The (probably unintentional) historical importance of deer-hunting and sea-paddling in a happy marriage.
I was watching the season 3 Christmas special and musing, as I often do, about how the Crawleys lives are built on all kinds of historically interesting stuff with which Fellowes never engages. So I thought I’d write down some of my musings. This is about Argyll, and sheep, and seaweed, and why Charles Carson’s worst fears are Elsie Hughes’ family history. It’s about what’s at stake with “worshiping” the Crawleys. It’s also about another beautiful layer to the Carson/Hughes romance, if you’re an unrepentant shipper like me.
Elsie Hughes has built a career as a well-respected record producer. After a major life tragedy, she decides to take a risk and fulfill an old dream of creating musical theatre. Worthington Park is going to take the West End by storm - at least if she can find a better composer and convince her librettist to leave out the tenant uprising.
Charles Carson is a classically-trained musician who likes to pretend his brief stint as a rock star never happened. But when his orchestral career is threatened it seems like the past is going to catch up with him after all. Maybe embracing the past and understanding it is the only way to build a better future. Elsie certainly thinks so.
It’s the one where Carson is in a train crash and believed to be dead. (Not ChelsieSouloftheAbbey’s Who We Truly Are, which is great but not the one I’m looking for.)
Carson shows up in the kitchen his telegram to tell them he survived having gone astray.
“I suppose you think I'm a drunk or trembling with fear at the onset of old age.“
I was thinking about that line again. And also about the downright weirdness of that bit where Carson tries to go teetotal because his robertship has to abstain. (I wasn’t the only one who found that super weird, was I?)
I wonder if they’re connected. Do you think he’d already had the tremor at that point? And for some reason he’s legit afraid that his wife will think he’s a drunk? (Maybe Carson Sr or Carson Sr² turned to drink post tremor. Idk). But for whatever reason he sees solidarity with Robert as sort of awkward cover to telegraph to Elsie that he’s definitely not a drinker?
Carson, who had made the decision as a youngish man to leave the entertainment industry and come into service and is almost disinclined to believe his affection for Mrs. Hughes can go anywhere but after watching the family upstairs tolerate Mr. and Mrs. Bates getting married I think that Mrs. Hughes and Carson decide to set aside a lifetime’s belief that there could never be the joy of marriage and they embrace it. And once they’ve made the decision– And there’s a lot of hesitation. Hesitations built upon a whole upbringing of expecting it never to be possible.
Alastair Bruce (x)
There must have been some fierce gossip among other servants about them. Much tutting and frowning and probable snide remarks - surely - from those who didn’t break the rules.
Some snobby-arse butler friend of Carson’s casting aspersions. Some insinuating that Mrs Hughes did well for herself to get her hooks into him.
I mean, even staying close to home, I can’t imagine Denker not having something to say about it? (Headcanon she tried to stir it, and Mrs Patmore smacked her down.)
I kinda love that there must’ve been talk, and they must’ve known there’d be talk, and despite the fact that they’re both so talk-averse, they did not care in the face of being happy together.
When Charles & Elsie were married, do you think someone walked Elsie down the aisle/gave her away? If so, who? If no, why not?
I was looking at pictures of the church/thinking of the church for some research for my current [cobert] fic. This lead me to think of the Chelsie wedding, obvs, and I thought it was interesting that the Family would sit on Charles’s side. Of course it makes sense when you consider everything, but then I thought BUT WHAT ABOUT ELSIE?
Anyway, late night fic writing aside, I’m curious as to what you think :)
The thing about the wedding scene being full of extras is that it gives you this lovely sense that there are lots of people in Charles and Elsie’s lives who matter to them and have eff all to do with the Crawleys.
Like, you don’t rent-a-crowd for a wedding. The many people we don’t know there are presumably friends and acquaintances from the village or from their pasts.
If somebody walked Elsie down the aisle, I’d like to think it’s somebody we don’t even know about. That she has people in her life who matter to her who are part of her story, not the story of the “glorious house and the glorious people who’ve lived in it”.
