More Downtoniana (for Those not Tired of Plum Pudding)

More Downtoniana for those not yet cloyed by plum pudding: Heidi Schlumpf has a great piece at National Catholic Reporter right now summarizing the appeal of "Downton Abbey" to many viewers, herself included.  I learn from this educational piece that there's a YouTube video on s--t that the Dowager Countess Lady Violet Crawley says--which I freely confess I'll be heading to visit immediately.  I love the opening line of Lady Violet's that struck Heidi Schlumpf, too: "Don't be defeatist, dear; it's so middle-class."

The discussion following Schlumpf's piece is equally instructive.  I'm fascinated by an observation of an anonymous reader that had struck me, too, as I watched the series this season: this is that the Earl and Countess of Downton sleep in the same bed and same bedroom--which has decidedly not been the norm among the English upper classes.  If nothing else, this arrangement rather cramps the style of either spouse when he/she has an inamorato/inamorata on the side.

I had remarked to Steve about this unrealistic detail of the series from the time we first noticed the sleeping arrangements.  My grandparents were not English (except by blood, for the most part--and they were Scottish, Irish, and Welsh by blood otherwise) and by no means aristocratic, either, but not even they slept in the same bedrooms and same bed--so the sleeping arrangement struck me as a retrojection of a modern (and decidedly non-upper crusty) practice into the plot line the first time I saw it.

Maybe as an American, Countess Cora Crawley has introduced a new-fangled and democratic sleeping arrangement into the practices of stodgy old Downton?

I also find a comment of another anonymous reader responding to Schlumpf's article amusing.  Schlumpf notes (as Chris Morley had done in a comment here yesterday) that the series creator Julian Fellowes is Catholic and will introduce some Catholic themes into the show next season.

Anonymous writes in response, 

Oh no, do we HAVE to bring Catholics into this wonderful series? I have enough of them (formerly me) in the news. Leave a good thing alone please.

And given what we Catholics have made of ourselves in recent years, I'm inclined to agree.  When I watch escapist television to enjoy some guilty plum-pudding pleasure that takes me out of the present (and out of grim reality), I tend to watch precisely to escape from the present.  And to nibble my escapist plum pudding in peace, free from the cares and worries of the day.

Of which Catholicism has most definitely become one.