Downton Abbey fanfiction: Trust and Providence - Marriage During The G

[reveilles]

Greetings...

This is my first post in the Great War Forum, so please feel free to correct me if I'm doing this improperly.

I'm writing a Downton Abbey novel trilogy, Trust and Providence (T&P), that's a retelling of the TV series with one key detail changed: Mary and Matthew are married throughout the Great War. T&P explores themes such as marriage in wartime; the role of faith amidst the horrors of war; the psychological and physical effects of war; the Jewish experience, both at home and at the front, during the war; social change brought about by the Great War; and the postwar recovery period in Britain.

For those who are fans of Downton Abbey, much of the plot and characters in T&P will be familiar, but many of the themes are explored in greater depth than in the TV series.

I am announcing T&P in this forum not just to promote it, but to invite those who have expertise with this period of history to offer critiques and suggestions for improvement. Although T&P is fiction, I'd like it to be as historically accurate as possible.

Thank you for your time!

Rachel

Title: Trust and Providence
Fandom: Downton Abbey
Rating: M
Pairing: Matthew Crawley / Mary Crawley (and Sybil/Tom, Edith/Anthony, Cora/Robert)
Genre: Romance, Hurt/Comfort, Drama
Length: 198,200+ words
Chapters: 22/40
Status: In progress

Summary: What if Mary had immediately accepted Matthew’s first proposal? Where might events have taken them if she’d trusted him with her secret from the start? An alternate universe (AU) story starting from Series 1 Episode 6.

Warnings: graphic depictions of sex, frank discussions of faith and philosophy, strong language, disturbing wartime imagery, racial slurs, character death (but trust me: T&P will end very happily for Mary and Matthew!)

Start at the beginning

Read the latest chapter

DISCLAIMER:

I do not own any Downton Abbey properties, nor do I make any money from the writing of this story.

Dialogue and scene excerpts, written by Julian Fellowes, are taken from Downton Abbey Series 1 - 3 (2010-2012) © Carnival Film & Television, Masterpiece

This story is released under the GPL/CC BY: verbatim copying and distribution of this entire work are permitted worldwide, without royalty, in any medium, provided attribution is preserved.

[johnboy]

I feel sure that most of your questions were answered before you started writing.

[reveilles]

Yes, I've learned a lot reading resources on this site! It's a treasure trove.

[WilliamRev]

Hi Rachel

Just putting in my oar:

1. amongst the vast number of inaccuracies (I don't mean uniforms or visible details - rather vastly improbable plot lines) in Downton Abbey, the one that really annoyed me was that Matthew seemed to come home on leave nearly every fortnight. As a junior officer he would have had leave perhaps once every six months if he was lucky. (His title would not have given him any advantage).

2. I remember hearing an interview on the radio with a very old lady who was brought up in a seriously big stately home, like Downton Abbey. She said that they had 65 servants living in the house (i.e. far more than we see in DA), and around a similar number living in cottages and above stables nearby, who dealt with the carriages and gardening etc. None would ever be allowed to speak to a member of the family unless spoken too first - there was none of this "If I might have a word with you my lady?.." from a maid.

She thought that there must have been the very occasional confidence between a young lady and her maid, or possibly butler and master, but these would be very much the exception. On the whole there was no "chat" between servants and masters (as we constantly see in Downton Abbey) at all. Servants were blamed for all sorts, and sacked on a whim. (look at any census of a very large house, and then the census of the same ten years later - I virtually guarantee that all the servants from the first will have been replaced by the second.) They were not friends - not even as friendly as the Romans were with their slaves.

William

[reveilles]

Hi WilliamRev--

Thanks for these notes! Yes, I was a bit annoyed with how the war was portrayed (or really, not portrayed much at all—instead we got a predictable soap-operatic love quadrangle!) in series 2 of the TV show. I had been so looking forward to a real exploration of the experience of WWI and its paradigm-shifting impact on society, but instead we got a highly-sanitised version of events that only barely touched on a few things for a few episodes, and then we were forced to sit through a really embarrassing paralysis-oops-saved-by-a-tea-tray! plot with Matthew.

