Half the Story Hidden—Chapter 3 Part a. – The Follies of Youth.
Author Note: Please note the following edit I made to a segment of the Dowager's letter in the last chapter section. Some poor sentence structuring, along with the names of some characters that we have not actually met but who figure in the new Crawley/Carson family tree, perhaps led to some misinterpretation.
"Know also that the final secrets I am to reveal herein are, to the best of my knowledge, not known by anyone else now living. Mrs Elizabeth Carson, her sister, and my own sister remained the very souls of discretion about their parts in this sorry saga, as did Mr Frank Carson, Peters, dear Joubert and of course, your own dear Papa."
I hope that is a little clearer.
Thanks,
BTF.
oOOo
Date: (Continued)
Early August 1927. The day after the Dowager Countess' funeral and the Carson's rather momentous afternoon beside the Stable-hands Stream.
Occasion:
Mid-Morning teatime and luncheon in Jackdaw's Castle, the rectangular, Corinthian pillared garden folly that looks back over the sweeping lawns towards Downton Abbey.
Attendees:
Mr and Mrs Carson, Lord and Lady Grantham, and Lady Rosamund Painswick.
oOOo
The Dowager's letter continues:
And now to you, Charles, my dear boy,
I can only imagine how heavily you have been hit by the nature of my revelations so late in your long life— much more so than anyone else at the table with you now (or at least so far). Please know that it has never been my intention to hurt you, nor Robert and Rosamund, in making this heavy secret known to you now. Please try to believe me on that front, for it is the truth that I have never wished any sort of harm to come to you, my dearest boy.
Rosamund blinks her glassy eyes a couple of times to clear them before she can continue. She really did care for me, too, then. She actively reminds herself, for she has ever been disquietingly unsure of where she really stood with her Mama.
Carson, you cannot know how proud I am of the man you have grown into. It was nigh on impossible for me to love you openly and freely as any mother should love her firstborn son, but please know that I have longed to do so. I well know all of the things you might have become had Lord Hepworth done the honourable thing by me and married me. You would have made a fine and fair and good Earl; there can be no doubt of it. And this is likely the case despite the profligate and dissipated tendencies of 4th Earl of Hepworth. For Carson, I truly believe it is within your very nature to be kind and openhearted and giving of yourself. Frank and Elizabeth Carson saw it from the very first moment they held you in their arms, and they nurtured that proclivity in you as if it was the very finest thing they could ever hope for in a boy of their own– and, indeed, it most surely is that.
In her careful diction, Rosamund somehow manages to convey the intimate address of their Mama to Charles, despite the Dowager still referring to Charles by his long-held professional name. It is somehow now almost a motherly pet name for him and one that all of the Crawleys present may take on in a more familial manner from now on. In addition, to call Charles 'Carson' further respects the life that he did end up leading and the Carson family who did love him in the first instance.
Charles Ernest Carson. You are a fine man, and all of Hatton Park and Goldsborough Hall and the Hepworth fortune would likely still be intact today if it could have all fallen to you in some other life. Although the grim truth be told, far too much of the Hepworth fortune continued to be made on the backs of slaves and via immoral trade deals in Barbados long after the passing of the Slave Trade Acts in the colonies. All of this is something that I do not think you ever would have countenanced. The 5th Earl of Grantham, as you know, helped fight for the abolition of slavery, and Patrick himself also sought to ensure our business dealings in the subcontinent and the West Indies and were not supported by the worst of the trade in coolies*. As you know, he always voted for the eventual cessation of the trade and for their emancipation. So, despite my own family's strange role in the insurgencies in Lucknow, the Crawleys have always tried to maintain fair business dealings with the natives* on the sub-continent. And Carson, I did see how Lord Shaftesbury impressed you so—with his works for all labouring men and poor children— back in the late 70s and early 80s when Patrick and I travelled to London or saw him in his country seat. And so, I flatter myself to think that you might have turned the Hepworth fortune to the greater good in England and abroad in the longer term. But, life as a Hepworth was never to be a reality for any of us. And yet, I find I can feel no lasting regrets about that fact, for the fine estate of Downton, has likewise benefited from your kind and generous nature, Carson, and I only regret that it had to be attended to secretly and in a very different manner from that which should have been your birthright and which you most truly deserved.
