Refreshing the memories of Downton fans, Lord Grantham is Robert Crawley, the titular head of a bit of a sprawling family that occupies the big house in Hampshire at the turn of the 20th-century. In English peerage, you have a titled name, and a real name apparently. The English love names. And hyphens, if you can get one in there.
Robert's mother is Dame Lady Violet Crawley, Dowager Countess of Grantham, played of course by Maggie Smith. Lady Violet is so old she was at Queen Victoria's Silver Jubilee. She is the eminence gris behind her son Robert.
One thing I find so quaint about these Britishers is that their name always tells you where they're from. It's almost as if they are a hotel key, that if found lost, wandering amongst the sheep, just ask their name and they will be able to be returned to the library at the big house. No postage needed.
Robert's wife is Cora Crawley, an American played by Elizabeth McGovern. Apparently, at the turn of the 20th-century American heiresses were marrying English lords. Love might have been part of it, but a merger of their inheritance from their American fortune in say, coal or beer, with the dwindling fortunes of the manor house, was seen as a way for the Lordships to keep the west wing open and heated with firewood. Also, to repair the roof. The roofs in these places always needed repairing.
Contrast whatever you enjoyed about Downton Abbey with the real occupant of Highclere Castle and you'd have a splendidly different tale on your hands.
Browsing through 'The Daily Telegraph Book of Obituaries, A Celebration of Eccentric Lives,' edited by Hugh Massingbred, I came across the 1987 obituary by Mr. Massingbred for the 6th Earl of Carnarvon.
His death of course greatly predates the Downton series. Highclere Castle is still in the family, with it now passing to the 8th Earl of Carnarvon. But it's the 6th Earl that seems to have had the most fun.
British tribute obituaries are delightfully full of eccentric lives. It seems the higher up in peerage these people are, the more their behavior steps outside what might be the considered norm.
The 6th Earl, whose name is really a showstopper, Henry George Alfred Marius Victor Herbert, had the usual aristocratic start in life. He was educated at Eton and commissioned into the 7th Queen's Own Hussars in World War I, a cavalry regiment.
Any of these people were always officers who looked splendid in their uniforms, and were always attached to some legendary regiment that fought with valor against Zulus, or Pakistanis, or anywhere the sun didn't set on the British.Empire.
If you remember an early episode with Lord Grantham, World War I is breaking out and Robert pulls the uniform out he wore during the Boer War. He thinks they're going to need him. Robert is distinguished looking with his belt and cross-shoulder sash, and looks ever-ready to invade Holland, but it turns out he's too old for the war effort to be on active duty. Dash it all.
Robert is reduced to marching around his home in uniform when Highclere is turned into a rehab center in World War I for recuperating wounded personnel, who can be seen getting better while playing ping-pong. Robert certainly feels he's missing the action. Ping-pong. The world has gone soft.
"Porchy" the 6th Earl's nickname, became the 6th Earl when his father, naturally the 5th Earl, died from an infected mosquito bite while excavating King Tutankhamen's tomb in Egypt. (When I'm really silly, I always see the king's name as if he were a wrestler: Two Tank Hamen.) Anyone who knows anything about Agatha Christie knows that her husband was an archaeologist who spent a good deal of time at Egyptian sites.
The blood poisoning death from the mosquito bite naturally gave rise to the curse of death if you pried into Egyptian tombs. But this is what the peerage did. They explored.
Mr. Massingbred uses a string of 8 adjectives to describe the Earl, none of which would lead you to believe the guy ever had to show up at a 9-5 job and had a boss who would get mad if they were late. Soldier, sportsman, gentleman-rider, bloodstock breeder, landowner, clubman, bon vivant, and an "uncompromisingly direct ladies' man."
Best amongst the Earl's adjectives is his recounting on talk shows of the women he chased, and the husbands of the women who chased him through garden hedge mazes, trying to extract revenge for his conquering their wives. The guy sounds like Warren Beatty, or whomever Carly Simon sings about in 'You're So Vain.'
Mr. Massingbred describes this part of the Earl's life as his being "a direct ladies' man." How quaint. We would just say the guy was a major league skirt chaser, womanizer, or perhaps inelegantly, a whoremaster.
The lyric in 'You're So Vain' that refers to "...went to Saratoga and your horse naturally won..." could easily refer to the Earl since he bred and raced thoroughbreds, and won several prestigious races.
So imagine Downton Abbey with Robert running through the shrubs and going to the stables to check on the champions and what pedigreed offspring they are producing. Because when you're an Earl, you breed humans and horses.
The 6th Earl's first wife was an American, Catherine Wendell from New York who was not an heiress, but rather from a widowed mother who immigrated to England in hopes of getting her daughters "up-market pairings" to titled gentry. The matchmaking mother succeeded, getting her two daughters hooked up with titles.
Porchy and Catherine were divorced in 1936, with the Earl taking a Viennese dancer and singer, Tilly Losch as his wife, a disaster marriage that was dissolved in 1947.
The Earl was such a well-known rake with an international set of friends that Mr. Massingbred tells us that when the Earl stayed at the Ritz his preference was not necessarily a room overlooking Royal Green Park, but rather an arrangement that overlooked the rent. Porchy was comped.
The Earl did need his World War I uniform when he served in World War II, rejoining his old regiment and somehow attaining a Bronze Star from the United States Army.
Porchy held court at several gentlemen's clubs in London and played bridge at the Portland Club. He was known as a "raconteur" who apparently told the filthiest stories. Imagine Robert Crawly smoking, playing cards and telling the boys at the table of who he recently banged—and how. Would the ratings be even better?
It is probably just as well that Julian Fellowes gave us the Grantham family significantly different from the Earl's. There are more children, therefore more of their lovers, husbands and friends to build story lines around.
The 6th Earl retired to a nursing home and passed away at 89. His son, the 7th Earl of Carnarvon, Lord Porchester, became a racing manager for the Queen. The 8th Earl currently runs the place, is considered an "arable farmer," and has made Highclere available for filming Downton Abbey and public tours for fans.
For Queen and Country.
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