Downton Abbey, Episode 4

29 Jan 2013 2 Comments

by smkelly8 in Review, television Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Lady-Sybil-Crawley-the-crawley-sisters-31850306-1418-945

If Thomas (a.k.a. Mr. Burton) cries during an episode of Downton Abbey, you know there’s tragedy. I happened upon news of Sybil’s death last fall when I did a search for some other Downton matter and a British site popped up.

Still as Bresson asserts in good drama knowing the outcome won’t diminish the engagement with a story. I know how Casablanca ends and yet I get caught up in the story time after time.

So I was actually all the more rapt as Sybil lost her life in childbirth. Any viewer could tell the city-fied, modern Sir Whatshisname, was wrong and that Lord Grantham should listen to Dr. Clarkson. It was odd, but believable, that this tradition-bound lord didn’t. I kept thinking, “Listen to the women. Listen to Cora on this, Robert!”

The tone of the emotion was just right. Characters were devastated, but there was some reserve. This is not a telenova. And that’s why we viewers feel all the more emotion. When I see say a Malaysian soap opera everyone’s screaming, crying and flailing about in hysteria. I feel nothing because that “works” been done by the actors. When you witness tragedy and there’s been restraint because the situations so sad that words and actions won’t suffice, that’s when the audience feels the most.

One of the most beautiful scenes in this season so far was when we saw Branson at the window holding his daughter. No words and it just lasted a minute, but we knew (or projected) everything his grieving husband must feel. He’s got to be strong and committed to his daughter in spite of his own grief.

We’re in store for a lot of drama. Branson’s role in the family is even more tenuous. He’s still connected by a female the Grantham’s love, but she’s a baby and can’t act as a mediator. Where will they live? What work will Branson, who can’t return to Ireland, take on that won’t humiliate the Grantham’s?

Bravo to Isobel for hiring Ethel. I can see why Mrs. Bird left, but it’s a shame she didn’t try to stay and work through her prejudices. I think Isobel’s great sacrifice isn’t going to be her reputation, but rather her palate. It’ll take Ethel a while to learn to cook.

Congratulations to Edith for the newspaper column. I hope she surprises everyone with her insights and writing. Edith, yes your father and granny disapprove, but don’t flee the breakfast table each time he does. Women need their rights, but they also need to learn to stand their ground.

Robert, it’s true you didn’t cause Sybil’s death, but to get back into Cora’s good graces, you ought to blame yourself as much as possible.(The trailers suggest you won’t.) If you descend into depression than Cora would probably consider rescuing you her mission. If you aren’t huber-contrite and grief-stricken you’ll be sleeping solo ad infinitum.

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Word of the Week

07 Aug 2012 1 Comment

by smkelly8 in writing Tags: , ,

Wazzock: (ˈwæzək) n. dialect (English) a foolish or annoying person

I read this in a Maureen Dowd editorial about Mitt’s bull in a china shop performance in the U.K. She saw the word in The Daily Telegraph.

I do love British slang.

Downton Abbey Background, Part 3

16 Jul 2012 6 Comments

by smkelly8 in art, television Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

So I’ve explained how these families like the Crawly’s amassed huge estates, but how did English estates come to look as they do? Barbara Geiger enlightened us on this question as well.

Wealthy young English men of the 17th and  begin to cap their education with a trip abroad. Often these classically educated men would spend time in Europe and value paintings of Greek pastorals with beautiful expanses of land dotted with sheep and enclosed at the horizon with a line of trees.

By Thomas Cole

Sometimes a nymph, probably naked would show up.

By John Reinhard Weguein

Geiger mentioned Claude Lorrain as an influential painter.

By Claude Lorraine – Note the Classical Greek structures

These sons would return home and want to recreate the images in these paintings.  In addition the price of English wool goes up so bring in the sheep.

Lancelot “Capability” Brown was a famous landscape architect who

Glamis Castle, designed by Lancelot Capability Brown

Blenheim Place designed by Capability Brown

A key feature of English landscaping, the Haha, a ditch near a home that kept animals like sheep from nearing a house. It’s something of a moat out of land.

This doesn’t seem so deep, but they aren’t crossing

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More on Enclosures

14 Jul 2012 1 Comment

by smkelly8 in culture, Europe, History Tags: , , , , , ,

From http://cla.calpoly.edu/~lcall/enclosures.html

What were enclosures?

  1. Enclosure meant joining the strips of the open fields to make larger compact units of land. These units were then fenced or hedged off from the next person’s land. In this way a farmer had land in one farm, rather than in scattered strips. This brought greater independence. Enclosing land was not new; it dated back to at least the Medieval period.
  2. The areas of England affected by the enclosure movement of this period were mainly the counties of the Midlands, East Anglia and Central Southern England.

How was land enclosed?

