DA's series 2: The Ghost of 1914 -- OR -- Does Matthew have a mean streak? (part 2)
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Shall I Remind You...
"Shall I remind you of some of the choicest remarks you made about me when I arrived here? Because they live in my memory as fresh as the day they were spoken." Matthew Crawley arrived at Downton in September 1912. The moment before he stooped to kiss Lady Mary in May 1914 he would still have been able to recite her remarks from a year and a half ago, because they were hers. And he would have been willing to! When Mary warns him to be "careful not to break Sybil's heart. I think she has a crush on you", Matthew does not dwell on Sybil's heart for one second. He has other concerns: "That's something no one could accuse you of." There is something definite about Matthew's answer. He is not uttering a hope that Mary might be in love with him. On the contrary, Matthew is prejudiced against the very notion that she might be, and since May 1914, Mary - and others on her behalf - have faced an uphill struggle in their attempts to convince him otherwise. And in January 1920, Matthew still doesn't believe her (bringing up his 1914 conversation with his mother: «I thought you didn't like her for throwing me over?»). He won't let it rest, the idea of a rejection that never happened. In episode 1.07, Matthew anticipates a rejection already before he and Mary discuss their engagement eye-to-eye (he is planning to move to Manchester, which he wouldn't do if Mary accepted him - but he's planning it already); Mary's hesitation in the light of his changed prospects only fuels the doubts he has about her feelings all along. Thus, episodes 1.06 and 1.07 serve to remind us of two things: First, that Matthew's doubts about Mary's feelings were always stronger than his confidence in having her love. Second, that the possibility of breaking another girl's heart has never been an important enough concern for Matthew to eclipse his preoccupation with Lady Mary alleged indifference.
It was Matthew who withdrew his proposal in 1914, because he couldn't be sure if Mary would have accepted him under different circumstances. In later years, his memory of what actually happened on that summer day in 1914 seems to become a bit fuzzy. In 2.05, he will remember correctly that he has turned her down. In the Christmas Special, however, it seems he doesn't. On the contrary, he argues twice that Mary has turned him down and that this might give others (like "his mother") a reason not to like her (which was a different conversation indeed, but still - a conversation they had in 1914). What's going on? And what does he mean by suggesting to Mary that she wouldn't have to marry Carlisle "to prove you've broken with me, surely. We know were we stand. We've no need for gestures..."? Well, I might need an explanation here. First of all, Mary didn't cause the break-up in 1914, Matthew did. So why would he make a connection between Mary's engagement to Carlisle and their break-up, call it proof that she has broken with him, a gesture to demonstrate were they stand? Heavens, were do they stand anyway? Prove it to whom? Is he projecting?
Why would Matthew come up with the idea at all that one gets engaged to prove that one has broken up with someone? Why did he get engaged? And when? And under what circumstances?
Actually, he got engaged in November 1916. He was released from the front for a couple of days' leave after the Battle of the Somme, and he made plans to go to Yorkshire where there was a girl he naturally wanted to see, as he put it. Mary, obviously. Before going there, however, he made a trip to London "to remind myself what real food tastes like." From London, he informs his mother by way of a letter that he just got engaged to a Miss Lavinia Swire. Isobel had never heard of the lady before, and it all seemed rather hurried in her opinion. It is strange that he wouldn't mention a girl in London to his man-servant when he considers the food worth mentioning. And even if this omission were to be interpreted as Matthew being unwilling to appear as a womanizer to his man-servant, chasing two girls in two different places, it is nevertheless odd that he chooses to omit the London girl instead of the Yorkshire girl, if he indeed saw his future with this London girl. To sum up: Matthew got engaged in a hurry a couple of days before his planned visit to Downton, where he wanted to see Mary - "naturally", as he says, for the first time in two years.
The strange part of the story is that neither Matthew nor Mary were interested in other suitors between their break-up in 1914 and Matthew's return to Downton in 1916, while everyone in the family were keeping their hopes up until the very end that they would make up. Now, all of a sudden, between the day Matthew announces his plan to go to Downton for the girl he naturally wants to see, and the day he actually arrives there, he as gotten engaged to a different girl he doesn't even bother to mention when he talks about his London detour - and that's supposed to be a coincidence? He coincidentally gets engaged to a girl who loves him "very, very much" and who wanted to marry him from the first moment she saw him - unlike Mary? Who reminds him of these facts in 2.08 ("... all that is true"), meaning that he already knew that about her when he proposed to her? Who was exactly the woman who would have loved to be a solicitor's wife - unlike Mary? Whom he told long tales about Mary Crawley, enough to make their first meeting rather awkward ("Of course you are [Mary Crawley]. I mean, I've been longing to meet you, because I've heard so much about you from Matthew. Er, that is--")? And it's got nothing to do with Mary?
