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<p>Oh, I do hope you’re right. Whenever Thomas is in the scene, I imagine gloomy, dangerous music playing in the background, just like in the old silent films when the villain would appear. He’s a bad one, he is, and I don’t understand the point of him. His badness doesn’t seem relevant to anything – just annoying.</p>
<p>I’m so curious to know what Baxter’s story is. The wicked Tom obviously has something on her.</p>
<p>I was surprised when Cora was joking about Tom maybe finding a sailor on the trip to New York. I thought it was all a big secret the upstairs folk did not know about.</p>
<p>^^ Maybe to prove that she’s not as much of an idiot as she appears?</p>
<p>Re the Dowager Countess: Maybe a harbinger of things to come, that no one lives forever?</p>
<p>We have to have villains and turmoil to make this show interesting. I think Tom is a great villain! If everybody got along perfectly downstairs it would be pretty darn boring. I agree about Edith needing a break. I really want things to turn out well for her.</p>
<p>^^Yes, but Tom hasn’t really done anything all that evil this season…just veiled threats against Baxter. >:) </p>
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<p>Well, being rich, very beautiful, and part of an aristocratic family makes Mary a particularly attractive candidate. And although there were over a million men from the British empire killed and 2 million wounded, there was a further 2 million who served honorably in WWI and came home intact. So while there was indeed a sharp reduction in the number of eligible men about, it’s not far-fetched that a woman with Mary’s advantages could still attract a crowd of suitors. </p>
<p>Blake and Gillingham served together in the Royal Navy on the same ship at the battle of Jutland. It was mentioned in a bit of dialogue.</p>
<p>And I think that’s supposed to represent the erosion of traditional class lines that the war accelerated: that a top-shelf Hon like Gillingham and a Labour-oriented intellectual (with an agricultural background) like Blake had served together and considered themselves friends was certainly a change from the situation a decade before where Matthew was Not Our Type.</p>
<p>I read all your comments despite not getting to watch last night. </p>
<p>RE Edith. What if, instead of pregnancy, she has some sort of “female problem”???</p>
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<p>Keep in mind that the reason why the Southern planter elites had no cash money was because they supported secession from the Union back in 1861 to “preserve the southern way of life”…including the very institution of slavery*. This included supplanting the US dollar for the Confederate dollar…a currency which increasingly became worthless when the Confederacy’s fortunes waned and then collapsed at Appomattox. </p>
<p>While this may sound harsh to those pining for the “lost cause”, those Southern planter elites as portrayed by the O’Hara and other planter families in GWTW brought those troubles on themselves by rebelling and seceding from the union in order to preserve their aristocratic pretensions and institutions needed to preserve them…such as the institution of slavery. </p>
<p>In contrast, the British aristocracy were affected by social changes and a major world war which they had far less direct responsibility for instigating or vigorously prosecuting. It was much more muddled and dragged out process with WWI serving as one of the last straws. </p>
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<li>This aspect is clearly stated in several secession declaration documents made at the very beginning of the American Civil War.<br></li>
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<p>This wouldn’t have viewed as much by those with a basic background in British military and social history. </p>
<p>Unlike the British army, the Royal Navy had been much more meritocratic in terms of recruiting and promoting officers due to the great technical and educational requirements of leading sailors and commanding warships. Lord Gillingham and Blake would have had to have been at the very minimum intellectually and technically competent to gain entry into the Royal Navy as commissioned officers. Only exception I could think of was royal princes like the future King George VI who despite graduating last in his junior preparatory Naval Academy class at British Royal Naval College, Osborne, was allowed to continue with his class at the senior BRNC Dartmouth and graduate. In any event, no aristocratic family or aristocrat himself would ever consider enlisted service…especially in this period when there was a strong class/wealth component to the commissioned/enlisted divide. </p>
<p>In short, if one was an intellectually dull aristocrat even back in Colonial period /Nelson’s day, he’d probably be much better off joining one of the more socially prestigious British army regiments populated by high-born aristocratic officers like the Blues and Royals for enhanced prestige/promotion opportunities. </p>