Headcanon: Carson’s tremor is psychosomatic because subconsciously he wants to give up work, be with his wife, do other things. His heart’s not been in Downton the same way since he married, but he couldn’t consciously admit that to himself.
TV3 Ireland just ran an advert for the CS with Thomas telling Carson he’s learned a lot from him, and what looks like Edith coming downstairs in her wedding veil. I guess this must be an official trailer, but I’ve been out of touch. Is it available somewhere online?
This may be awful of me, but the Carson spoilers are giving me loads of really delightful headcanon?
I really hope that it’s RSI or arthritic rather than neurological. Because then it can serve the plot purpose of getting him out of service without being too debilitating. I mean, it’s Fellowes so it could be bloody anything. But I’d find it rich fuel for Carson, and Elsie, and Chelsie daydreams if he doesn’t mess it up.
It’d be thematically neat because it’d be further proof that service doesn’t have to be his life. If it’s something that means he can’t do his job anymore but that doesn’t mess up the rest of his life, that shines a light on the fact that here at the end he does have a bigger life than that. And that kind of physical damage makes sense as a life in service leaving its mark.
Because I’m trash I keep having really indulgent daydreams:
About an exasperated Elsie - who is not one for romantic speeches - laying down truth about how much she loves him.
About Charles spilling the beans about the Becky situation to somebody else - and it finally not being OOC to imagine him doing that, because he’s freaking out that he trapped her in a life she chose against before.
About Carson discovering all kinds of other valuable things about himself as a clever and honorable man outside buttling. (And Elsie who knew his worth all along - but well done for catching up, Charles).
About Robert and Carson developing a different stage in their relationship as Robert occasionally calls on him for other things now.
About Mary coming to visit him in the cottage and the three of them establishing a different kind of vibe too.
About people thinking ‘well, at least he was sensible and sorted himself out with a housekeeper and carer. What a good practical arrangement that marriage was’ - and then being proved massively hugely wrong by how obviously happy together and besotted with each other the Carsons are in retirement.
About Elsie saying she’s never regretted entrusting her future and her happiness to him, so if things do get worse will he trust her with his dignity? (And of course he will, because she always has protected it.)
(And then about it not being that debilitating after all once he slows down and stops working so much. Because this is wish fulfillment.)
You know, retirement in the 1920s was about one’s health, not one’s leisure. We’re still miles away from the notion of life expectancy extending beyond active working years for the majority of people. “Retirement” as a period one’s life where one has earned a new lifestyle is a far more modern thing.
Buying the B&B is less Carson saying “I’d like to spend my retirement with Mrs Hughes”, and more “I’d like to give up my job and start a whole new life in a different line of employment that will give me greater personal freedom than I find in service”.
Carson - newest and most unlikely subscriber to the Team Gwen newsletter, tbh.
(Brouncker Rd vs Haxby is another interesting line of thought.)
[In the Christmas episode] In terms of Mrs Hughes, she’ll reach a resolution that is unexpected in some ways and could be perceived as rather challenging. But I think it’s the right thing. I can’t say any more than that!
My guess (hope?) is that she’s going to push hard for them to retire. He won’t go easy, but he’ll realise in the end that it’s the right decision. Happily ever after with leisure time!
Technically, I think Mrs Hughes became eligible to vote when Carson put her name on the deeds to the house? (He just pipped universal suffrage to the post.)
Headcanon: For the rest of their lives, the Carsons will steadfastly go to the polls and cancel each other out at every single vote and election.
I….I feel like I tried really hard to defend Julian Fellowes’ choices regarding Carson and Hughes in the second half of season 6 - I didn’t agree with how he got there, but ultimately I felt like I could see the greater purpose that Fellowes was trying to accomplish. Marriage is rocky and adjusting to married life is hard + Carson is often stuck in the mud and has a hard time distinguishing his personal and professional selves = Carson being fucking weird about meals as a means to introduce them having a tough time adjusting to married life. But I’m just, I don’t know, I’m super disappointed in the end with how Fellowes chose to get there with them.
