Toad of Toad Hall, Edith of Downton Abbey & the WINDng Allusions of Julian FeLLOWes

My last two posts have demonstrated, beyond a reasonable doubt, the pervasive and thematically significant allusive presence of A.A. Milne’s The Red House Mystery in the shadows of the storyline of Julian Fellowes’s Downton Abbey. As a bonus, this post will demonstrate the additional presence, in those increasingly crowded shadows, of one of Milne’s literary icons, Kenneth Grahame.

In late 2011, BBC News ran the following story:

“Julian Fellowes is to write a new musical adaptation of Kenneth Grahame's novel The Wind in the Willows. …Fellowes said: "The Wind in the Willows is one of our greatest classics and as true and entertaining now as it has ever been….I am delighted and tremendously flattered to have been asked to write the book [narrative] for the new musical.  In fact, I suspect this is something I've been wanting to do subconsciously for many years.…The book itself is packed with music and songs so I can't wait to find the sounds to score Ratty, Mole, Badger, Toad and their adventures."

That announcement coincided with the airing in the UK of Season Two of Downton Abbey, as to which Wikipedia alerts us to the following:

“In Season 2, Episode 2 of Downton Abbey, the Dowager Countess says to Lady Edith Crawley, "Edith! You're a lady, not Toad of Toad Hall!," after Lady Edith announces at dinner that she has volunteered to operate a tractor at a nearby farm because the men who normally operate it are away fighting in World War I.”

As I will now quickly outline, this was no coincidence!

Countess Violet Crawley seems to be alluding to Toad of Toad Hall, AA Milne’s famous adaptation of Grahame’s classic:

Wikipedia: “Toad of Toad Hall is the first of several dramatisations of Kenneth Grahame's 1908 novel The Wind in the Willows. The Wind in the Willows tells the story of Mole, Ratty and Badger and their adventures in the beautiful, rural landscape of Edwardian England, with much of the action focusing on the comic antics of aristocratic wastrel Mr Toad….Toad of Toad Hall was written by A. A. Milne [in 1921, but not staged until 1929], with incidental music by Harold Fraser-Simson.

Milne extracted the adventures of Mr. Toad (which form only about half of the original book) because they lent themselves most easily to being staged. Milne loved Grahame's book, which is one of the reasons he decided to adapt it. The play has four main characters: Rat, Badger, Mole, and Toad. Toad's caravan and car adventures are included, as well as his imprisonment, escape, and subsequent fight with the weasels and stoats to regain his home with the help of his friends. Although not a musical, the play contains six songs.”

However, I was deeply puzzled by Fellowes’s allusion, because it would mean that he had been guilty of anachronism. I.e. , how could the Dowager Countess, speaking in 1916, be referring to Milne’s dramatization, as if Edith should know what she was talking about, if Milne would not even be writing his adaptation of Grahame till 1921 and it would not be performed publicly until 1929?

That sort of sloppiness would be utterly inconsistent with the extraordinary meticulousness of historical detail that Downton Abbey prides itself on, as is amply demonstrated in “The Manners of Downton Abbey”, the documentary aired 6 weeks ago on PBS, which gave us all an in depth  behind the scenes look at the crucial role of social historian Alastair Bruce in making sure every single onscreen detail was historically accurate.

Then it occurred to me, somehow the Dowager Countess must have been referring, not to Milne’s adaptation, but all the way back to Grahame’s original story! And sure enough, when I searched for the phrase “Toad of Toad Hall” within Grahame’s 1908 text, I was led unerringly to the following smoking gun, a bit of dialog spoken by Mr. Toad himself:

'Yes, yes, that's all right; thank you very much indeed,' said the Toad hurriedly. 'But look here! you wouldn't surely have Mr. TOAD, OF TOAD HALL, going about the country disguised as a washerwoman!'

