The Chronicles of Downton Abbey: A New Era (15 page)

The situation had deep roots. Many Irish people (particularly in the southern and western counties) had long campaigned to have a greater say in the running of their own affairs. Initially it had been envisioned that this devolution could occur within the framework of the United Kingdom – with Ireland having its own assembly for debating local questions, while continuing to send MPs to Westminster to contribute to broader national and international debates. In the late nineteenth century, two attempts to introduce such ‘Home Rule’ were tried, but both were thwarted by the House of Lords, which vetoed the bill after it was passed in the Commons. Finally, in 1914, after the powers of the House of Lords were curtailed, an Irish Home Rule bill was passed. But the outbreak of the First World War delayed its implementation – it was decided that the need to present a united front against the enemy was more important. Some sections within the Irish nationalist movement balked at this delay and, at Easter 1916, they tried to force the pace, by beginning an armed rising against British rule in Dublin. This Easter Rising had limited popular support, and was speedily put down.

But the execution of the Rising’s leaders provoked a great deal of anger in Ireland, and led to a huge increase in support for their aims and ideals. Further anti-British sentiment was stirred up in 1918 when (due to the urgent need for troops) it was suggested that the Irish might be conscripted into the British Army. By the end of the war the nature of Irish nationalism had changed decisively, hardening into a desire not just for Home Rule, but for actual independence. In the 1918 General Election, Sinn Fein, the radical political party that expressed this new nationalism, won 73 of the 105 Irish seats. The newly elected MPs (including one female candidate, the Countess Markewicz) refused to take their places in the House of Commons at Westminster, declining to take an oath of allegiance to the British Crown. Instead, they assembled in Dublin and made a unilateral declaration of Irish Independence. They formed themselves into the Dáil, and claimed to represent the new Republic of Ireland.

Lloyd George’s recently formed coalition government refused to recognise this arrangement, and instead put forward a new Home Rule bill, superceding the 1914 one that had never been implemented. The Better Government of Ireland Bill – offering considerable devolution – was introduced into Parliament in December 1919. It is this bill (which was finally passed in November 1920) that is discussed throughout the third series.

Isobel
Do you approve of the new Act ?

Branson
Would you approve if
your country had been divided by
a foreign power?

The Dáil, however, refused to countenance the proposal, and instead declared a War of Independence against the British. From January 1919, across southern Ireland, violent incidents began to multiply as the Irish Republican Army (IRA) launched a campaign of terror against all aspects of British rule. The principal target was the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC), but anyone or anything who represented or embodied British authority became a target. The British retaliated to this provocation – often with extreme savagery. In September 1919 Britain declared both the Dáil and Sinn Fein illegal.

There were several incidents in Dublin: an attempted assassination of a British general as he drove through Phoenix Park, attacks on RIC barracks, strikes by Irish workers refusing to aid the British war effort. A resident magistrate was hauled off a South Dublin tram and shot three times in the head. In February
1920,
Dublin and six other southern Irish counties were declared as being in a ‘state of disturbance’. It would have been very frightening for Robert and Cora to read of such things in the paper, and think of their daughter caught up in such troubled times. ‘Big Houses’ (the mansions of the old Protestant land-owning aristocracy of Ireland) also began to be attacked and burnt – as symbols of British imperial oppression. Thirty such properties were torched in 1920, and many more in the years that followed.

Sybil
I just want to make things
easier for you.

Branson
For me or for you? Don’t
disappoint me, Sybil. Not now that
we’re here.

From early in
1920,
the RIC began to be reinforced from the UK by ‘Auxis’ (Auxillaries – ex-British Army officers) and Temporary Constables (known as ‘Black and Tans’ on account of their motley khaki uniforms) as well as by the British Army itself. Numerous acts of brutality against civilians were carried out – especially by the Black and Tans: whole villages were burnt, suspects were executed. These actions only fuelled anti-British feeling.

Branson
Those places are different for
me. I don’t look at them and see charm
and gracious living. I see something
horrible.

Dublin by the end of 1920 was not a safe place to be. Michael Collins, the leader of the IRA in the city, aimed to launch three attacks a day. Policemen and soldiers were ambushed and killed, officials were assassinated in their offices. The tit-for-tat atrocities reached a peak on 21 November when the IRA attempted to wipe out 19 British Intelligence operatives in Dublin, in a series of early-morning raids. They killed 14 of them. In response, a party of Auxillaries drove into the Dublin stadium, Croke Park, during a Gaelic football match and opened fire on the crowd; 14 people were killed and 65 injured. The day became known as ‘Bloody Sunday’. (Events escalated until July 1921, when a truce was declared. A treaty was negotiated, giving southern Ireland independence within the Commonwealth. It was generally accepted, though some hard-liners within the nationalist movement refused to consent and launched a civil war against their former comrades. The anti-treaty side eventually lost in 1923.)