  • Before about 1740, most villages were enclosed by agreement. This was when the main owners of the land made a private agreement to join their strips together. This may have involved buying some strips from the small farmers to get rid of any possible opposition. Where all the land in a village was owned by one or two people, enclosure by agreement was relatively straightforward. Unfortunately, it is impossible to tell how much land was enclosed in this way, as little documentation was kept.
  • Where a number of smaller landowners provided determined opposition to enclosure by agreement, an Act of Parliament had to be obtained. This became the accepted procedure after 1750. It had a number of factors in its favor:
    1. Each enclosure had legal documentation and certification
    2. It provided the machinery for opposition to be heard
    3. It allowed the whole of the village to be enclosed at the same time (that is, commons, waste
    4. land, meadows and open fields.) Up to 1750, many villages had been enclosed a little at a time.
  • Between 1750 and 1850 there were approximately 4,000 Enclosure Acts of Parliament.

Why was Parliamentary Enclosure so widespread in the periods 1760-1780 and 1793 to 1815?

  • Between 1760 and 1780, some 900 Enclosure acts were passed. Historians agree that high cereal prices motivated farmers to enclose land in order to produce a greater amount, thereby earning bigger profits. Also, where land was enclosed, landlords could charge tenants higher rents.
  • The years of the French Wars (1793-1815) saw almost 2,000 Enclosure Acts being passed. This can also be explained by high cereal prices, which were the results of a series of poor harvests and the difficulty of importing foreign corn at a time when Europe was involved in a major war. This led to widespread enclosure with even marginal waste land being enclosed. With enclosures the farmers could grow more food to feed the domestic population and make larger profits.

Downton Abbey Background, Part 2

13 Jul 2012 2 Comments

by smkelly8 in History, television Tags: , , , , , , , ,

So much of the drama of Downton Abbey rests on the entail. If you’ve read Jane Austen or To Kill a Mockingbird, you’ve heard about these mysterious legal arrangements. Last night at the local library, I learned for once and for all what an entail is and what their history was.

Any Downton Abbey fan knows that Lord Grantham can’t leave his estate to his daughter because of the entail. It must go to the oldest male heir and that heir died on the Titanic. A distant cousin, Matthew will inherit the massive house, all its furnishings and grounds. That information can suffice, but as we’ve go to wait till January for our next Downton Abbey fix and since the library had a historian speak on Downton Abbey background, and since I’m geeky enough to dash off to such an event, I can now illuminate this entail business.

Get out some No Doze and here we go!

Way back when in England everyone who helped out the powerful got parcels of land and the poor could work as farm hands and use the commons for pastures. The problem that soon surfaced was that as the father died all the sons would get a divided parcel of land. Well, that would mean in a few generations people would be living on like one acre. That’s no good. Land meant wealth, power and status.

So when the Normans invaded they were bright enough to be careful that the parcels of land they confiscated and doled out remained intact. So land was passed down by primogenator, i.e. to the eldest living son. This method gave the British aristocracy a lot of power. In fact, by the 18th century the aristocracy in England had more power than the monarch. (That wasn’t the case in France so I guess they did things differently over there.)

Women’s property and money was subsumed by the husband upon marriage.

Entails (Sometimes In tails)

According to LexisNexis, an entail means:

To settle property upon a person with limitations in respect of the succession. Precisely, to create an estate in tail, that is, a fee tail, in conveying or devising real property. To involve, e. g., the trial of a law suit “involves” much preparation.

But we figured that. Entails made this even more secure, power more consolidated. The land the nobles got in the Henry’s era weren’t all that big compared to what the Crawleys have.  Why?

Enclosures

Small fields and forests got taken by a few families

Because of the Privatization and Enclosure Acts, which began in the 1600s, allowed people to petition Parliament to consolidate plots disenfranchising small farmers. Before you knew it 4 million acres in Britain were owned by 12 individuals (Ye Olde 1%). Enclosures allowed the rich to become richer. They also made farming more efficient for a time. Yet the small farmer sure got squeezed out.

Common Recovery document

An entail could be “smashed” as Violet periodically urges and even by Jane Austen’s time they were becoming unpopular. One way to break an entail was this loop hole – when the legal son turned 21 he could turn the property over to fee simple (i.e. owning a land with a deed) that way the new owner could do with it as he pleased, will it to anyone, split it up, sell off parts.

There was also something called a Common Recovery whereby an owner could break an entail by creating this legal mess whereby the landowner transfers the land to an agent or lawyer and then some bogus chap John Doe, Richard Row, Moses Mill or such seems to take the land and sell it all so the owner can do what he wants with it. It’s all quite confusing and I have no idea why the owner could sell to an agent but not to someone else, but then these property laws are all about power and injustice when you start reading through some of these articles.

The Fines and Recoveries Act of 1833 put an end to this charade and allowed that a lease could trump and entail.

So it seems that Robert Crawley could have signed away his entail at age 21, but if he was a serious sort who liked tradition, he wouldn’t have felt the need to. Most 21 year olds probably figure they’ll have at least one son. He still could . . . we’ll have to see what happens in January.

Commoners try to keep the commons

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Downton Abbey Withdrawal?

04 Mar 2012 2 Comments

by smkelly8 in architecture, culture Tags: , , , , ,

Wouldn't you want to live here?

There’s a good documentary on English manor homes available on the PBS website. Elucidating, though not as witty.

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