Hairpin Costume Drama Club: Sleeping With Kings and Kind of Liking It

by Danielle Roderick

The Hairpin Costume Drama Club welcomes you to our very first talk-about. We started off with the classic Duchess of Duke Street, one of the best Masterpiece Theatre products ever (first rule of Costume Drama Club: Be as bold as Louisa Trotter’s king-seducing quail pie), and now here we are, all cried out and informed about 1900 to 1925, how devastating World War I was, and how insane the Brits were about where you come from and who your parents are.

I don’t want to start a shit storm, but I heartily believe Duchess of Duke Street trumps Downton Abbey. There is more moment-for-moment sadness, class tension, and humanity in Duchess than in Downton. Every character in Duchess is round, nobody gets a simple ending, and just when you have written it off, along comes an episode that ties you up in knots. The show is very good at knotmaking, and pretty much breaks a lady down while she’s watching it.

I cried less this second time through, mostly because I skipped the disc where (spoiler!) Charlie dies, because it was checked out of my local video store (my heart was warmed by the possibility that some other Costume Drama Club member was watching it, and sobbing in my stead). I cried at the happy bits (Louisa singing in that final scene), I cried at Ethel lamenting her widowhood, I cried like nobody’s business when Louisa’s mother says “I never understood you, but I understand Lottie.” I cried whenever Charlie and Louisa looked at each other post-tryst, and I cried forever when Louisa puts that last bottle of champagne upside down in the bucket at the end of season one.

But enough about my tears, let’s talk about yours (did you cry? If at least half of us cried, we’ll be okay. Costume Drama Club depends on it!).

Some questions to start us off:

1. Do you think anybody gets out of this thing with a happy ending? Even the Major admits his marriage is kind of a dud.

2. Will you now recognize Gemma Jones forever and ever in all kinds of movies?

3. Mary and Starr…it just doesn’t seem right, or does it?

4. Isn’t it amazing that we don’t end up hating the spoiled rich boy who doesn’t know what to do with his money, and who sneaks into servants bedrooms on their first day at work?

5. Is Louisa the only woman in the series that has her shit together? As far as partners go, she’s the only woman who’s sexual and smart and really good at putting a house in order. No other Lady or maid is shown to be a package anywhere close. Louisa, the Grand Dame of Single Ladies, arrives as the domestic goddess of her time. She seems to be the only capable woman in a world where women are children, tarts, or bitter shrews.

6. Did you notice Poldark star, and favorite actress name ever, Angharad Rees as the young wife that sleeps with the con man? And in real life, she was married to Christopher Cazenove, our Charlie.

7. Moms get a really rough ride in Duchess, and I believed every second of it. Does it break your heart like it did mine? Like every time Louisa’s mother came on screen, did you clench your teeth?

8. Speaking of mothers, can you believe that we get to see such a complex and unsimpering portrait of a woman who leaves her child and feels no guilt about it? About a woman who constantly says she has no idea how to love her daughter or be a mother?

9. Costume dramas love independent women who go against convention, but Louisa is certainly not the sweet version (say we have a spectrum of costume gal, ranging from the eternal sunshine of Anne of Green Gables to the wicked wicked ways of Vanity Fair’s Becky Sharp?). Louisa is often selfish and mean. My take is that her foibles come down to humility — if anybody shows her their weakness, she can lavish kindness on them. Or is it all more prickly than that?

10. What’s your favorite version of maid’s hat as they changed over the decades?

11. Did you laugh a little bit (through your tears) when Louisa reads Charlie’s last letter and he said she was always “keeping [her] pecker up through it all?”

12. Lottie. Thoughts?

13. In the last episode, Louisa says she hates American ladies, and especially American lady writers, but you don’t really think Louisa would hate any of us, right? Louisa would totally be a Hairpinner. “Clothes are important!” she would remind us, and then, she would tell us to stop crying at damn DVD rentals! “Put it in a frame!” she would say. Dammit, Louisa, no. We’ve got to put it in the comments!

For our next installment, what say you to Elizabeth Gaskell’s Wives and Daughters? The sleeves alone should convince you. It’s on Netflix instant, and is full of a bunch of odd bits. Plus, it’s about a thousand years shorter than the marathon we all so heroically just succumbed to. We have to save up our strength for the holidays (don’t worry, we’ll have something delicious for your winter break!). See you in a month?

** If you need just a bit more Louisa Trotter in your life (besides your own routine of champagne and taking up with English nobles), she was a real lady in history, and there are books out there themed around this miniseries (that is, if you’re like me and trawl the internet for cookbooks from the ’70s with Gemma Jones’ face on them … really, maybe the perfect holiday present?).

Danielle Roderick will dress up if you will, and writes as Carla Fran at Millicent and Carla Fran.