The Chronicles of Downton Abbey: A New Era (27 page)

Ethel
Mrs Hughes said we all have
lives to lead, but that isn’t true.
I’ve got no life. I exist, but barely.

Hoping to receive some help from Isobel’s charitable work is the former Downton Abbey housemaid, the unfortunate Ethel Parks, who is now facing a life of hardship, alone with her boy Charlie. With no husband, no war widow’s pension and no work as a housemaid, she is at her wits’ end. Barely able to feed herself after finding what little she can for her son, she starts to think that perhaps she ought to hand him over to the Bryants, his grandparents. The future she can offer Charlie is a paltry one – as a ‘bastard’ he, too, would face difficulties of his own later on to get work or marry well. Her decision would be a far from unusual thing to do; as the taint of illegitimacy was so grave, many single mothers gave their babies up for adoption. Frequently, parents would adopt a daughter’s child and raise it as their own, and many children grew up believing that their mothers were their older sisters. As there were no legal adoption processes before
1926,
this was relatively easy to do; even informal adoption continued well into the 1930s.

‘She’s very in love with her little boy,’ says Amy Nuttall, the actress playing Ethel. ‘She wants to do the best for him and initially she thinks that what he needs most is a mother’s love. But then she comes to realise that maybe he will be better off with his grandparents, and the stability that they can offer him.’ Poor Ethel has gone from being a bright, confident young woman full of hope and ambition for her future, to one who is forced to scrabble for what tiny scraps of work or food she can find. ‘She’s a coper,’ says Nuttall. ‘She has a steely side and an essential optimism – even in her position. She is still shunned by society. She hates it. But she accepts that it is a consequence of what she had done. She doesn’t rage at the injustice of it.’

In the same way that Isobel would consider herself an optimistic realist, in that she only seeks change within the existing structures of society, Ethel, too, believes that the fundamentals of the world and how it is organised are immutable. Of course, they are both wrong. The world in 1920 was on the brink of extraordinary social change; the effects of the war had acted as a catalyst for a number of developments – from medical improvements and technological advances to the breakdown of class barriers and women’s suffrage – that were now going to take a foothold.

That said, some of the feared or promised changes never actually happened: illegitimacy continued to carry with it a social stigma until the late 1960s. The old way of life on the big country estates largely survived until the outbreak of the Second World War. Women’s fight for equality did not begin to be won until the 1970s. The aristocracy and socialists alike believed with some fervour that the revolution would come at some point during the 1920s. It still hasn’t.

The turmoil of the First World War provoked movements
of people across Europe and the Near East, as the old
Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires broke up.
Some of these displaced people arrived in Britain needing
support and care. (Agatha Christie based her detective
Hercule Poirot on a Belgian refugee she met in England.)
Although state provision of social welfare in areas such
as health, housing and education continued to grow in
the years after the war, there was still a strong belief that
voluntary action was an essential component of a good
society and should be encouraged rather than superceded
by the state. Isobel Crawley was one of many newly
enfranchised women active in providing this service.

As lady’s maid, O’Brien would be
responsible for looking after her
mistress’s wardrobe. In addition to
cleaning and pressing her clothes,
she would be required to darn and
mend them and do fine needlework.
As clothing budgets were slashed
amongst the aristocracy, the lady’s
maid would also be tasked with
updating and altering dresses
into more fashionable styles.

Molesley
I'm essential to Mrs Crawley.
She relies on me. That’s what he said.
Essential.

O ’Brien
Oh yes. We're all essential.
Until we get sacked.

S
arah O’Brien, an upper servant in an earl’s household, would have been considered a woman of position amongst her class in the early twentieth century. Having risen to such a high rank, she ought to be happy, but she’s not. Tetchy when spoken to by anyone but her mistress, Lady Grantham, O’Brien refuses to become a part of the servant family, walking alone in the shadows above and below stairs. As Gareth Neame, executive producer, remarks, ‘Downton Abbey is a world where people don't say quite what they mean. There is always a subtext.’