In Trust and Providence, Matthew only manages to make it home for about 3 days once every 6-7 months, and that's only after 1915. He's initially away from home for 10+ months, from August 1914 to May 1915. I do keep in the recruitment-drive plot, which gives him two extra stops at home, but each of those stops are limited to a few hours at most. There is a whole chapter dedicated to life on the home front that doesn't have Matthew in it at all, and another chapter that is dedicated to life on the Western Front that doesn't feature Mary except in one brief scene.

I include the servants in T&P, but they are largely background characters. I don't explicitly violate any of the relationships shown on the TV series, but I don't have a lot of chummy conversations between the family and the servants, either. That being said, I would imagine that some families managed their servants differently from other families. The Crawley family in Downton Abbey is certainly an idealized, palatable-to-modern-audiences portrayal, though.

I have no love for contrived soap opera, particularly when there is enormous scope for real, compelling drama. Hence getting the "will they or won't they?" silliness between Matthew and Mary out of the way at the very beginning, and making plenty of room for dealing with the rigours of war. It is my hope that readers of T&P will not find a single wasted scene.

I'll keep your notes in mind as I write.

Thank you!

Rachel

[Moonraker]

Interesting project, Rachel, and you're quite brave getting involved with a theme that, some might say, has become a national institution, certainly something that is much discussed. Doubtless you've seen the DA pages over on IMDB?

I've just two observations:

Though set in Yorkshire, there's nothing at all in the TV drama that reflects that area, apart from a few references to "meeting in York" or whatever. The scenery doesn't look like Yorkshire, it looks like, er, Berkshire, Hampshire and Oxfordshire. Probably not a big problem for your books, and I certainly don't expect you to have some of your characters saying "ee bar gum", but most books set in a distinctive part of England manage to convey local atmosphere.

Some have criticised the Earl of Grantham character for being atypically benevolent, certainly in the early series, and would have liked him to be portrayed more as their idea of a country peer (whatever that might be). But if a character is representative then (s)he is in danger of becoming a stereotype. Several GWF and IMDB members have criticised recent (and not-so-recent) Great War films for portraying stereotypes, though when I've asked them to suggest believable non-stereotypes there've been no replies! So after a century of literary and cinematic representations of life in early 20th century England, including the war, a challenge to today's authors is portraying characters who are "fresh" and believable.

Good luck!

Moonraker

[reveilles]

Thanks for the encouragement, Moonraker! No, I haven't spent much time on the DA pages over on IMDb. Do you have anything specific over there in mind, something I ought to check out?

I'm American (although I do my utmost to write T&P using British English spellings, idioms, grammatical structures, and punctuation, and using the British words for things, not the North American ones: it is my hope that my British readers never have their teeth set on edge ), so I was unaware that Downton Abbey doesn't look anything like where it claims to be set. Thanks for raising this point! I don't spend a lot of time describing the countryside in T&P, and no, none of my characters say "ee bar gum", although they do use bits of northern dialect, like "was stood" or "was sat".

I hope my portrayals are "fresh" and believable, but I am constrained (and liberated, to be honest) by what Julian Fellowes has created. I like the idea of an atypically benevolent Earl, but I don't just have Robert be that way without considering why he might go against the grain a bit. My working theory on a key component of Robert's (and Matthew's and Isobel's) characters is that they are devout Christians (although not perfect people, of course ) living amongst a mainly culturally-Christian populace, and thus their actions and motivations sometimes seem incomprehensible to others. Hence why we got this exchange in Series 1, Episode 2:

---
VIOLET, DOWAGER COUNTESS OF GRANTHAM
Why do you always have to pretend to be nicer than the rest of us?

ROBERT, EARL OF GRANTHAM
Perhaps I am.