<p>In fact, even into the 1920’s, it was regarded among some aristocratic circles that it was much better for their sons to join the more socially exclusive regiments in the British army rather than go off into the Royal Navy or <em>shudder</em>, the more technically demanding RAF*. </p>
<p>There was a sort of inverse relationship between heightened technical/intellectual demands and perceived social prestige of military services/branches with among the aristocratic families. This is shown by the higher proportion of aristocrats populating the Cavalry units of the British Army compared with infantry…much less more technically demanding and “less gentlemanly” branches such as artillery and engineering. </p>
<p>Calvary also had the least academic requirements and greater military/personal expenses** among Sandhurst military academy graduates as Winston Churchill’s case proved. Despite an inauspicious start there academically**, he managed to graduate with a high enough class standing to choose infantry which required higher class standing and greater math abilities than cavalry. Despite that, Churchill opted to go into cavalry to the consternation of his father who already made arrangements for him to join the most socially exclusive infantry regiment in the British army. </p>
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<li>It was also a reason why many aristocratic peers discouraged their sons from pursuing more technically/intellectually demanding branches such as medicine or engineering. Both were regarded as being “ill-suited for gentlemen/peers” because they were closely associated with “trades”.<br></li>
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<p>** Upkeep of horses, lavish uniforms, and personal expenses to live in the style expected of an aristocratic officer…all of which he/his family would have had to pay for out of their personal funds/income. A reason why serving as a British Army officer in the cavalry or infantry often required an independent income as the pay was so low one couldn’t live off of it even without those named personal expenditure requirements. </p>
<p>*** Took 3 tries for him to gain admission…and he barely made the grade on the third try. </p>
<p>Not to get TOO boring on the historical stuff- but one of the main reasons that the estate system was failing at this time was the collapse of food prices due to refrigeration. This meant that food could be imported much easier and as food prices collapsed, the farms were no longer self supporting. Mary would have indeed been a prize catch as she had both a title and money. If you really want to get into the historical info, a book called The Secret Room, goes into depth into the history of the Duke of Rutland and how he kept himself out of harms’ way during WW1 (despite his regiment being on the front line and having HUGE numbers of fatalities). There were also, (as someone else mentioned many pages ago) a number of American heiresses who were married for their money- including Jenny Churchill, Winston’s mother. For a book on it (that gets a little tiresome with some of the details) read To marry an English Lord- probably available at your library. I know it is at ours.</p>
<p>^^Mary comes from a titled family but doesn’t actually have a title herself. Had Matthew lived to inherit the Earl of Grantham title Mary as his widow would now be referred to as the Dowager Countess. But since Matthew never held the title it will skip over anyone in Mary’s generation and go directly to her and Matthew’s son when the current Earl dies.</p>
<p>But she is called “Lady Mary”. Isn’t Lady a title? Granted it isn’t as high ranking as Duchess of Grantham (or whatever it would have been) but it is still a title, right? Despite having read all these books, I still don’t know the title stuff very well.</p>
<p>I think “Lady” or “My Lady” is just a polite (and expected) way to address a member of the aristocracy. A title would be Duchess, Countess, Earl, Duke, etc. Lord Grantham is the Earl of Grantham, and they address him as “My Lord.”</p>
<p>This explains it all: <a href=“Forms of address in the United Kingdom - Wikipedia”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forms_of_address_in_the_United_Kingdom</a>.</p>
<p>Apparently it was degrading of me to refer to Lady Mary as “a Hon,” since that implies that she was only the daughter of a Viscount or Baron. Horrors!</p>
<p>I just took a peek at the wiki article JHS mentioned above. ^^^^^^ My goodness – there should be college majors in that sort of stuff!! Who can keep track of it all? Certainly not me!</p>
<p>Which makes it all the more interesting that upon marriage the Queen’s daughter refused her mother’s offer to ennoble her husband which means Princess Anne’s children and grandchildren are plain Mr and Miss.</p>
<p>I still don’t think Bates did it. That’s way too easy, and as noted above, we’d also have to believe that he killed his late wife. That’s out of character for what we’ve known about Bates.</p>
<p>Where is this weeks Facebook update?</p>
<p>I dunno. Check Bates’ Look of Death here (scroll down):
<a href=“Downton Abbey Season 4 Episode 7”>http://downtonabbeyonline.com/downton-abbey-episode-guide/downton-abbey-season-4-episode-7/</a></p>
<p>That look says, Green, you’re a dead man. And now Green is a dead man.</p>