I LOVED HER FIRST

Chapter 14 Responsibilities and Relief

Difficult Subjects

"Mr. Carson, what's a concentration camp?"

The butler of Downton Abbey was assembling the decanting cradle that he might filter the red wines he'd selected for dinner. At Miss Mary's question, he paused to look over at her. She was sitting on the other side of the desk, in the visitor's chair, and all he could see of her were her hands clutching the morning's edition of The Times and her legs, dangling from beneath those expansive pages.

She was not unfamiliar with The Times. He read to her frequently from its pages. It was their primary source of information about the war which had separated Miss Mary from her father and which was, much to the consternation of almost everyone in Britain, now dragging on into its second year with no end in sight. Carson read all the papers assiduously, with the exception of the Manchester Guardian, that radical rag. He wouldn't have it at Downton. He had, in fact, only the other day confiscated a copy from one of the footmen to whom he had issued a sharp rebuke for entertaining such rubbish.

"Why do you ask?" he said, though he knew the answer. She was reading a letter to the editor on the conduct of the war. The Times was challenging material for a ten-year-old at the best of times, and the war always a difficult subject, but he did not discourage her when she perused the paper, though usually he read things to her. This allowed him to filter the contents to a degree. He had been avoiding the controversy over the camps. Some woman - a woman! - named Emily Hobhouse had taken it upon herself to police the practices of the British Army in South Africa and had only recently delivered a report on conditions in the so-called "concentration camps" to the government. And now there was to be a commission, an all-women commission, to look into it all. The Liberals were making hay of it. The resulting political vituperation was hardly material fit for a child's ears.

Miss Mary lowered the paper a little that they might see each other, although her eyes remained fixed on the paper. "Mr. Camp-bell-Ban-ner-man...," she drawled his name, making sure to enunciate it perfectly, "and Lord Crewe think it is a bad thing. But...," her eyes shifted a little to the by-line of the letter, and then she read, "Mr. Winston S. Churchill says 'we come to concentration camps, honestly believing that upon the whole they involve the minimum of suffering to the unfortunate people for whom we have made ourselves responsible.'" Frowning, she looked up at the butler. "What is he talking about?"

He found the corkscrew and applied it expertly to the first of three bottles on the sideboard. "The Boers aren't fighting fairly," he said. She nodded at that. They'd discussed it before. "Our army raised the sieges of Mafeking and Ladysmith and... the other one..."

"Kimberley," she said helpfully. "The diamond mines!"

"Yes, Kimberley. And then we beat them soundly in some major battles and captured their capitals, and..."

"They won't give up."

"Precisely. They've taken to hit-and-run assaults on our positions and to raids by unruly units called commandos..."

"Commandos." Miss Mary repeated the word with relish. Foreign words appealed to her, so long as they weren't French words. Learning French, especially from Fraulein Kelder, was a chore. But there was a novelty about the South African terms the war had yielded up - kraals, uitlanders, bitter-einders.

"They're little more than armed bandits!" Carson said indignantly, speaking almost more to himself than to Miss Mary.

"What do commandos have to do with con-cen-tra-tion camps?"

"I'll tell you. Because the Boers have taken to fighting in this irregular way, Lord Roberts and subsequently General Kitchener saw no other way to bring them to heel than to burn the crops and to empty the land - of food and forage, as well as of people - in order to force them to surrender. But instead of doing so, the Boers have fought on and left their families to starve. That has obliged the British Army to take them into camps - concentration camps, that is, camps where the scattered volk may be concentrated - where they can be fed by British authorities. There are in these camps as well Boers who have wisely conceded defeat but who have then been hounded by their own people for doing so."

"Why does it make people in England angry?"

Carson paused for a moment. He knew the debate over the concentration camps. The army and the government contended that they were a necessity for the reasons he had just related. But Miss Hobhouse and others had shown that the camps were not at all well administered and that Boer dependents were dying in them in unacceptable numbers. Carson was inclined to side with the Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury, and General Kitchener on this. To his mind, the Boers had brought it on themselves, not that this excused the deaths. But it was his understanding, and Mr. Churchill supported this view, too, that the British Army was doing the best it could in unexpected circumstances. No one had anticipated that the Boers would abandon their families in this way. But there was an increasing chorus in the press that maintained that the camps expressed a deliberate policy of extermination on the part of Britain. It was a reprehensible accusation, to Carson's mind, and wholly groundless.

"When you bring a large number of people together in make-shift circumstances," he began carefully, "it is often the case that they catch diseases or cannot be adequately supported with the limited means on hand. People have died in the camps, Miss Mary." The dead were mostly women and children and the elderly, but he chose not to mention this lest she find it too disturbing. "And there are many in England who think we ought to have done a better job." He paused. "And perhaps we should have done."*

She stared at him thoughtfully for a long moment and then, apparently satisfied, dropped her gaze to the pages of The Times once more, though she did not raise the paper between them again. He glanced at her with mild concern. It was a fraught topic, the camps. He sought a distraction.

He was now fitting a bottle into the decanting apparatus. Without looking at her he asked, "What brings you down here at this hour of the day?" It was past their usual time. He was surprised Frau Kelder wasn't out with the hounds looking for her.

Miss Mary's hands fell into her lap, the paper crumpling. Her shoulders sagged a little. But her great dark eyes focused on him and their gazes met through the intervening medium of the red-purple Bordeaux he was decanting.

"Do you have any brothers and sisters, Mr. Carson?" She spoke as though burdened with a great weight.

