Rumors have reached my eager ears that, at this very moment, Julian Fellowes is scribbling a screenplay for a Downton Abbey reunion movie. Put that quill down, Julian! We have already penned the definitive sequel, taking place 10 years after the last episode—and oh, what a decade it has been!
When we last saw the Crawleys and their loyal retainers, they were wallowing in nuptial bliss and sacred childbirth and prodigal returns. But that was 1925, when Wall Street—or, in this case, Canary Wharf—was still gushing money; when flappers were flapping; when the great houses, though beginning to teeter financially, were at least kind of great.
So what have the denizens of Downtown been up to since the market crashed and the old order was vanquished by a devastating economic depression?
Cora Crawley, Countess of Grantham, has dumped the Earl, sick of his patronizing, paternalistic ways, especially since his hauteur was almost completely funded by her money. Cora has run off to London with that weedy art historian from season five and is feathering their Cadogan Square nest with a big hunk of cash provided by mom Shirley MacLaine, who, no dumb bunny, pulled her substantial holdings out of the market on October 23, 1929, and stuffed it in her sock drawer. But she isn’t the only one who squirreled away a pile.
Mr. Carson and Mrs. Hughes, realizing that real estate is the way to make real money, have joined Mrs. Patmore and bought up a bunch of abandoned cottages, even renting one to—you’d never guess—the master himself: After creditors repossessed Downton, Robert is currently enjoying a second bachelorhood with his new dog, Al Qaeda.
After a shaky start, Mr. and Mrs. Bates have managed to produce 10 children. Despite this fecundity, Anna is dedicating her life to the struggle for legal birth control—that visit to the local pharmacy to procure a diaphragm for Lady Mary apparently scarred her for life. Bates, whose only real skill is shoe polishing (remember how he was always seen buffing a boot?), is now a stay-at-home dad making bubble and squeak and toad in the hole for his hungry brood.
Lady Edith, aka the Marchioness of Hexham, still presides over her vast estate, though she has been forced to turn its 980 chambers into a vast rooming house, which barely covers expenses. Her illegitimate daughter, Marigold, now 15, has changed her name to Marxigold and spends most of her time in the attic poring over volume one of Das Kapital and haranguing the tenants with the tenets of historical materialism.
But if Marx is a commitment commie, not so Sybbie, who is nonstop dreaming of her debutante year and spends most of her time sitting at the feet of her great-grandma, now 107 years old, listening to tales of romance in czarist Russia.
This causes no end of despair for her father, Tom Branson, the former Irish revolutionary who has made a great success of that garage he started with Mary’s husband, the retired race-car driver Henry Talbot. Branson has in fact thrown out Talbot, since that charming fellow is a real dud at business, and married Daisy, the little cook who, in addition to whipping up a mean soufflé, is a genius with numbers.
But it turns out that no one can squeeze a dollar like Lady Mary. After dumping Henry, the once-widowed, once-divorced committed serial monogamist supports Master George and herself by running a vast network of auction houses, Mary’s Aeries, dedicated to selling off the trappings of her erstwhile neighbors—Mappin Webb tea services! Asprey champagne flutes! Harrods tea hampers!—for 10 pence on the pound.