---

Plus, we saw lines of dialogue in both Series 2 and Series 3 that indicate the Robert values the Bible and knows it well enough to quote it accurately under duress in defence of a gay servant, which I found very interesting. It indicates not only that he knows it, but that he lives as though he believes it to be true. He makes plenty of other mistakes, but this was a fascinating bit of character development from Fellowes.

There's also a bit in Series 3 where Matthew tries to convince Tom that Mary isn't actually against having a former chauffeur for a brother-in-law, and part of his argument is that "Mary is a pragmatist". I was amused and intrigued by a man who describes his wife in abstract philosophical terms, and I wondered how Matthew's own philosophical bent (which I would describe as "idealist") would contrast with hers...it opened up a whole world of fascinating conversations and conflicts, and it made more sense of Matthew and Mary's ongoing disagreement in Series 3 over whether to accept the (admittedly deus ex machina) fortune from Reggie Swire. So I'm having fun playing with a variety of themes in T&P, including conflicts around faith and philosophy, all based upon what Fellowes gave us in canon.

[Magnumbellum]

I'm American (although I do my utmost to write T&P using British English spellings, idioms, grammatical structures, and punctuation, and using the British words for things, not the North American ones: it is my hope that my British readers never have their teeth set on edge

no, none of my characters say "ee bar gum", although they do use bits of northern dialect, like "was stood" or "was sat".

I hope my portrayals are "fresh" and believable, but I am constrained (and liberated, to be honest) by what Julian Fellowes has created.

In writing historical fiction it is not only a matter of appropriate grammar and idioms, but also appropriate terminology in a particular context. I have seen only five minutes of DA, when I happened to enter a room while it was on, but that was enough to put me off for life.

The scene was the housekeeper interviewing a maid, apparently at the latter's request. She explained that she was "pregnant", a word never used outside purely medical circles until probably the 1960s - certainly well after the Second World War, never mind during the First. A maid constrained to make such a confession in such a context would most likely have said, "I'm in trouble", and the housekeeper would have known exactly what she meant.

I would add that a "respectable" married woman would never have announced to her husband, parents, friends, "I'm pregnant". A middle class woman would have said, "I'm expecting"; a working class woman, "I'm in the family way", or to her closest associates, "I'm in the club", but never "pregnant".

Such ridiculous anachronisms on the TV and radio are irritating enough to make one switch off.

[reveilles]

In writing historical fiction it is not only a matter of appropriate grammar and idioms, but also appropriate terminology in a particular context. I have seen only five minutes of DA, when I happened to enter a room while it was on, but that was enough to put me off for life.

The scene was the housekeeper interviewing a maid, apparently at the latter's request. She explained that she was "pregnant", a word never used outside purely medical circles until probably the 1960s - certainly well after the Second World War, never mind during the First. A maid constrained to make such a confession in such a context would most likely have said, "I'm in trouble", and the housekeeper would have known exactly what she meant.

I would add that a "respectable" married woman would never have announced to her husband, parents, friends, "I'm pregnant". A middle class woman would have said, "I'm expecting"; a working class woman, "I'm in the family way", or to her closest associates, "I'm in the club", but never "pregnant".

Such ridiculous anachronisms on the TV and radio are irritating enough to make one switch off.

Thank you, Magnumbellum, for teaching me about this! I knew about many of the older idioms for pregnancy, but not that that specific term was unfamiliar (in that sense) outside of medical journals until the 1960s. Since you told me this, I've kept the word out of the chapters of T&P that I've published. (I have to go back at some point and remove it from the earlier chapters that were published before your message.)

I'm so grateful! I completely understand how much of a turn-off anachronisms are. Insufficient research and lazy writing do not make for an enjoyable, immersive story.