Carson and Hughes have, for me anyways, been the one area where he hadn’t managed to screw things up too badly - he’s literally ruined almost everything he’s touched at one point or another, but they remained there on the outskirts, steadily creeping closer to each other in a real and believable manner. Carson’s reserved and grumpy demeanor always made sense before and stopped at a certain line; Elsie always managed to snap back when she needed to so that he could internalize the fact that he was being a bit of a douchecanoe and then he’d get on her side.
But the episodes after the wedding, continuing in to this (almost) final episode seem to really drive home the point that Charles Carson Can Be An Ass. Which - yeah, Carson’s the one dude on this show who I really care about so I’ve defended him at length - but at this point it’s like Fellowes has created this caricature where Carson’s sole downstairs purpose is to be an ass to everyone. His saving grace is that Elsie can call him out on it, and clearly she’s used to this, but it’s like this concentrated amount of AssNess that is too much to bear.
So basically, this is my anti love note to Fellowes. I’ve spent approximately four years of my life on this show; I’ve spent two of them on this godforesaken website defending your choices about Carson and Hughes to a fandom that often aimed daggers at Carson but even I can’t defend your choices anymore. You’ve made Carson into someone even I can’t defend anymore, because the character you’ve given us in the last 4 episodes isn’t Charles Carson Per Usual; but instead like one decade of all of the Worst Of Carson’s Behaviors jammed into a small (two week? two months? what is the timeline, I don’t know, it’s all a haze) amount of time. I’m hopeful that you’ll patch it together (it seems like you tried, here, in episode 8 with Elsie rebutting all his AssNess, all while Carson continued to pout about things for a much more prolonged period than he would have pouted about things before) in the Christmas Special, but hey, who has hope anymore. I give up. You’ve bested me. You’ve finally made such shitty writing decisions that even I can’t do it anymore. Please don’t write anything even vaguely romantic anymore, ever; or if you do, stop while you’re 3/4th’s of the way there and hand it off to someone more capable.
This is the most overdramatic monologue to a writer I’ve ever posted, please feel free to mock me.
I was really excited that we were getting the wedding early in the season, because that meant we’d have time to see them together an loving after the wedding. I should have heeded the warning of the Banna fans.
S6 Carson doesn’t even seem to just have regressed. He turned into - as you say - a caricature of his previous foibles. Making exaggerated Carson-style hyperbolic statements, but without any of the actually understandable motives that were previously there.
I haven’t found a way to comfortably hash out a reading that fully makes sense to me. (And maybe trying to is a futile cause because some of it really is just bad writing. Like, I’m genuinely starting to think Fellowes thought that the food stuff was a comedy b-plot? WTF?)
Currently I’m trying to think about the ways in which a lifetime in service messed with people’s heads. And I’m wondering if S6 Carson is a man struggling and failing to serve two masters: the system (which he thinks is where his loyalty should lie), and his own happiness with Elsie.
Actually, the latter has already won. He’s not devoted to service anymore. He’s not going to go down with the ship. His motivation in life now is his wife and his marriage. But it’s going to take a while for him to work through the guilt and the ingrained habits that have told him all his life that duty to the system comes first.
That’s why he keeps saying exaggeratedly ass-ish things that not even Robert agrees with about how things should be done. And it’s also why they sound so ridiculous and hollow and over the top - he doesn’t believe them anymore. He’s just not ready to admit that to himself yet.
There were times he felt like he was being a really bad husband to Elsie. But actually, he’s a guilty cheating spouse to Downton and to all the feudal ideas he claimed he was dedicated to forever. He’s trying to pretend that nothing has changed with over-exaggerated gestures of fidelity. But in reality, he’s not sticking around. He’s just going through the motions until he eventually admits that what he'll be happy to retire with his wife and go have a life outside service, being on memorial committees and things. He keeps shaking his compass, but when it settles it’s going to point due-Elsie now and that’s that.