Bingo!!!! It turns out that there is no anachronism at all. Fellowes, who at that very moment was engaging himself to adapt Grahame’s original work, was spinning off a sly bit of midrash on it in Downton Abbey.I.e., Violet Crawley—who, it seems to me, is Fellowes’s alter ego for expression of his elegantly satirical sense of humor--- was merely demonstrating her  quick wit and accurate literary knowledge, by suggesting that Edith taking on the role of a tractor operator would be as much of a fish (or toad) out of water as Mr. Toad disguised as a washerwoman!

When I reviewed the entire chapter in Grahame’s text surrounding Mr. Toad’s haughty ejaculation, the reason for his disguise as a washerwoman became immediately clear—he was in prison, and it was the daughter of a washer woman who proposed the following daring escape plan to him:

“One morning the girl was very thoughtful, and answered at random, and did not seem to Toad to be paying proper attention to his witty sayings and sparkling comments.

'Toad,' she said presently, 'just listen, please. I have an aunt who is a washerwoman.'

'There, there,' said Toad, graciously and affably, 'never mind; think no more about it. I have several aunts who ought to be washerwomen.'

'Do be quiet a minute, Toad,' said the girl. 'You talk too much, that's your chief fault, and I'm trying to think, and you hurt my head. As I said, I have an aunt who is a washerwoman; she does the washing for all the prisoners in this castle—we try to keep any paying business of that sort in the family, you understand. She takes out the washing on Monday morning, and brings it in on Friday evening. This is a Thursday. Now, this is what occurs to me: you're very rich—at least you're always telling me so—and she's very poor. A few pounds wouldn't make any difference to you, and it would mean a lot to her. Now, I think if she were properly approached— squared, I believe is the word you animals use —you could come to some arrangement by which she would let you have her dress and bonnet and so on, and you could escape from the castle as the official washerwoman. You're very alike in many respects—particularly about the figure.'

'We're not,' said the Toad in a huff. 'I have a very elegant figure—for what I am.'

'So has my aunt,' replied the girl, 'for what she is. But have it your own way. You horrid, proud, ungrateful animal, when I'm sorry for you, and trying to help you!'

'Yes, yes, that's all right; thank you very much indeed,' said the Toad hurriedly. 'But look here! you wouldn't surely have MR. TOAD, OF TOAD HALL, going about the country disguised as a washerwoman!'

'Then you can stop here as a Toad,' replied the girl with much spirit. 'I suppose you want to go off in a coach-and-four!'

Honest Toad was always ready to admit himself in the wrong. 'You are a good, kind, clever girl,' he said, 'and I am indeed a proud and a stupid toad. Introduce me to your worthy aunt, if you will be so kind, and I have no doubt that the excellent lady and I will be able to arrange terms satisfactory to both parties.'  END QUOTE FROM WIND IN THE WILLOWS

And, as with the sophisticated complex allusion to Iago hidden in plain sight in Downton Abbey,  this turns out to be an equally subtle and apt allusion---it has been shown since the beginning of the series that Edith repeatedly experiences her life as a privileged heiress at Downton Abbey, and more generally as a woman living in sexist Edwardian England, as a metaphorical prison from which she would wish to escape.

And this theme is still being played out in Season 5, more saliently than ever, as Edith’s “crime” against the societal norm prohibiting sex outside marriage is on the verge of being revealed, with some sort of “punishment” imposed on her!

So, to those who think that Downton Abbey is a mere frothy confection designed to appeal to as wide an audience as possible by playing up its own soap opera aspects, think again—Julian Fellowes is once again having his commercial cake and eating his literary cake too!

Cheers, ARNIE

@JaneAustenCode on Twitter

P.S.: I do not have the DVD of Season 2 of Downton Abbey that includes commentary, so if anyone does, I would be grateful if you’d listen to that scene, and see if Fellowes or any other commentator happens to refer to the above-discussed scene as being derived from the prison escape scene in Grahame’s novel.