[James A Pratt III]

Having looked through it. They look good. I do have some comments:

During the Great War the number of household servants in the UK dropped from 1 Million to 400,000. As one Austrian Count said towards the end of the war All my male servants have been conscripted into the army all my female servants are working in munitions factories. I can't get enough to eat and can't get fuel to keep warm.

As for Mathew it looks like he was lucky not to have been wounded or gotten sick between 1914-1917. Note there were more than a few soldiers at the front in the British army in 1918 who had 3 and 4 wound stripes according to one veterans account.

Jews were also not popular in Britain for another reason according to the book "Young Stalin" their ranks included more than a few criminals and revolutionaries.

I hope this is of some use.

[Magnumbellum]

Thank you, Magnumbellum, for teaching me about this! I knew about many of the older idioms for pregnancy, but not that that specific term was unfamiliar (in that sense) outside of medical journals until the 1960s. Since you told me this, I've kept the word out of the chapters of T&P that I've published. (I have to go back at some point and remove it from the earlier chapters that were published before your message.)

I'm so grateful! I completely understand how much of a turn-off anachronisms are. Insufficient research and lazy writing do not make for an enjoyable, immersive story.

Thanks for the appreciation.

Another example of the way that pregnancy was referred to publicly is that in WW2 there were special arrangements for "expectant mothers", and that was the language used in advertisements and leaflets.

[reveilles]

Having looked through it. They look good. I do have some comments:

During the Great War the number of household servants in the UK dropped from 1 Million to 400,000. As one Austrian Count said towards the end of the war All my male servants have been conscripted into the army all my female servants are working in munitions factories. I can't get enough to eat and can't get fuel to keep warm.

As for Mathew it looks like he was lucky not to have been wounded or gotten sick between 1914-1917. Note there were more than a few soldiers at the front in the British army in 1918 who had 3 and 4 wound stripes according to one veterans account.

Jews were also not popular in Britain for another reason according to the book "Young Stalin" their ranks included more than a few criminals and revolutionaries.

I hope this is of some use.

Yes, it's of great use!

The fact that all of the military-age menservants leave service does become a plot point in both the TV show and in Trust and Providence, including how the remaining men find jobs in service (or not) after the war is over. For those who do remain in service, yes, the size of the household will eventually be reduced as the economy goes into a slump after the war, and most of the younger people in service are less enamored with preserving the old class hierarchies, because they've had a taste of the society-flattening effects of war.

I agree that Matthew's story is an unusual one, with him having survived four years of war to begin with. Since I'm writing an alternate-universe version of Downton Abbey, I'm choosing to work within the constraints established by Julian Fellowes' canon, so Matthew gets to be lucky. But I tried to expand on his experiences during the war and I based a lot of what I wrote on

Read, I.L. 'Dick' (1994). Of Those We Loved: A Great War Narrative: Remembered and Illustrated, Barnsley: The Pentland Press, Ltd.

and Read also survived the entirety of the war, remaining on the battlefield far longer than Matthew did, actually. But I think Read had only 2 wound stripes.

Thanks also for the reference about how Jews were perceived in Britain during this time. I suspect that their criminal ranks didn't significantly exceed the criminal populations of other ethnicities at the time, but the refugee status of many Jews who had fled Russia and Eastern Europe certainly didn't endear them to the British population (particularly since these refugee Jews weren't eager to enlist and fight on the same side as their Russian persecutors), so any tales of Jewish criminals would probably have gotten more traction than others' situations.

Thanks for the appreciation.

Another example of the way that pregnancy was referred to publicly is that in WW2 there were special arrangements for "expectant mothers", and that was the language used in advertisements and leaflets.

Great tip: I've already made use of it!

[reveilles]

Just a note: unless you request otherwise, I will acknowledge each person who has helped me in their replies to this thread. If you want me to use a name other than your Great War Forum username, please send me a private message with the name you prefer. Thanks for all your help!

[Muerrisch]

There is a scene fairly early on where a sergeant of Foot Guards in Service Dress appears with scarlet sash. Looks nice but an anachronism!