminder of times past. Examining the Crawleys’ departure to their cousins, the Marquess and Marchioness of Flintshire (Susan is Violet’s niece), is a welcome opportunity for us to look at the old ways, something which Violet, above all, enjoys.

The journey to Duneagle Castle begins at Downton Station, where the family and their servants board the train. Anna and Bates, as lady’s maid and valet, are happily able to enjoy the trip as a small holiday of their own (for O’Brien, however, Cora’s lady’s maid at the time, this is work as usual); Bates admits to a Scottish ancestry – his mother was a Keith.

Much to Robert’s consternation, his dog Isis must be left behind, in the care of Tom Branson, who hasn’t been invited, which worries Violet: ‘I know he’s housebroken more or less, but I don’t want freedom to go to his head.’ Turns out, as with so many things, she is right.

Lavinia Smiley remembered her own family’s Scottish expeditions when she was a child, in the 1920s, travelling up from King’s Cross Station and occupying almost an entire carriage of first-class sleepers. The children would struggle to wake up in time to look out of the window as they crossed the magnificent Forth Bridge: ‘It was like going into a new world. For many years all the taxis waiting at Aberdeen Station were Rolls-Royces – demoted from a more gracious castle life among the lairds, I suppose – and in one (or two) of them we would be driven the fifteen miles through rolling farmland to Dunecht.’ Lavinia recalled that her aunt’s maid had to arrive at the station well before her ladyship, in order to make up the bed in the sleeping car with linen sheets. Thankfully, even Violet is rather less demanding.

This is a portrait of Julian’s great-aunt, Isie Stephenson (1880-1971). She was the original inspiration behind Violet, even providing some of her best lines, such as ‘What is a weekend?’

Violet’s character was inspired by Julian’s paternal great-aunt, Isie. Born in 1880 (rather later than Violet, who was a child of the 1850s), she married the heir to a rubber fortune, Hamilton Stephenson, always known as Bertie. Bertie descended from a cherished illegitimate son of a Regency Duke of Norfolk who hated his wife (whom he divorced in 1794) and loved his mistress. He enriched the child, marrying him off to Lady Mary Keppel, daughter of the 4th Earl of Albemarle. Bertie’s first cousin was Harold Nicolson, husband to Vita Sackville-West, famed in the 1920s for her intimate female friendships, most particularly with Virginia Woolf. ‘All in all, by her own admission, she [Isie] had married into a pretty tangled and very interesting group,’ says Julian.

Isie was named after her much-loved aunt, Eliza, always known as Isie, who died of consumption within a month of her niece’s birth. ‘She really functioned as our paternal grandmother, as our real one was pretty mad and detested children,’ says Julian, who today owns a portrait of her as a child, as well as this pretty watercolour of her grown up and a miniature painted for her fiancé to keep on their engagement.

Tragically, Isie’s husband died of wounds in the First World War, and her only son, Russell, drowned in the Second. It was Isie who originally said to Julian a line he later gave to Sybil in the second series; she had gone to a ball after the war and on entering the room, thought she must have mistakenly come to a hen party, as she could see only women. Gradually, she spotted a man here and there and realised that men had been invited – it was simply that there were almost no men left. ‘It was as if every man you ever danced with was dead,’ she said.

Violet shares with Isie her formidable air, a belief in the aristocracy’s right to reign and a certain severe snobbishness, but as Julian has said, the women of that time were complex. They had been brought up to believe that life held sure things for them, as it had for their mothers, grandmothers and great-grandmothers. As young women, their expectations were solid, but the world they grew up in was shattered by the war. Their education and upbringing had apparently failed to prepare them for this. In fact, women of Isie and Violet’s generation were prepared for little more than marriage, for that was what was to bring them independence from their parents, operating their social and charitable lives from their husband’s grand houses. Isie told a wonderful story of her own education, in which she was walked around the garden by her governess. They would pause by every shrub and Isie would have to spontaneously introduce a new topic of conversation. The idea was that you would be able to keep a party going even if the people you were with had all the social abilities of a plant.

Nevertheless, women of Isie and Violet’s type could be tough – they were the undisputed matriarchs and ruled their houses. They bring to mind a line from a memoir in which a young nanny recalls the aristocratic grandmother, Lady Reeve: ‘[She] had a direct manner of speaking. She acknowledged two superiors – God and Queen Victoria.’ These women had one certain priority: family. For Violet, even when her granddaughter Mary has behaved in ways which must be shocking to someone of her own generation, she will stand by her, no matter what, because she is family. Violet and Al Capone share one or two qualities, it may be said.