In the Christmas Special, in the moment leading up to the punch, Carlisle accuses Matthew of never having loved Lavinia. Significantly, Matthew doesn't dispute Carlisle's accusation, he only reacts to it as some sort of threat: "Don't you dare!" So Carlisle is right as far as the factual content of his statement is concerned? If so, just how far back does this never in love with Lavinia go? "Never" as in "not even at the time when Matthew proposed"? Would Matthew seriously propose to someone he didn't love? The same guy who attributes Mary's reluctance to marry him in 1.07 to a lack of love: "I think this is black and white. Do you love me enough to spend your life with me? If you do, say yes. If you don't, say no." Who counters Mary's suggestion that she was advised to say yes first, and later change her mind in case he should be disinherited, with the accusation "To make that work, you'd have to be a good liar. Are you a good liar?" Mary isn't willing to lie to Matthew ("Not good enough to try, apparently"). Doesn't mean that Matthew wouldn't try to lie - to anyone but Mary, and it doesn't mean he wants Mary to be honest to anyone but him. "You must promise faithfully to lie when they ask you how I did", he requests during the pheasant shoot in New Year's Day 1920. Hear hear, a lawyer. But then again, even the lawyer's mother isn't categorically opposed to perjury, as Isobel's remark during the Bates trial suggests: "It's difficult to lie on oath, few of us can manage it." Matthew might have, which makes that scene a bit awkward for his part. When Lavinia died in April 1919, the prospect of his lying on oath ("to love and to cherish ... I plight thee my troth ... with my body I thee worship") was only three days off.
We have Matthew on record saying to Mary in 1.07 that he sees his departure from Downton as a necessary "return to real life", where he must take charge of his own life again, after having lived in a dream, as her puppet. In other words, he has to carve out a life for himself outside Downton, both practically (not rooted in the idea of being an earl, but taking pride in his own abilities) and emotionally (not deriving his self-esteem from what Mary thinks of him). Rather than belittling the intensity of his own feelings for Mary and blaming her outright for not living up to his expectations, Matthew suggests that his expectations were unrealistic and that the idea of him and her getting together despite their different backgrounds was an illusion. Based on Matthew's farewell speech, there is no reason why we shouldn't put it past him to settle with a second-rate marriage arrangement, and do so consciously, particularly if the first-rate scenario was an illusion anyway. And given the fact that Matthew doesn't consider lying about engagements a bad thing as such, provided it is not Mary lying to him, there is no reason why we shouldn't expect Matthew to be just as willing to ditch his plan B as soon as something better turned up, just as Mary would have been with respect to Patrick Crawley and later Richard Carlisle.
As I have mentioned earlier, there is no indication that Lavinia features in Matthew's plans as he leaves France for London in November 1916, even though he had known her since his previous leave. The timing of his sudden intent to see Mary again (when he didn't want to see her on previous occasions), suggests that something has happened during the Battle of the Somme that not only makes him feel proud enough of himself to be able to face Mary again, but at the same time makes him long for that good old time - possibly a fear that he might not survive the war and that he doesn't want their final words to have been angry ones. "When I think of my life at Downton, it seems like another world" he admits to his man-servant. As a soldier, he has demonstrated that he has woken up from the dream of Downton, and that he has taken charge of his own life again in practical terms. But after two years in the trenches, he may need a glimpse of that dream again to charge the batteries, that dream of Lady Mary Crawley. That's Matthew's primary motive as he leaves France. And even if he intended to get engaged to Lavinia already before leaving for London, the fact that he doesn't mention her to his man-servant in the trenches, while he mentions the girl in Yorkshire and the food in London, is evidence enough that this not-to-be-named business in London is only important with respect to his plan to see Mary. Lavinia has no place in Matthew's life outside of his relationship with Mary.
Because, to be honest, while his stint in the trenches has given Matthew enough proof of his practical independence from the earldom of Grantham, he still has no proof of his emotional independence from Mary, and his refusal to see her on previous leaves can hardly be taken as evidence to support the idea. What might she think of him, especially since he turned her down back in 1914? No one in the family could have given him an indication of her feelings since they don't know either. Would she rejoice at the fact that he hasn't been able to find love after throwing her over? Would she mock him? That would leave him discouraged rather than encouraged when he has to get back to the front, and encouragement is what he needs at the moment. So how should he go about meeting Mary again without making himself vulnerable to attacks? How does he prove to Mary that he is no longer her puppet and that he has returned to the real world - where girls are crazy about solicitors, and where girls have enough taste and appreciation to want to marry him on the spot? Why not bring a fiancée? Why not bring his plan B before having another look at plan A? It didn't mean he had to go through with it, even if Mary hadn't been an issue. Just for the time being, with the war on.