Thomas Barrow of Downton Abbey & Matthew Cayley of The Red House Mystery: Twin Iagos in Tormented Sexuality as well as Chicanery

 In my previous post….

http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2015/02/thomas-barrow-as-iago-of-downton-abbey.html

….I demonstrated Julian Fellowes’s multilayered veiled Shakespeare-drenched allusion to A.A. Milne’s renowned 1922 detective story The Red House Mystery, an allusion that Fellowes hid in plain sight in Downton Abbey, and I concluded as follows:

“And here’s the final takeaway of all of the above. It’s not just an esoteric literary game to be played only by literary sleuths like myself. I remain confident that Fellowes has been playing fair with this veiled allusion to Milne and Shakespeare, and that, sooner or later, in Season 6 if not later in Season 5…….Julian Fellowes is going to spring his own carefully laid five-year trap on the viewers of Downton Abbey, and show us how Thomas Barrow, his Iago, somehow, some way, carefully planned and instigated the murder of Green, and then worked, meticulously, tirelessly, and creatively, to frame Bates for that murder!”

In an Introduction to The Red House Mystery written by Milne after his unexpected commercial success (23 editions over one decade) in the detective story genre, he outlined a few basic rules that every proper detective story should follow, and included therein the deliberate omission of any romantic storyline that might distract from the pure readerly pleasure of solving a murder mystery. I have delved further into Milne’s classic detective story, and, as I will now show you, I am convinced that Milne was being deliberately misleading in promulgating that no-romance rule; and that, behind the screen of an ordinary whodunit, Milne actually painted a very subtle portrait of a villain tormented by homosexual self-loathing and anger which ultimately drives him to murder.

I have long been of the minority scholarly school of thought that sees Iago as being a closeted gay man whose anger toward Othello is (ironically) motivated by jealousy of Othello himself.  Therefore, what I see Iago and Milne’s Matthew Crayley sharing implicitly with Fellowes’s Thomas Barrow is that they are all three of them tormented, angry closeted gay men. Which tells me that Julian Fellowes must have recognized this subtext in both Shakespeare’s Iago and Milne’s Matthew, and brilliantly made it explicit in his 21^st century series which has as its most compelling subplot the complex character of Thomas Barrow.

The best way for you to test the validity of my above claim is for you to read the entire text of The Red House Mystery, which you will find here:

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1872/1872-h/1872-h.htm

I urge you to do so, it’s not a long read, and Milne’s writing style is a pleasure to read—it’s clear to me that his well known lifelong love of Jane Austen’s novels, particularly Pride & Prejudice (which he adapted for the stage in the mid 1930’s, although his adaptation was overshadowed by the much more popular, but much less faithful, adaptation of P&P by Helen Jerome) was very beneficial to the development of his own writing style.

And, even more relevant than that, I believe Milne must have absorbed, on some level, Jane Austen’s shadow story expertise, because I see evidence of this all over the place in the way he hid the painful details of the love/hate relationship between Mark and Matthew in plain sight in his detective novel which left for the sharp elves the task of detecting the hidden love story.

But for those who would not wish to read Milne’s novel on the above say-so alone, I will now  provide you with key excerpts from Matthew Cayley’s confessional letter to sleuth Anthony Gillingham, near the end of the novel text.  Gillingham, like Sherlock Holmes, has relentlessly investigated and analyzed the facts surrounding the apparent murder of black sheep brother Robert Ablett by Mark Ablett, and has concluded that the murder victim is actually Mark Ablett himself, and that the murderer is his younger cousin Matthew. Gillingham chooses to discreetly convey his knowledge of the truth privately to Matthew rather than to the police, and Matthew kills himself as a result.

These excerpts (in ALL CAPS, supplemented by my bracketed comments) make the Iago-Othello homoerotic relationship between Matthew and his cousin Mark (these names themselves a dark Biblical twist, given that the Gospel of Matthew is an expansion of the Gospel of Mark) crystal clear:

[Matthew Cayley’s letter to Anthony Gillingham]

"I must begin by taking you back to a summer day fifteen years ago, when I was a boy of thirteen and Mark a young man of twenty-five. His whole life was make-believe, and just now he was pretending to be a philanthropist. He sat in our little drawing-room, flicking his gloves against the back of his left hand, and my mother, good soul, thought what a noble young gentleman he was, and Philip and I, hastily washed and crammed into collars, stood in front of him, nudging each other and kicking the backs of our heels and cursing him in our hearts for having interrupted our game. He had decided to adopt one of us, kind Cousin Mark. HEAVEN KNOWS WHY HE CHOSE ME. Philip was eleven; two years longer to wait. PERHAPS THAT WAS WHY.

