A Year in the Life of Downton Abbey: Seasonal Celebrations, Traditions, and Recipes (29 page)

The one thing Cora would not have been responsible for, that hostesses today feel the pressure of, is the interior decoration. Houses of the Downton Abbey sort did not change madly after the Victorian age (the Victorians were enthusiastic builders and there was usually rather a lot of knocking down and building up again), and certainly they would not follow any interior fashions. If a young couple inherited a house that was falling down a bit, they might try to do some restoration, but that was the limit. Helen, Lady Dashwood, was married to Sir John Dashwood when they inherited West Wycombe (used today to film the interiors of Rosamund’s London house). It was almost falling down after the First World War and they set to putting some of the rooms back, but it was a long job. In the magnificent book
The Country House Remembered
by Merlin Waterson, Lady Dashwood recalled: ‘On one occasion, it seemed to me that some of the busts in the colonnade were missing, and the man I was talking to about it said, “Oh, I expect they will be in the Bust Room, my lady.” ‘It was in the old wing – I’d lived in the house for fifteen years and I’d never known there was such a thing – in a bedroom, with a staircase leading out of it onto the second or third floor, and it was absolutely full of busts. Some of them were quite good.’

There were strict social barriers up until the 1920s and we should not be fooled into thinking that they were completely relaxed thereafter, far from it, but they were loosened up slightly. Elinor Glyn was a social-climbing novelist of the 1890s who received instruction from a countess friend of hers as to who could and could not be asked to one’s house. Army and navy officers could be invited to lunch or dinner, as could diplomats and clergymen. The local vicar might be a regular guest at Sunday lunch or supper, as long as he possessed the key qualification of being a gentleman (many vicars were the younger sons of gentry, but some, of course, were not). Doctors and solicitors tended to be garden-party-only people; no lunch or dinner invitations could ever come their way – the point about garden parties being that you did not introduce people to each other.

‘There seems to be a good deal of emotion being vented among the guests in the library. But then they are foreigners.’
MRS HUGHES

As the 1920s drew on, it started to become more fashionable to invite people who may not have been aristocratic, but were certainly entertaining – movie stars, distinguished sportsmen, musicians and so on. Before the First World War, these kinds of people would have been, if not quite ‘below stairs’, then certainly more suitable for the garden than the dining room. Hence, Robert’s bewilderment when he is instructed by Cora to place Dame Nellie Melba, whom he has paid to sing for the guests, on his right at the dinner table, rather than serve her a tray in her room as Carson suggests.

House-party snobbery may have relaxed enough to allow the invitation of non-gentry, but strict rules of precedence were still observed, both above and below stairs. The higher you were in the peerage – i.e. royalty, duke, earl, viscount and so on – the better the bedroom you were given and the better the place at the dining table (mimicked in the servants’ hall). The grandest female guest would sit to the right of the host; the grandest male guest to the right of the hostess. This had the unfortunate consequence that the hostess of a house party could find herself next to Duke Boring night after night.

The younger generations of 1924 behaved quite differently, at least in London, as we know from seeing Rose dance her way around the nightclubs. She almost certainly would have been reading about the exploits of the Bright Young Things in the newspapers and their new fashion for the ‘stunt’ or ‘freak’ party, in which outlandish fancy-dress costumes would be worn – there was a peculiar mode for dressing up as babies at one point. There was no precedence in their groups; what mattered was how extravagant and wild a party was – the more, the better, of course … and there was a lot of drink being drunk.

If the BYTs ever showed up at a parent’s house, a culture clash was inevitable. Arthur Ponsonby’s daughter Elizabeth, cousin to Loelia, was a notorious BYT and he recorded his frustration with her friends in his diary, after she turned up at home one weekend with one contingent in tow, another following on the next day, arriving at 3 p.m.: ‘They consisted of a girl who seemed to have been picked up very late at night off Piccadilly. A shiny cinema actor, a bogus Sicilian Duke and two other anaemic undistinguished looking young men. At 5 brandy was called for by the girls as the sherry which had been going on during the afternoon had given out. Owing to the weather some decided to stay the night in Haslemere. So M went to make arrangements, bringing back four more bottles. At this point my patience broke down …

Whoever their guests, the onus was always on the host to be welcoming and generous. This could be taxing when people suddenly announced they’d like to drop in, a particular threat to a house such as Downton Abbey, which was miles from anywhere – it meant guests were liable to stay for more than one cup of tea. ‘Do people think we’re a public house on the Great North Road?’ complains Robert. Still, he would be on his best behaviour, because that was What One Did.

Julian tells a great story about his parents, forced into having a couple to stay at the end of the war: ‘They came for a week and they stayed. And stayed. And stayed. And then at last it was time to say goodbye, a moment which, by some miracle, had been reached without the smiles ever cracking. The door shut with a click and my parents raced upstairs to celebrate. My mother leaped onto a table and started to dance a flamenco, swishing her skirts and petticoats to and fro, while my father circled below her, stamping his heels, clapping, whistling and laughing with glee. “They’ve gone!” they shouted, “They’ve gone!” Then they stopped. The guests were standing in the drawing-room door. “We forgot to leave our key,” they said.’

While Robert might pay the bills, it is Mrs Patmore, Carson and Mrs Hughes who have to quickly accommodate unexpected guests. Menus have to be drawn up and extra food has to be ordered in. Bedrooms have to be given a polish, the beds quickly made up with fresh linen, a small vase of flowers arranged, clean towels laid out, and possibly Anna or Bates will have to double up their duties if the guest has no lady’s maid or valet of their own. Robert and Cora are good employers, who are aware of the extra work put upon their servants. They also know that their servants’ skills make the difference between a party going well and going badly, and Carson feels this pressure to a degree that can at times seem rather disproportionate. Thankfully, Mrs Hughes is usually on hand to put him right.

Molesley

Sarah Bunting at Downton Abbey.

Before the advent of the ‘weekend’, a new concept to the likes of Violet, who has little understanding of finishing work on a Friday and returning to it on Monday morning, the pinnacle of the ‘Saturday-to-Monday’ house party (as it was then known) was the Saturday night dinner, as guests arrived on Friday and left on Tuesday. As usual, the servants at Downton Abbey have a break for tea before Carson sounds the dressing gong – this signals the preparations for the evening. Mrs Patmore and her kitchen staff will attend to the final touches for the dinner, the footmen will lay the table in the dining room and Baxter, Anna, the silent Madge and Bates attend to their mistresses and master to help them change.

Clothes matter, particularly when Granny’s coming for dinner. Violet’s presence demands white tie, but perhaps now that the family do not dress up in white tie every night, they enjoy it rather more when they do. Mary, as a married woman, can wear a tiara to dinner; Edith and Rose will wear fashionable headpieces instead.