I thought it was interesting how in an episode where everyone and their dog was brought in to talk about how Mary and Henry were OTP, Carson’s opinion wasn’t even in the chorus. That’s not his story any more. He’s free - despite himself. But he’s going to have to realise that slowly by increments. Because Carson.
(My ideal happy ending for Carson was always that he’d learn to value himself outside of the damaging service system without having to renounce the worth of his work or his bonds with the family. I wanted him to learn to accept a more liberal world without having to be humbled or forced into it. My ideal scenario involves a future with Mary stopping by for tea in his cottage and them finding a balance where he can remain deferential enough for his own comfort without having to be servile. And possibly not even noticing how outrageous his past self would have thought it for Mary to come drink tea in his kitchen - or simply not minding. And I feel like maybe I can convince myself that’s where this period of terrible AssNess is heading?)
That tension between them never disappoints me. Let’s just be grateful to Phyllis and Jim for their incredible chemistry.
Carson’s look just before Elsie kissed him in the cheek was so similar to that from their first kiss. This time again it looked like he was going to kiss her himself, or was waiting to be kissed but like IN THE LIPS!
But instead he gets it in the cheek and he is still so pleased! Like it couldn’t have been better!
And I ABSLUTELY LOVE that there wasn’t any little moment of disapprove of the moment or the place where the kiss happened. JUST LITTLE SUPRISE AND THEN PURE HAPPINESS AND LOVE!
Here’s my reading of it (because what is fandom for if we can’t write hundreds of words about a slight downward glance?)
I think Elsie kisses him pretty often. I think that after twenty years of working together in service - with all the ways it limits physicality - they are aware of each others’ body language enough that even a fractional difference in the distance between them or the tilt of a head is as legible as a big physical gesture to us.
I think that there’s something about the way she steps in close to him that signals to him that she’s about to kiss his mouth. And he is so far gone over her at this point that there’s no longer any butler counter-reflex. If she had gone for the mouth he would not have stopped her. For all his bluster, he’s a complete lost cause.
He is shit at actually keeping the boundaries he thinks he wants at work. Are you really surprised to find her “ruthless”, or did you just want to use a non sequitur to say “my wife” really loud in the kitchen again? ‘Nothing will change!’, ‘I can’t call you Elsie at work!!11!’ - yeah right, Charles.
(I also wonder if maybe this is why she’s not fighting him on what an ass he’s being to everyone lately? It’s hard to tell because it doesn’t feel like it’s been consistent. But in this ep, he lets her overrule him on a lot of it. So are his over-the-top protests about standards just the noise he makes as he settles into letting himself be happy? And she knows full well that a lifetime in service leaves deep scars and this is just about temporary coping mechanisms until he catches up with her and realises they should through a few last splendid shindigs and then retire and be happy?)
I’m intrigued by what we’re learning about Elsie Hughes in marriage.
It makes sense to me for her, tbh. Much as I’d love to have seen her unleash feminist wrath on her husband for being an idiot, that’s evidently something that it’s not in her to do. She’s very good at maneuvering him, but she won’t gainsay him. At home or at work (over Thomas).
The little exchange with Daisy was interesting too. Downton is a very secular show for the times in which it’s set - which I think’s always been a very good choice for a modern audience - but I’ve wondered before where religion sits in the life of sensible and practical, but Scottish, Victorian, and working-class Elsie Hughes.
Must we now always end on a question mark, Tumblr?
"She is quiet. She is, he reflects, a woman of many silences. Warm silences, disapproving silences. Hurt silences, and teasing ones. The politic, the reverend, and the utterly bewildering silences have become as much a part of the soundscape of his life as the jingling of her keys, and she keeps them as ready for use as the scissors or the needle case chained at her waist. For cutting or repairing. This though, is a contented silence. It is his favourite of the silences they share, and on any other day – how strange to remember that there have been other days and there will be more – he would hold it sacred. But they have been silent for too long and he is hungry for her."
