Book Review - John Hawkesworth's Upstairs Downstairs
Upstairs Downstairs by John Hawkesworth
Published by: Nelson Doubleday
Publication Date: 1971
Format: Hardcover, 243 Pages
Rating: ★★★
Out of Print
165 Eaton Place sits on the North side of the street in Belgravia. Above stairs there's Richard Bellamy, a conservative MP, and his wife Lady Marjorie. There two children are no longer at home with James in the Life Guards and Elizabeth at a finishing school in Dresden, Germany. Below stairs there's the butler, Hudson, and the cook, Mrs. Bridges. Under them are Alfred the footman, Rose the houseparlourmaid, and Emily the kitchen maid. The downstairs staff is completed by Miss Roberts, Lady Marjorie's Lady's Maid, and Mr. Pearce the chauffeur. The household are in need of an under houseparlourmaid after the last one came to a bad end. Lady Marjorie is interviewing one Clemence Dumas whom most of the staff are rooting against. Except Emily, but she's a romantic, and the tall tales Clemence spins have already won over the kitchen maid. Against all expectations Lady Marjorie takes on Clemence, rechristened Sarah, for a trial period. Almost at once she's causing a scandal by sitting for a portrait for the same artist that is painting Lady Marjorie. The painting of "the maids" is so salacious juxtaposed with the more traditional portrait of Lady Marjorie that the news is actually picked up by the local papers. Though it wouldn't be proper to send Sarah packing because of her naivete for trusting a painter the Bellamys themselves shouldn't have trusted. Thankfully they luck out soon enough when they are away for the summer and the servants play at masters and James Bellamy arrives home. A charged moment between him and Sarah makes her realize that she doesn't want to exist to prop up the lives of others, she wants to live her own life. A desire that may come back to haunt her. But for the Bellamys life goes on, Elizabeth returns from abroad, nowhere near as finished as they'd hoped and wanting to talk about German philosophers with everyone. A lady should only talk about the weather and never about politics, especially to politicians. Her behavior soon has her banished by her family from London. And despite their actions their dearest wish is that Elizabeth would be happy, so she comes and goes, trying to make a place for herself in society. But when the first man she falls for was using her as a pawn to get to her father and then runs off with the footman, she thinks that her love life is doomed. All is not lost. Not for her parents or for Elizabeth herself when she falls in with revolutionaries and meets the poet Lawrence Kirbridge. After much trial and tribulation, both for the masters and the servants, maybe an approximation of a happy ending is on the horizon. Though with Sarah back on the scene and stepping out with James the happy ending depends on your point of view.
If you're a fan of the original Upstairs, Downstairs I know the question on the tip of your tongue, and it's who the hell are these people on the cover of this book!?! It's like someone asked AI what the cast of Upstairs, Downstairs looked liked and this weird amalgamation of seventies business suits and mobcaps was churned out. But I can assure you, this is the real cover because I actually scanned it into the computer myself from my copy. My guess is that they were trying to lure in readers who weren't aware of the television show and therefore have these generic models because Richard Bellamy sure as hell wouldn't show that much ankle. Yet the selling point in the United States should have been that you could read the first season as it was meant to air, minus episode six, "A Cry for Help," and episode eleven, "The Swedish Tiger." Because when Upstairs, Downstairs first aired in the United States in 1973 what was shown was a weird hybrid of season one and season two where the twenty-six episodes where reduced down to thirteen. Obviously some of this had to do with the fact that the first six episodes were in black and white because of the Colour Strike with only the pilot being reshot for color. But still, that is A LOT of story to omit. So American audiences could have turned to this book written by John Hawkesworth, who turned Jean Marsh and Eileen Atkins's idea into the beloved show and produced the series and wrote twelve episodes of it as well. But the thing is, John Hawkesworth wasn't an author he was a screenwriter, so this book comes across more like a script treatment, where the dialogue is bulked out with minimal descriptors. So there's no insight and without the actors imbuing their characters with life they come across as flat and unlikable. In fact the omission of "A Cry for Help" in particular was detrimental to the understanding of Richard Bellamy's character. This lack of insight made the book feel more antagonistic, more us versus them instead of one household working together. What did work was the added history. Upstairs, Downstairs was known for it's incorporation of historical events, which occasionally verged on the preachy side with their teachable moments. I know everyone seems to love the episode "A Patriotic Offering" about Belgian refugees, but I've never liked it, mainly because of Hudson's racism. Though overall the extra bit of background, especially about the dreadnoughts, was welcomed. This is just such an odd book because it flattens some aspects and invigorates others, especially when the characters are away from the house. But in the end the problem is there is no arc to the book because there was no arc to the show. This book makes me simultaneously want to binge the show once more but also to never watch it again. It shows the ups and downs of the series rather well and, well, by the end of the book you could see even John Hawkesworth wanted it to come to an end as the episode dramatizations got shorter and brusquer. He just wanted it over with and regrettably so did I.
