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Column: Jessica Fellowes on Episode 5

Jessica Fellowes offers behind-the-scenes access to the world ofDownton Abbey, from the cast to the castle, like no one else. Now, Fellowes shares her insights into the most explosive and moving moments from Downton Abbey, Season 3. Find out what Fellowes had to say about Episode 5. (Note: The following contains plot spoilers for Downton Abbey, Season 3, Episode 5.)

  Mrs. Patmore, close up

“Do I look like a frolicker?”

Against the black dresses and the dark shadows of grief dancing around the walls of Downton Abbey, the wit of writer and creator Julian Fellowes was thrown into even sharper relief this week. The notion of Mrs Patmore being led down a path of wickedness by Ethel was not only brilliantly funny, but just what we needed to dry the tears.

Downton was in action-packed form in this episode, with several plotlines neatly laced together, and the Dowager Countess there at every intersection, knotting up any loose ends. She does like things resolved, does Violet.

  Violet

The Dowager is based on Julian’s own great-aunt Isie, a woman he said, with the same “mix of severity and kind heart.” She was formidable, a woman who had married into a great fortune but suffered her own difficulties and tragedy. During the First World War, she went to the docks to greet her husband returning on leave. She expected him to run down the gangplank and sweep her into his arms; instead, he was carried off dying. Violet this week hinted at her own past tragedies. “I do not speak often of the heart,” she said. “Since it is seldom helpful to do so. But I know well enough the pain when it is broken.”

There were other marvelous lines – almost maxims – that I could only recognize as being my uncle’s: “People like us are never unhappily married” and “anyone who has use of their limbs can make salmon mousse” (Mrs Patmore’s ready wit almost matched the Dowager’s this week).

  Robert and Cora hugging

Once more, however, it is not just the many characters and their storylines (Bates will be free -- that was good news) which pull us in, but the insight into the human condition. The death of a child often, sadly, causes a split between the parents when blame is conferred, however mistakenly. Both Cora and Robert were devastated by the loss of their daughter in quite the same way, but how this manifested itself in each was markedly different. Cora withdrew into herself: she blamed her husband and Sir Philip Tapsell, and this led her to conclude once and for all that any kind of allegiance to titles, the aristocracy, the old-boy network or even Harley Street, could only be nonsense at best, fatal at worst.

Meanwhile, Robert, struggling to do his best in the face of huge guilt, is beginning to feel that everyone is against him – not just his wife, but Matthew, too, with his implication that he has been incompetent running the estate and then his own grandchild becoming a Catholic (“a left-footer”). The scene when Robert turns up to remove all the women from Isobel Crawley’s house neatly demonstrated his sense of futility – although it was Violet’s attempts at diplomacy that really made it for me: “Well, you know, servants are very hard to find these days.” (Not to mention the laugh-out-loud line, on sight of Ethel: “I suppose she has an appropriate costume for every activity.”)

The scene between Robert and Mary, when he unburdens his sorrow to her was touching – she is the power in the household in many ways, the natural heir to Violet.

Of course, it is the Dowager who has the last word, finessing the doctor’s truth when it came to Sybil’s death (“‘Lie’ is so unmusical a word”), but only because she has a higher cause in mind. But I don’t think I’ve ever been so moved by the back of someone’s head, as the moment when Violet turned as her son and his wife sobbed together in grief and love. 

Jessica Fellowes is the bestselling author of The Chronicles of Downton Abbey, The World of Downton Abbey and Mud and the City: Dos and Dont’s for Townies in the Country. Buy books by Jessica Fellowes at ShopPBS.org.

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