[The veiled implication is that Matthew was sexually maturing at 13, while Philip, at 11, was not]

"Well, MARK EDUCATED ME. I went to a public school and to Cambridge, and I became his secretary. WELL, MUCH MORE THAN HIS SECRETARY as your friend Beverley perhaps has told you: HIS LAND AGENT, HIS FINANCIAL ADVISOR, HIS COURIER, HIS—but this most of all—HIS AUDIENCE.

[That hanging ‘his’ is ambiguous—was he going to say ‘audience’ or was he perhaps going to say ‘lover”?]

 Mark could never live alone. There must always be somebody to listen to him. I think in his heart he hoped I should be his Boswell. He told me one day that he had made me his literary executor—poor devil. And he used to write me THE ABSURDEST LONG LETTERS WHEN I WAS AWAY FROM HIM, letters which I read once and THEN TORE UP. The futility of the man!

[That does sound like the actions of a lovesick man, but Matthew doesn’t want to acknowledge it, so he has to destroy the letters so they won’t be a constant reminder]

"It was three years ago that Philip got into trouble. He had been hurried through a cheap grammar school and into a London office, and discovered there that there was not much fun to be got in this world on two pounds a week. I had a frantic letter from him one day, saying that he must have a hundred at once, or he would be ruined, and I went to Mark for the money. Only to borrow it, you understand; he gave me a good salary and I could have paid it back in three months. But no. He saw nothing for himself in it, I suppose; no applause, no admiration. Philip's gratitude would be to me, not to him. I begged, I threatened, we argued; and while we were arguing, Philip was arrested. It killed my mother—he was always her favourite—but Mark, as usual, got his satisfaction out of it. He preened himself on his judgment of character in having chosen me and not Philip twelve years before!

"Later on I apologized to Mark for the reckless things I had said to him, and he played the part of a magnanimous gentleman with his accustomed skill, but, though outwardly we were as before to each other, from that day forward, THOUGH HIS VANITY WOULD NEVER LET HIM SEE IT, I WAS HIS BITTEREST ENEMY. If that had been all, I wonder if I should have killed him? To live on terms of INTIMATE FRIENDSHIP WITH A MAN WHOM YOU HATE is dangerous work for your friend. Because of his belief in me as his admiring and grateful protege and his belief in himself as my benefactor, HE WAS NOW UTTERLY IN MY POWER. I could take my time and choose my opportunity. Perhaps I should not have killed him, but I had sworn to have my revenge—and there he was, poor vain fool, at my mercy. I WAS IN NO HURRY.

"Two years later I had to reconsider my position, for my revenge was being taken out of my hands. Mark began to drink. Could I have stopped him? I don't think so, but to my immense surprise I found myself trying to. Instinct, perhaps, getting the better of reason; or did I reason it out and tell myself that, if he drank himself to death, I should lose my revenge? Upon my word, I cannot tell you; but, FOR WHATEVER MOTIVE, I DID GENUINELY WANT TO STOP IT. Drinking is such A BEASTLY THING, anyhow.

"I could not stop him, but I kept him within certain bounds, so that nobody but myself knew his secret. Yes, I kept him outwardly decent; and perhaps now I was becoming like THE CANNIBAL WHO KEEPS HIS VICTIM IN GOOD CONDITION FOR HIS OWN ENDS. I used to gloat over Mark, thinking how utterly he was mine to ruin as I pleased, financially, morally, whatever way would give me most satisfaction. I had but to take my hand away from him and he sank. But again I was in no hurry.

"Then he killed himself. That futile little drunkard, eaten up with his own selfishness and vanity, OFFERED HIS BEASTLINESS TO THE TRUEST AND PUREST WOMAN ON THIS EARTH.