You literally CAN NOT think or talk about Masterpiece Theatre without thinking or talking about Upstairs, Downstairs. They are inseparable. One can not mention Jean Marsh without thinking of Rose Buck. Or Gordon Jackson without actually believing that he might be Hudson, foibles, xenophobia, and all. Each season focused on the trials and tribulations of the Bellamy household and how they handled different crisis, from Elizabeth's imprudent marriage, to Lady Marjorie dying on the Titanic, to James's imprudent marriage, to World War I, to the roaring twenties and the bright young things, to that tragic ending! Oh James, how could you? The family had often faced financial ruin, but somehow there always was a way. There could have been a way if you had but tried! But I can see that the showrunners wanted to end on a dramatic note. What's interesting about the forth series is that we have perhaps the most sustained theme over any of the other series, that being World War I. Of course Upstairs, Downstairs handles even this most used of historical periods in their own unique way. This uniqueness is that we see how the war effects everyone at 165 Eaton Place. So yes, we get the tropes of the son being almost mortally wounded and nursed back to health by the woman he truly loves, who happens to not be his wife. As for the wife, she falls for someone else yet somehow they keep up the pretense of their marriage despite neither being happy. Yet what I'm drawn to is how the staff took part in the war. You rarely get to see how the everyday folk pitched in, other than knitting socks and balaclavas! Hudson becomes a Special Constable and helps police the streets because he is unable to serve, Rose works on an omnibus, Edward joins the Army, Ruby works in a munitions factory, everyone finds a way to help the war effort while also carrying out their regular duties, well, aside from Mrs. Bridges who just seems to be angry about the lack of produce and wants to hoard everything she can. Which seems very relevant today, as did the handling of the tricky topic of disinformation in the press with regards to the war. Upstairs, Downstairs was praised at the time for making history timely and relevant. And with season four ending with Hazel dying from the 1918 influenza pandemic, it's even more relevant today.
January tenth of this year marked the fiftieth anniversary of Masterpiece, no longer Theatre, but still Theatre in my heart. If you watched the "special" hosted by Alan Cumming you were probably just as baffled as I was that it was nothing more than an infomercial for their most recent seasons without touching on the glorious history and the wonderful shows they have aired over the past fifty years. Let's just do a really fast montage of the hosts to prove that it wasn't the biggest mistake of our lives firing Russell Baker, OK? Sigh. In fact the very touching tribute to Diana Rigg at the end of the second episode of All Creatures Great and Small this season was longer than the tribute to past hosts in a special about the show's history! My quibbles aside, Masterpiece didn't just change television, it changed me. It informed everything about me growing up. It was a touchstone, there every Sunday night, where I could get respite from the world and escape into a show before the onslaught of Monday morning. The theme music was used as the processional music for my eighth grade graduation. I have spent more hours than you can count going through shelves at used bookstores to find the old tie-in editions with the beautiful poster art that Mobil produced for each show. I learned about new shows wandering bookstores and seeing the newly released tie-ins for the upcoming season. I have found more favorite authors than I can count because of this show! 