It does if you mean it
Therefore, when Richard Carlisle claims in the Christmas Special that Matthew never loved Lavinia Swire, implying that he loved Mary all along, there is enough evidence to support his claim, as we have seen in the opening scenes of 2.01. It looks likely that Matthew used his engagement to Lavinia primarily as proof that he had broken with Mary, as a gesture to signal where he thought they stood when he returned to Downton. Walk in with Lavinia in tow, make eye contact with Mary, and then look away demonstratively. As proof to Mary and proof to himself. Only he hadn't anticipated that he wasn't over Mary after all, and didn't want to be, once he saw her again. Breaking eye contact with her was probably a relief for him - before the hurt could come creeping back. He did not feel superior at all. He had no idea where they stood: "I can't say... It's been such a long time. Who knows what you think of me now?" - "I think...I'm very glad to see you looking so well" - "All right, you win. We are at peace again." So the proof didn't work for him. On the contrary, it got in the way.
At dinner, Matthew more or less apologizes to Mary for bringing a fiancée, and he doesn't exactly encourage Mary to find someone else either. Their conversation is a pure power struggle. Who's jealous? Who wins? One could argue that the phrasing of Matthew's question ("You don't mind my bringing Lavinia?") is an open invitation to elicit a disapproving response from Mary, but she keeps her cards close to her chest and counters that she approves of an arrangement that seems to make Matthew happy. Instead of confirming that he is happy (which he obviously isn't), Matthew plays the ball back to Mary instead ("What about you? Are you happy?"). When Mary suggests an impending attachment on her part ("I think I'm about to be happy. Does that count?"), Matthew's reply is cryptical to say the least: "It does if you mean it". "About to be happy" counts as equivalent to "happy" if you mean it, naturally. A rose is a rose is a rose. What does he mean? Does he mean that her intent to become happy by way of an engagement counts as being happy, if she gets engaged for the right reasons? Still he doesn't say he's glad to hear about it. Or does her suggestion that she's about to become attached to someone only count if she tells the truth? In other words, does he suggest (or hope) that she's bluffing? Or is he hoping that she is not happy at present after all (for her own sake, seeing him with Lavinia), that he acknowledges her present unhappiness and suggests that she might be dishonest when she claims that her unhappiness is about to end? Whatever Matthew implies, he does at no point express a wish that he wants to see Mary happy with someone else.
When Matthew arrives at the train station for his departure and he sees Mary waiting for him there, his first reaction is astonishment: "You must have been up before the servants". I find this comment rather significant because it shows that it suddenly dawns on Matthew that Mary is not the posh doll he'd always taken her to be. Obviously, she'd gotten up before the servants and dressed herself - in order to see him! That's something! After all, she doesn't do that on a regular basis, as she freely admits ("They were rather surprised to see me"). It follows that, if Mary insisted in 1914 that she might have accepted him even if he had not become an earl, Matthew may now be inclined to believe her retrospectively, seeing that she is both willing and able to do mundane things for his sake. And when Mary gives him the dog for luck, Matthew is so touched that he immediately backs out of the idea that he and Lavinia will have a future together after the war, even if it takes a death fantasy to rid him of the prospect. Curiously, Matthew uses the possibility of his death as an excuse to tie Mary to his life by way of obligation: "Will you do something for me? Will you...will you look after mother...if anything happens? ... And Lavinia. She's young, she will find someone else. I hope she does, anyway, but...until she does." Mary interprets this "will you" request as "we" (she refuses to take on that responsibility individually), but I suppose Matthew really means "you, Mary" - which is a rather selfish request, since it might greatly restrict Mary's independence in the future. I take it that this is exactly what Matthew wants. He does not want Mary to live an independent life apart from him, and he can sort of die with the illusion that they will always be connected through his mother (like Daisy-William-Mr.Mason in the subplot). It is funny to hear Matthew say that he hopes Lavinia will find someone else, preferably sooner than later, when he cannot bring himself to wish the same for Mary.
Back in the trenches in France, Matthew has to make a daily choice between two women. Nobody sees it, of course, but he makes that choice without hesitation; it does not appear like a hard decision to make. He picks Mary's dog over Lavinia's picture every time. When he bumps into Thomas Barrow and the latter smiles at the idea of him having tea with the "future Earl of Grantham", it is this comment which makes Matthew say that "war has a way of distinguishing between the things that matter and the things that don't." Following Matthew's reunion with Mary, I interpret this statement as an acknowledgement on Matthew's part that he is no longer hung up about the crucial 1914 question if Mary was attracted to him for the right reason, as long as she is attracted to him the way he is now.
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