[The abundant animal imagery used by Iago in Othello is always associated with sexual disgust]

You have seen her, Mr. Gillingham, but you never knew Mark Ablett. Even if he had not been a drunkard, there was no chance for her of happiness with him. I had known him for many years, but never once had I seen him moved by any generous emotion. To have lived with that shrivelled little soul would have been hell for her; and a thousand times worse hell when he began to drink.

"So he had to be killed. I was the only one left to protect her, for her mother was in league with Mark to bring about her ruin. I would have shot him openly for her sake, and with what gladness, but I had no mind to sacrifice myself needlessly. HE WAS IN MY POWER; I COULD PERSUADE HIM TO ALMOST ANYTHING BY FLATTERY; surely it would not be difficult to give his death the appearance of an accident.

[Then Matthew dramatizes for Anthony the dialog with Mark in which he, Iago-like, sucks Mark into the very scheme that will enable Matthew to murder him without detection, by playing on Mark’s vanity, and by giving suggestions in a hesitant manner that make Mark feel he has concocted the entire scheme on his own. That is followed by the following end of the letter]

"Good-bye, Mr. Gillingham. I'm sorry that your stay with us was not of a pleasanter nature, but you understand the difficulties in which I was placed. Don't let Bill think too badly of me. He is a good fellow; look after him. He will be surprised. The young are always surprised. And thank you for letting me end my own way. I expect you did sympathize a little, you know. We might have been friends in another world—you and I, and I and she. Tell her what you like. Everything or nothing. You will know what is best. Good-bye, Mr. Gillingham.

"MATTHEW CAYLEY.

"I AM LONELY TONIGHT WITHOUT MARK. THAT’S FUNNY, ISN’T IT?"

[Yes, it’s “funny” in the sense of very curious, a bookend to Mark’s loneliness for Matthew that he expressed in those long “absurd” letters years before—Matthew cannot admit his feelings for Mark to Anthony Gillingham or to himself. That P.S. in Matthew’s letter is Milne’s broadest hint, but only the last in a series of subtler hints, that a significant part of Matthew’s complex tortured motivation was his own (unacknowledged) romantic/sexual love for Mark. In other words, Matthew is a tortured closeted gay man in 1922 who murders the man he loves rather than allow his beloved to marry a woman—and that goes to the heart of Fellowes’s Thomas Barrow, doesn’t it? If he cannot be happy in love, then no one must be happy in love.]

So we see that Milne picked up on that subtext in Othello, and then Fellowes in turn picked up on it in both Othello and The Red House Mystery. A brilliant literary layer cake.

And so I conclude with a prediction: if Fellowes does indeed continue to track Milne’s novel, and I believe he will, that is going to make for some very interesting twists in the final denouement of the struggle between Bates and Barrow that we all know is going to occur in Season (or should I better say, ACT) Six of Downton Abbey, the tragedy disguised as a country house soap opera!

I.e., what a great (indeed Shakespearean and Austenian) twist it will be if it turns out that our international obsession with the trials and tribulations of the Grantham family upstairs will in the end be understood to have been a sideshow, with the most significant and compelling action going on offstage, between Barrow and Bates.

Cheers, ARNIE

@JaneAustenCode on Twitter

Thomas Barrow as the Iago of Downton Abbey: his hidden fictional ancestor (and don’t you dare Pooh-Pooh it, Mr. Milne!)

For those who missed it, my quiz yesterday went as follows:

I’m thinking of a fictional story by an English male author with great name recognition, a story that has received great acclaim in the English country house upstairs/downstairs genre, and that has all of the following specific elements:

ONE: A man is murdered who has been at the country house.

TWO: The murder is committed a few years after the end of WWI.

THREE: Suspicion is cast on one or more of the main characters at the country house.

FOUR: The apparent murder victim appears to be a disruptive figure.

FIVE: A main character deeply involved in the murder mystery is named Tony Gillingham.