Charles Carson, my great and lasting regret in this life is that I could never openly let you know how very much I have loved you. Yet, please believe me when I say that I have tried in my own way to love you in the only way that I could. It is something that my dear husband always encouraged, despite our great need for secrecy. He taught me how to love, really, for he also loved you as if you could have been his own, from the very first day, and in his own particular way, given the quite strange circumstances with which we needed to install you within the estate. Patrick always did the very best that he could for you. I never expected nor deserved it from him, given my foolish, youthful indiscretion, but he still gladly took it all on as he could never bear to think of you being abandoned to the care, or otherwise, of complete strangers. Patrick was instrumental to your survival, and I do hope that in time you will see that he tried to provide you with every happiness in life that he was able to offer you by finding such fine and loving parents for you in Frank and Elizabeth Carson, and then by seeing to your later schooling in Ripon and, of course taking you into his and Peter's tutelage within the house. Well do I know it was, and still is, grossly imperfect, but I pray that you can eventually see and accept it as the very best that we could do for you at the time.
In fact, you will all soon find out that Patrick did so very much more than you could have imagined for all three of my lovely children and for others well beyond our little family. Do try to move beyond your grief and hurt about all that has been or might have been for you, and, instead, use all that the 6th Earl has provided you with for the benefit of your own loved ones in the here and now. I know that a man of honour and integrity such as yourself, Charles Carson, will endeavour to always do as much.
Dearest Charles, please, forgive me that this is all I have been able to give to you when you have always deserved so very much more. I sincerely hope you do not feel too abused by what life has dealt out to you because of my secrets. And still, it is my sincerest wish that you will find some new way to continue to support and care for your newly discovered siblings, just as you always have done so within the house across your lifetime. Charles Ernest Carson, in your precise, devoted and most inimitable fashion, you have somehow always been the very best older brother to Robert and Rosamund that I ever could have hoped for, not to mention a most beloved and supportive Uncle to Mary, Edith and Sybil. May they all now offer you just as much love and respect in return.
Dearest Charles, my son, please remember me with at least some little fondness.
Ever your loving Mama,
L.V.C.
oOOo
Somewhat overwhelmed, Charles has risen from the table and moved to the edge of the folly to snuffle quietly into his handkerchief with his back turned to the table. Elsie moves to his side and is rubbing small circles onto his lower back through his suit coat. Robert, Rosamund and Cora all turn their gaze away from this most intimate and private moment between the man and woman they have only ever known as their servants until this last day. Rosamund and Cora both dab discreetly at their eyes on more than one occasion. Robert fidgets awkwardly with his own napkin between his fingers as he looks intently into his lap, totally unable to meet Rosamund's or Cora's eyes as he tries to fully fathom the place in his mother's life that he inadvertently usurped from the man struggling for composure at the edges of this shared folly. In time, Charles composes himself and looks down with loving glassy eyes at his wife, and then bends slightly to the side to acknowledge and pet their new pup who had silently sidled up next to him and leant the still and sure weight of her shoulder as a comfort against his leg. The pup smiles goofily up at him, and he cannot help but smile back at her liveliness.
"Ready, Charles?" Elsie asks quietly.
"Once more unto the breach, dear friends…"** he trails of wryly.
oOOo
A/N
*I think it is reasonable to assume that in this mid-war era, a full 10 years after the official ending of the trade (1916), the Dowager Countess would have still referred to the Asian underclass workers of the then British colonies by terms such as 'coolies' and 'natives'. My own mother-in-law (with connections via marriage to French Mauritian minor level aristocracy) still mentioned terminology like this prior to her death not so long ago. Even in the post WW2 era of the 20th century, many people did not understand such a term as the slur that it is to the peoples caught up in the trade of low-priced labour that sought to mitigate the loss of African slave labour after the Slave Trade Act of 1807 and the Abolition of Slavery Act of 1833. Different people from different times used language in ways that we may not agree with now.
I have also tried to intimate in the Dowager's expressions about the Crawley fortunes the idea that the movement from trade based on slave labour to the development of free trade labour in the British colonies in the Victorian era was a complex and convoluted affair. It cannot be assumed that it was so very easy to extricate a family's business dealings away from the economic circumstances, and the social and moral mores of their times. There are many interesting historical articles and books that can be read regarding this issue. Here is one academic paper that touches on some of the complexities involved: Emancipation to Indenture: A Question of Imperial Morality Author(s): William A. Green Source: Journal of British Studies, Spring, 1983, Vol. 22, No. 2 (Spring, 1983), pp. 98- 121. However, it may only be available in full and for free via a University based library system and account.
I cannot feasibly paint the Crawleys as being 'all good and morally upright' about their connections to British Colonial power, but Downton Abbey is romantic fiction and our favourite characters do need to be seen to be aspiring to some level of moral goodness in their various dealings.
** Henry V, Act-III, Scene-I, Lines 1
oOOo
Now, I should really be marking essays about educational legislation!
Kind regards,
RM