There is no one at Downton Abbey that you could confidently say was O’Brien’s friend. Even Thomas is less a chum than an ally in her scheming. As valet to Lord Grantham, Thomas is useful to O’Brien as a means of gaining intimate knowledge of their paymasters and the other servants – knowledge that she can use to manipulate those about her. But Thomas is wary of feeding her the information that she wants: he certainly has the measure of her. Rather like two schoolchildren who egg each other on, the pair of them occasionally shock each other with just how far they can go in their machinations. When Bates is found guilty of murder, at the end of Series 2, Thomas’s first remark is that Lord Grantham will need a new valet. ‘I don’t often feel selfless,’ says O’Brien. ‘But when I listen to you, I do.’

The truth is that they are both as hard and soft as each other, but they express these opposing sensitivities in different ways and they decide who sees these sides of their personalities. Thomas has buried his heart, but O’Brien’s bitterness disguises a fierce loyalty that she bears to a chosen few. Her family, of which we hear only a very little, is among this select group. She successfully persuades Lady Grantham to hire her nephew, Alfred Nugent, as footman behind Carson’s back (much to his fury, but she couldn’t care less about that). ‘As the son of her sister, it is likely that the family has a service background,’ says Julian Fellowes. With Alfred to look after, O’Brien shifts her attentions from Thomas, who predictably sulks about this. As he rightly points out, it is not so much who she cares for that decides the question of her loyalty, it is who she can control. When Thomas was younger and greener, he was more easily influenced.

No sooner has O’Brien landed her nephew a plum job as footman than she contrives to get him promoted as valet for Matthew. Thomas is outraged by this, after all he has been through to achieve the same position under Lord Grantham. So we are treated to seeing two former thick-as-thieves friends plot against each other. They are well matched but O’Brien has the upper hand, as Thomas cannot muster a quick enough riposte to her put-downs, which have a streak of black humour to them.

O’Brien
Listen to yourself. You sound
like Tom Mix in a Wild West picture
show.Stop warning me and go and lay
out his lordship’s pyjamas.

Whether alongside friend, foe or family, O’Brien is set apart from her colleagues below stairs, not only in character but also professionally. She reports to Lady Grantham and no one else – even Mrs Hughes cannot tell O’Brien to do anything, only ask her. Her aloofness would not have been exceptional; ladies’ maids enjoyed something of a difficult reputation. Consequently, it was recognised that care had to be taken when engaging them. One butler recorded a list of the questions that should be put to prospective candidates. As well as the usual concerns as to mending skills, tidiness and packing ability, there were inquiries on temper, discretion and reliability.

Even after careful screening, some ladies’ maids could be troublesome. One visitor to Sudeley Castle in the 1920s recalled that the lady’s maid there was ‘easily the most hated servant of all … and this was so in most big houses’. The records of country-house life between the wars frequently echo with the same tale. The renowned socialite Lady Dashwood told how, at West Wycombe Park, ‘There were a great many storms, it was always very troublesome … and very often it was the lady’s maid who caused the problem.’ At Knepp Castle, Lady Burrell wrung her hands over ‘terrible fights’ between the cook and the lady’s maid.

Their position was a territorial one, which perhaps accounts for the defensiveness and troublemaking amongst the other members of the household. Their domain was chiefly their lady’s bedroom; only the lady’s maid was permitted to touch her mistress’s dressing table, and so they became the jealous keepers of a woman’s most intimate secrets – from the potions she applied to keep herself looking young to her concerns about her husband. It was an enormously privileged position, but there was only so much that a lady’s maid could do with all this powerful knowledge.

Siobhan Finneran, the actress playing O’Brien, explains her character’s isolation: ‘She has always worked tirelessly hard. She has sacrificed her own life for her job. And eventually she has come to resent it.’

Perhaps she begrudges her life in service, but she doesn’t seem keen to alter the status quo. She bristled defensively when Ethel talked about wanting ‘the best’ and to be ‘more than just a servant’. But as much as she may feel aggrieved, O’Brien clearly lives by the maxim ‘better the devil you know’. It is the idea of change that upsets her the most – even when it is for the better. When Anna and Mr Bates announce their intention to get married, her reaction is mean-spirited.