SIX: There is a main character who meets all four of the following criteria:

     His first name is Matthew and his last name begins with C and ends in ”ley”;

     He has an older cousin named Robert;

     He is related to the owner of the country house family estate where the action occurs; and

     He is or might be in the line of inheritance of the estate .

SEVEN: There is a main character at the country house who is extremely Iago-like in his manipulativeness and expertise at exploitation of foibles in other characters, and who expresses the anger and bitterness which motivates him, most saliently in relation to the murder mystery.     

EIGHT: Description of action in this story has been posted during the past week in the Janeites & Austen L groups.

So…..what is the title of the story?  ;)     

ANSWER(S) TO THE QUIZ

I received one answer-a correct answer--from Jane S. Fox, in the Janeites group:

“By A. A. Milne of all people but the title escapes me. Red Manor?”

Bravo, Jane! The title of the novel is The Red House Mystery. A.A. Milne (of course most famous for creating Winnie the Pooh and friends) wrote this, his one and only detective story, in 1922.  Before I run through my Quiz points, and show how they all apply to BOTH Downton Abbey AND The Red House Mystery (with massive spoilers as to the latter), I want to first acknowledge novelist and blogger Maya Corrigan, who, two weeks ago, wrote the following post:

http://www.mayacorrigan.com/smorgasblog/downton-abbey-and-winnie-the-pooh\

“Children's author A.A. Milne, creator of Winnie-the-Pooh,  also wrote a detective novel. An odd connection exists between Milne's The Red House Mystery and Downton Abbey. The bones of the classic British mystery are on display in Milne's book: the English country house setting;  a crime investigated by an amateur;  a sidekick; a locked-room puzzle; a whodunit with clues that play fair with the reader.

The book opens "below stairs" . . .The housekeeper and a parlor maid discuss the arrival of the host’s long-lost brother, the disruptive stranger amid the guests already at the house. The murder is investigated by a gentleman sleuth named Tony Gillingham.

Aha. Tony Gillingham is also the name of Mary’s suitor in Downton Abbey and the man whose rapist-valet died last season in an “accident.” Is the choice of the man's name a coincidence? I wonder.  Julian Fellowes, Downton Abbey’s creator and writer, is certainly familiar with British mysteries from the same era as Milne's. Fellowes wrote the country house mystery Gosford Park and has a screenplay for Agatha Christie’s The Crooked House in the works. Fellowes says “murder in a genteel setting” never goes stale.  Downton Abbey was originally conceived as a spin-off of Gosford Park. Though the series went in another direction, the remnants of that initial idea remain in the suspicious deaths that affect upstairs and downstairs at Downton. So will the Tony Gillingham in Downton Abbey follow in the footsteps of his namesake? Will he try to unravel the mystery surrounding his valet’s death? “ END QUOTE

It was 2 days ago that I serendipitously discovered the Downton Abbey connection to The Red House Mystery, and then Googled and found Maya Corrigan’s earlier post. My serendipity lay in Ellen Moody having posted the text of a 1950 essay by Raymond Chandler entitled “The Simple Art of Murder”. As I was reading it, without any thought of Downton Abbey, my eye was arrested halfway through Chandler’s description of Milne’s novel:  “The detective in the case is an insouciant gent named Antony Gillingham, a nice lad with a cheery eye, a cozy little flat in London, and that airy manner.”

I was instantly certain that Julian Fellowes’s suave “Tony Gillingham” MUST be derived, at least in part, from Milne’s “insouciant gent Anthony Gillingham”, and that’s when Google led me to Maya Corrigan’s blog post. That, in turn, encouraged me to do the sleuthing which quickly led me to find the multiple points of correspondence which I will now outline, as I now run through the double answers to each of my Quiz points:

ONE: A man is murdered who has been at the country house.

DT: The rapist valet Green.

RHM: Mark Alblett is shot by his cousin Matthew Cayley.

TWO: The murder is committed a few years after the end of WWI.

DT & RHM: Obvious in both.

THREE: Suspicion is cast on one or more of the main characters at the country house.

DT & RHM: Obvious in both.