It is against this violent backdrop that Sybil and Tom return to Downton. It is hardly surprising that some of the Crawley family find it difficult to welcome Tom to their bosom. Knowing the fear Sybil must be living in, they must also contend with the fact that their son-in-law shares nothing of their beliefs or way of doing things. This leaves Tom in a defensive position: torn between wanting to do the right thing by the woman he loves and his loyalty to his political ideals. On top of which, he is emasculated by his inability to provide for her. Unhappily for him, his journalism pays only a meagre wage, when it pays at all; most of the time they are living off the allowance Sybil receives from her father. So there is no feeling for him of being able to take his bride back to her family home with him as her provider. He is unable to plant himself with both feet above stairs as, say, Mary’s former suitor, Sir Richard Carlisle could – he, too, might be unschooled in aristocratic ways but his money and confidence meant he could ride over any bumps. And besides, Tom still feels the pull of belonging below stairs – not just because they were once his colleagues and friends, but because as a revolutionary he is supposed to be fighting for equality and against the rule of the aristocracy. To allow himself to be dressed for dinner by a footman makes a mockery of his beliefs. As Leech puts it: ‘It’s a huge issue for him, that he can’t provide for his family. The fact that he’s living off the very thing that he’s fighting against is very difficult for him. It is an embarrassment. And it can make him touchy.’ As Sybil tells Mary: ‘He puts a tough face on it and says things that make everyone angry, but he so wants your good opinion. I can’t tell you how much.’

Nor can he slip under the radar when it comes to dressing in an ordinary suit, one which fits his needs perfectly in Dublin. At Downton they can hardly talk of anything else. Constant reference is made to the fact that Tom hasn’t dressed for dinner – it is to them an absurdity that he owns no white tie, black tie or even morning suit for the wedding. Robert says he looks like ‘a travelling salesman’; Violet calls him ‘the Man from the Prudential’. Caroline McCall, the costume designer, reflected this in her suit for Tom: ‘We give him more of a city look – no Donegal tweeds. Branson is a journalist living in Dublin. We wanted him to look different and out of place.’ Sybil is apologetic to her family – ‘we live a completely different kind of life’ – but for Tom, the clothes the aristocracy wear at different events are more than simply practical or aesthetic, they are a sort of uniform for their beliefs. As such, Tom doesn’t want to subscribe to them, and anyway, he has no spare money to buy extra suits for visiting his in-laws.

Branson
I’m sorry, but I’m afraid
I can’t turn into someone else, just
to please you.
  Violet
More’s the pity.

The question of etiquette generally could serve to unhinge an outsider. While there were spoken rules, there were thousands of unspoken ones, too – things that seemed to be in place only to catch someone out. This could be distinctly unnerving. Leech felt this in more ways than one: ‘Tom is very aware that he doesn’t know the etiquette,’ he says. ‘I felt that myself, as an actor. I had never filmed those scenes in the dining room at Highclere before. I felt as if I was in the wrong place. It all seemed another world.’ According to Gareth Neame, executive producer, this is reflected in the development of Branson’s character in the show: ‘The great thing about the second series – and beyond – is that whereas with a first series one just has a blank piece of paper and an idea about characters, by the second series those characters have been realised by actors and that very much influences our decisions. And of course one sees characters breaking through – such as Branson – who started as smaller characters but become much loved and we expand them beyond what we’d originally envisaged.’

The story of Sybil and Branson has its roots in a tale Julian heard of an earl’s daughter who ran off with a groom (in that case, though, the father managed to prevent her actually marrying him). ‘For the younger ones it became a family joke,’ says Julian, ‘but the older ones found it much harder to find him suddenly sitting there at lunch. It was a random event, as they saw it, and the point about the deferential system was that it wasn’t random. So to find a chauffeur upstairs, as the Crawleys do, makes it seem as if everything might fall apart.’ Coming so soon after the war, the sensation that the world will never be the same again is disturbing for the older generation, whereas the younger members of the household have less difficulty in accepting Sybil’s surprising choice of husband.