Violet is, of course, played by Dame Maggie Smith, an actress who commands great respect, not just from her immediate
Downton Abbey
family, but from audiences worldwide. She came to international attention for the eponymous, Oscar-winning role in
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie,
directed, coincidentally, by Gareth’s late grandfather Ronald. Maggie Smith is shrug-the-shoulder modest about her career: ‘One went to school, one wanted to act, one started to act and one’s still acting.’

Gareth has said of Maggie: ‘It probably goes without saying she’s a huge part of Downton and has received accolade after accolade for it. And I think she enjoys doing the show. It’s remarkable that someone who’s had such a long and illustrious career continues to deliver work of this calibre. And in reflecting on the pivotal role that she plays, one ought to mention the extraordinary collaboration of Maggie Smith and Julian Fellowes. She’s almost like a muse to him.’ As Maggie has said, Violet is, in fact, ‘the third old lady I’ve played for him, so I am getting the hang of it now’. (She was Lady Trentham in
Gosford Park
and Mrs Oldknow in
From Time to Time.
) The two of them certainly enjoy quick-witted banter and Julian has said that he enjoys writing for her because her timing is immaculate; nothing has to be explained about the beat or intention of a line: ‘I write a line that I think is quite funny, then she says it and it’s hilarious.’

On set, Maggie is adored by her fellow cast, and she certainly doesn’t have the same prickly relationship with Penelope Wilton as Violet does with Isobel Crawley – they are often seen taking strolls together around the grounds of Highclere. Her younger fellow actors will confess to feelings of apprehension before first filming a scene with Maggie, which she soon dispels with a remark of either reassurance or wit. It might be a surprise to some – if not all! – to hear that Maggie herself has confessed to feelings of nerves. One reporter once asked her if, when she was sitting there as Violet, in an incredible hat, she was nervous. ‘Like a lump of jelly,’ she replied. ‘Worried that if I don’t get this speech right, I’m done for.’

Maggie Smith and Penelope Wilton on location.

While the end of the London Season was traditionally marked by the beginning of the Scottish sporting season on the Glorious Twelfth (the name for the start of the grouse season), on our screens, we see the Crawleys go to the Highlands for stalking early in September, as the first signs of autumn begin to show. The episode – the finale for series three – was filmed in late July and early August and the costume designer then, Caroline McCall, had prepared herself for grim weather (it’s always raining in Scotland), ‘but it was really beautiful’, she laughs.

Caroline dressed the principal actors in earthy green colours, with Mary in burgundy. ‘I wanted to have a change [from the family at home in Downton] and to show the passage of time. We’d last seen them at the summer cricket match and now it was autumnal, with Mary pregnant,’ she explains. Of course, a little tartan wouldn’t go amiss and would be entirely in keeping. Many families liked to reference their ancestry if they were able. One child remembered being dressed in green and black Dunecht tweed for her holiday, her grandmother rumoured to have bought a mile of it: ‘There was something rather pleasant about being dressed the same as all the retainers – keepers, ghillies, gardeners and even the dour old groom.’

Much of the kit, however, was sporting in nature – and not just for the men. Increasingly, in the 1920s, ladies were joining in, particularly with fishing. Women were always reputed to be the best salmon-catchers on the Scotch rivers and Lady Colin Campbell, in her book
Etiquette of Good Society,
was very precise about what the smart lady-angler should wear: ‘A kilt skirt of rough tweed unheeded and reaching a little below the knee, over a pair of tweed knickerbockers to match, a Norfolk jacket with plenty of pockets, ribbed woollen stockings, stout low-heeled shoes and a deerstalker cap, form the best and most workmanlike costume for a woman to go fishing in.’

However, the author clearly did not believe women were able to handle all the aspects of fly-fishing: ‘A man should be taken for the purpose of baiting the hooks and taking off the fish when caught.’

The filming of the episode took place in Inveraray (pronounced ‘Inverara’) Castle in the West Highlands, owned by friends of Alastair Bruce, the Duke and Duchess of Argyll: ‘They’re lovely people and they had said to me that if
Downton
should ever go to Scotland, they’d love to provide the location. It’s a romantic place, so when Julian said he was thinking of doing a Scottish episode for the season finale, I passed the message along!’ Alastair also became rather closely involved with the stalking scenes: ‘Where [the actors and director] needed specific advice was on the hills. So I was on the spot as the ghillie [a Scottish gamekeeper].’ Resplendent with a long beard, too. Alastair was also quite literally on hand for the fishing: ‘I was there at the riverside, where I repeatedly picked up a dead fish [in the background] until the gill snapped – I had to stop the filming, I was laughing so much.’