FOUR: The apparent murder victim appears to be a disruptive figure.

DT: The valet Green rapes Anna while at Downton Abbey.

RHM: The victim, Mark Ablett, is murdered while in disguise as his long lost brother Robert Ablett, whom Mark has spoken of as a ne’er-do-well who went off to Australia.

FIVE: A main character deeply involved in the murder mystery is named Tony Gillingham.

DT: The murder victim Green was Tony Gillingham’s valet.

RHM: Tony Gillingham is the amateur sleuth who solves the murder mystery.

SIX: There is a main character who meets all four of the following criteria:

     His first name is Matthew and his last name begins with C and ends in ”ley”;

     He has an older cousin named Robert;

     He is related to the owner of the country house family estate where the action occurs; and

     He is or might be in the line of inheritance of the estate .

DT: Matthew Crawley is the younger cousin of Robert Crawley, Lord Grantham, patriarch of Downton Abbey, but then Matthew inherits Downton Abbey.

RHM: Matthew Cayley is the younger cousin of Mark Ablett, owner of the Red House, and they are the last survivors of the Cayley family, so Matthew would have inherited the Red House after he murdered Mark.

SEVEN: There is a main character at the country house who is extremely Iago-like in his manipulativeness and expertise at exploitation of foibles in other characters, and who expresses the anger and bitterness which motivates him, most saliently in relation to the murder mystery.     

DT: As I have been asserting for over a year…

http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2014/02/more-downtonwhodunit-abbey-ruminations.html

…I am certain that Fellowes has been consistently modeling Thomas Barrow on the character of Iago from Othello.

RHM: Like Iago, Matthew Cayley manipulates his narcissistic elder cousin Mark Ablett, after first insinuating himself into the role of indispensable Man Friday to his elder cousin, and then eggs Mark on to play a trick on others by impersonating his own (dead) brother, which trick provides Matthew with the necessary cover for what he hopes will be a foolproof murder.  I.e., Mark trusts Matthew the same way Othello trusts Iago, and Matthew causes Mark’s death just as Iago causes Othello’s death.

EIGHT: Description of action in this story has been posted during the past week in the Janeites & Austen L groups.

See above, re the serendipitous posting by Ellen Moody of Raymond Chandler’s essay which alerted me to Fellowes’s sly allusion.

DISCUSSION RE IAGO IN MILNE & FELLOWES:

Surely these extensive points of correspondence will lay to rest any reasonable doubt that Fellowes was indeed covertly alluding to Milnes’s novel, and it is indeed fitting and delightful that Fellowes chooses the year of Milne’s novel as the year in which Green is murdered.

But, aside from the fun of detecting Fellowes’s clever and multi-layered in-joke, hidden in plain sight for the pleasure of those who might recognize in Fellowes’s murder mystery as an homage to Milne’s, the real takeaway for me (and, I believe, for all dedicated Downton Abbey viewers) from all of this is Quiz Point Seven.

I find it an extremely strong additional corroboration of my claims that Barrow has been intended by Fellowes, from the very first episode of the show to the present, to be recognized by the knowing viewer as the Iago of Downton Abbey.

And there’s more, much more, where that came from. It turns out that Milne’s novel contains the following two EXPLICIT references to Othello, both in the confession by Matthew at the end, shortly before he kills himself:

"You will say that it was impossible to do the thing thoroughly enough. I answer again that you never knew Mark. He was being what he wished most to be—an artist. No OTHELLO ever blacked himself all over with such enthusiasm as did Mark.”

“…Oh, just tell me one thing. Why did Mark tell Miss Norbury about his imaginary brother?”

“That’s puzzled me rather, too, Bill. It may be that he was just doing the OTHELLO business-painting himself black all over. I mean he may have been so full of his appearance as Robert that he had almost got to believe in Robert, and had to tell everybody..”

And, guess what—Othello had been on Milne’s brain for quite a while when he wrote The Red House Mystery....Milne’s 1922 novel itself is a revisiting of his own 1915 short story “The Actor”, which is about a small town actor who is playing Othello when chance brings a theatre impresario to the hotel where he works, and that is his big break as an actor.

