Downton Abbey, a television series
that began in 2011 on PBS’s Masterpiece Classics,
depicts through narrative life in a British manor beginning with the sinking of
the Titanic in 1912. For European viewers and more generally for the rest of
us, the program proffers a glimpse of the world a century back. The advent of
the telephone and phonograph seem to pierce through the manor’s socio-economic
hierarchy that had undoubtedly been in place for centuries. It is the sheer
social distance between the servants, almost regardless of their particular
rank within their hierarchy, and the nobility in the house that is so striking
to me. Moreover, the “Your Lordship” and “Your Ladyship” are not contingent on
the manor’s owner employing or even paying the servants.
The full essay is at "The Profitable Aristocracy."
