ART & CULTURE
Molesley, the butler turned footman, started as a character with a few lines but due to how well he was played by Kevin Doyle, his role expanded to a full storyline. When Jessica Brown Finlay decided to leave the show, Fellowes had Sybil die from eclampsia, which women died from until the 1930s when medicine was more ad- vanced.
Real history
Fellowes adds into the mix American wife Cora, who brings a bit of reality in to the mix as one of the Buccaneers aka American Dollar Princesses. Tese were the infamous daughters of the nouveau riche who had earned a quick buck and sent their eligible offspring over to England to marry into the aristocracy. Why? Tey wanted what money couldn’t buy: a title. Tis is exactly what Leonard Jerome of New York did. His daughter Jennie married Randolph, the second son of the Duke of Marlborough, bringing with her a hefty dowry. Teir son Winston Churchill is pretty famous but many forget he was half American. We see the Crawleys get through the
Nineteen years after Jennie’s marriage to Lord Randolph, his nephew Charles Spencer-Churchill, the 9th Duke of Marlborough, married the wealthiest and perhaps most famous Dollar Princess: Consuelo Vanderbilt, great-granddaughter of railroad tycoon Cornelius Vanderbilt.
with, such as Violet, the Dowager Countess (played by Dame Maggie Smith), who has all of the witty lines and is ar- guably everyone’s favourite. His research helped the show balance be-
tween reality and drama. Mrs Patmore’s nephew would not have received his own private memorial, but this was Fellowes ap- pealing to a 21st century audience. Joseph
Great War, rationing, Suffrage riots, the Grand Trunk Railway, the rise of Hitler’s Brownshirts, and the Russian Revolution. Tey lose family members to diseases that no longer cause fatality in our time, see a shift in the common worker which sees their staff numbers dwindle, and deal with scandals which threaten their status in so- ciety. Kings are crowned, technology ad- vances, fashion takes centre stage and the world changes to everyone’s chagrin. In addition to well-known historic
events, Fellowes weaves into the mix some little known or unknown real events that have been revealed in his own family’s di- aries or other handwritten accounts that have been found in his extensive research. Te interracial relationship between Lady Rose and the jazz singer Jack Ross was based on the love affair of Lady Edwina Mountbatten (aunt to Prince Philip) and Leslie “Hutch” Hutchinson. Another example of a story derived from
reality is the one of the handsome Turkish Ambassador Kemal Pamuk. A friend of Fellowes had discovered the diary of his great aunt, who wrote about how a visiting diplomat had died in the bed of a cham- bermaid and all of the single women were woken up to help carry the body back to his bed. Te diary simply noted, “We had a tragedy, Mr so and so was found dead in his bed.”
www.focus-info.org FOCUS The Magazine 17
Edwina Mountbatten and Leslie ‘Hutch’ Hutchinson
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