Turns out that Mark Ablett, the murder victim, had been a small town actor himself:

"I don't know if Beverley has told you about Mark's acting. He was an amateur of all the arts, and vain of his little talents, but as an actor he seemed to himself most wonderful. Certainly he had some ability for the stage, so long as he had the stage to himself and was playing to an admiring audience. As a professional actor in a small part he would have been hopeless; as an amateur playing the leading part, he deserved all that the local papers had ever said about him. And so the idea of giving us a private performance, directed against a professional actress who had made fun of him, appealed equally to his vanity and his desire for retaliation. If he, Mark Ablett, by his wonderful acting could make Ruth Norris look a fool in front of the others, could take her in, and then join in the laugh at her afterwards, he would indeed have had a worthy revenge!”

 And, by the way, that leads to yet another broad wink at Milne’s fiction from Fellowes----that impressario’s name in his short story just happens to be LEVINski (a Jewish name, very much like LEVINson, Cora’s maiden name in Downton Abbey!).  So Fellowes has apparently been a serious enough scholar to have connected Milne’s novel to Milne’s obscure prior short story!

And here’s the final takeaway of all of the above. It’s not just an esoteric literary game to be played only by literary sleuths like myself. I remain confident that Fellowes has been playing fair with this veiled allusion to Milne and Shakespeare, and that, sooner or later, in Season 6 if not later in Season 5……

….Julian Fellowes is going to spring his own carefully laid five-year trap on the viewers of Downton Abbey, and show us how Thomas Barrow, his Iago, somehow, some way, carefully planned and instigated the murder of Green, and then worked, meticulously, tirelessly, and creatively, to frame Bates for that murder!

Cheers, ARNIE

@JaneAustenCode on Twitter

P.S.: As a delightful additional touch, Julian Fellowes is, I am sure, well aware that there is, not far from Highclere Castle, the great estate where Downton Abbey is filmed, a “lovely country pub” called…..the “Red House”!:

http://www.tripadvisor.com/LocationPhotoDirectLink-g190745-d1128235-i66500025-The_Red_House-Newbury_Berkshire_England.html

PPS: For a further quick excellent summary about Milne’s novel, read the following as well:

http://readerdad.co.uk/2011/06/30/the-red-house-mystery-by-a-a-milne/

“The Red House of the title is a country cottage owned by Mark Ablett. As the novel opens, we find Ablett entertaining a handful of guests, among them the young Bill Beverley. At breakfast one morning, Ablett announces to his guests – as well as his cousin Cayley, who plays the roles of secretary, confidante and business advisor – that his brother, the wastrel Robert, has returned from his 15-year exile in Australia and will be visiting the Red House that very afternoon. When Robert arrives, the guests are off playing golf, and only Mark, Cayley and the servants are present in the house. A shot rings out just as Anthony Gillingham arrives to visit his friend, Beverley, and along with Cayley, he finds Robert dead, lying on the floor of the office, and Mark nowhere to be seen.

In some ways, The Red House Mystery is an homage to the stories of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, with Gillingham taking on the role of Sherlock Holmes to Beverley’s ever-eager Watson. As the plot unfolds and we gain more information, Gillingham walks us through a number of equally plausible theories, and we learn the secrets that the Red House holds at the same time as our amateur sleuths. In other ways, the book is a playful satire of the entire mystery genre – Bill’s boyish keenness about the matter at hand, Gillingham – a man with a photographic memory – falling accidentally into the role of sleuth, and still managing to outthink not only the murderer but the police as well – but Milne manages to avoid cliche, despite the hidden passage and an abundance, of Christie proportions, of suspects.

When the final reveal comes, it’s not entirely unexpected, and sharp-eyed readers will have picked up on the clues Milne scatters throughout the story, but it’s no less satisfying a book for that – the joy of this novel comes more from the journey than the destination, and Milne provides us with a cast of likeable characters and an interesting enough mystery to keep us entertained throughout this light and entertaining whodunit.”