The Edwardians in Popular Memory

In Downton Abbey’s Christmas special for 2014, the Dowager Countess, Violet, is reliving her past to Isobel Crawley and, for once departing from her usual very proper persona, is remembering the passionate affair she had with a Russian prince as a younger woman:

“At the royal wedding we fell madly in love. And after weeks of balls and midnight skating to the stains of the balalaika … we resolved to elope … to set sail on the Prince’s yacht…” [Isobel] “And you’ve never strayed again?” [Violet] “I’ve never risked everything again.” [Isobel] “That’s not quite what I asked.” [Violet] “And it’s all the answer you’ll get. Remember, we were the Edwardians.” (Downton, Christmas 2014, emphasis Violet’s)

No more details are given, but as Violet smiles suggestively and smugly, the implication of her enigmatic response is clear. Her generation may have looked like the respectable, buttoned up successors to the Victorians, and were always discreet about their wrongdoings, but they knew how to have a good time. The upper-class life Violet describes here is one where intrigue and adultery are set against a backdrop of luxury and parties. There are strict social rules, but there is also indulgence and the beginnings of modern sensibilities about sexuality. This seems to sum up our contemporary view of the Edwardian period: as a transitional time when Victorian repression was beginning to give way to modern permissiveness, and where life was very pleasant — if only for a select few, like the characters in Downton. But those few are those whose lives we know most about, and who we choose to remember.