So that was it. Another falling out with Miss Edith. It was only ever Miss Edith with whom Miss Mary conflicted. Miss Sybil was a delight to everyone who met her. Carson himself was quite charmed by that sweet-natured child.

In a way it was odd that this question of his family had never come up between them before. Family was a natural bridge between classes as much as between strangers. But then even Miss Mary who spent so much time with him was conditioned to think of him as "the butler," a single-purpose entity. People who visited upstairs had family. The downstairs were a different type of creature altogether. Though this wasn't entirely fair either because even among themselves some of the downstairs were closemouthed about the home lives they had left behind. His had been more of an open book to those older servants like Mrs. Dakin and Mrs. Yardley who had known him all his life. He had not been forthcoming with newer members of staff and had thereby joined the ranks of those who kept their pasts largely to themselves.

Miss Mary's question startled him though, not because she was expressing an interest in his life beyond the role he played in the house, but because it brought to mind unhappy memories. "I had a brother," he said, straightening up so that he might look at her over the wine apparatus. "A younger brother." He spoke quietly.

She always paid close attention to what he said and now she frowned a little. "Had?"

"Yes," he said soberly. "He died. When he was nought but two years old." Only a year and a bit older than his ill-fated sibling, he had only the haziest recollections of a dark-eyed toddler teetering across the kitchen floor. He remembered nothing of his illness and death or funeral. Perhaps he didn't attend. Probably not. But he did recall the sadness that enveloped his parents when they spoke of the boy, as they did only rarely, over subsequent years. And they had visited the grave with its own small stone in the church yard. His parents would stand in silence for a long time and require that he behave respectfully, too. This grew easier as he grew older, not so much because he had lost his childish impulse to be ever in motion, but with a growing understanding of his parents' still palpable grief.

His revelation had prompted Miss Mary's eyes to go round with astonishment."Do you miss him?" she asked.

Ever honest with her, he shook his head. "Well, I hardly knew him, did I? But my parents mourned him until their own deaths."

Abruptly he shook off the sombre feeling that had settled over him and bent to his work once more. He was carefully aligning the bottle and the decanter when Miss Mary spoke again.

"Sometimes I wish Edith was dead."

Crash! So great was his shock that he knocked the decanter over and forcefully enough that it shattered on his desk top. He had the presence of mind to seize the bottle of wine and turn it upright so that no more than a splash stained the desk. Then he straightened to his full height and gaped at her.

"What did you say?" Although he was unconscious of it, his voice had assumed the tone he would take with a footman he had caught in a theft. It was the voice of authority and judgment, and it was both thunderous and cutting. He had never spoken to a member of the family, nor to any of their guests, in such a tone. Indeed, he had rarely spoken this way at all.

And it had its effect. Miss Mary dropped the paper and her face drained of colour. Her great dark eyes went round with alarm and her mouth formed an "o" of something that might have been fright. The man before her, always her champion and most zealous supporter, had become someone she had never seen before.

It was the look of her, more than anything else, that brought him to his senses, at least insofar as he heard, as though in an echo, what he had said and how he had said it. But he did not move to comfort her. Nor did he take it back, though he did take a deep breath and put down the wine bottle that he had been gripping.

"I didn't mean it, Mr. Carson." Her eyes remained wide and there was a bit of a tremor in her voice. He had frightened her. But she didn't run away.

He might have said something to soothe her, to erase the alarm in her eyes, but he couldn't. He was too appalled to think straight. But he must think straight. It was almost a physical effort to suppress the revulsion this sentiment, sprung from this sweet source, had fueled in him. He took several deep breaths. And then he sat down, not fully into his chair but on the edge of it. Only after a minute did he push into it properly and then sat for another longer moment while he worked to restore the internal equilibrium her awful remark had knocked askew.

"I didn't mean it."

These words, coming to him in the charged silence that had descended on them, demanded a response. He fixed his gaze on her and for the first time in their acquaintance, his eyes reflected no warmth.

"There are things you may not say." His pulse was still racing, but his voice had resumed its authoritative calmness. "There are things, Miss Mary, that you may not even think. Not in jest, not in thoughtlessness, not because you have been hurt. To wish another dead is ... a sin." And so it was. This was not a small thing.

"I didn't..." And now tears were welling up in her eyes.

He didn't know if she were remorseful or reacting to his ... anger.

"And a member of your own family! Your own flesh and blood." He shook his head. "And just after I have told you about the death of my own brother. That was insensitive in the extreme." He drew himself up again, preparatory to making a dire pronouncement. And then, seeing the impact of his words upon her he exhaled and with his released breath went the indignation. This was an unprecedented situation. He didn't know what to do.

Only he did. Her eyes had not left him although they were now blurred with tears. Her hands clenched the arms the chair and her knuckles were white. And her whole frame was tense. He had made his point. So he went around the desk and once at her side he held out a hand. Still following his eyes with her own, which now required her to look up sharply, she put her hand in his. The warmth of her flesh on his softened his demeanour.

"I cannot impress upon you enough," he began, very earnestly and in a quieter voice, "how very wrong it is to think such a thing. Miss Edith is your sister and she must, because of that, be very dear to you. Never, never say such a thoughtless thing again. To me. Or to anyone else. And think it of no one. We are all tasked with learning how to live with one another, acknowledging and accommodating each other's foibles and shortcomings. That is a fact of the human condition."

He did not know that she understood all of what he said, but he felt it very necessary to say it. Let her absorb the gravity of his manner, if not the specific ideas communicated.

She went away chastened, with a solemnly stated, "Goodbye" and without her usual smile. He went back to his chair and sank heavily into it. He was shaken, he realized, as much by the responsibility of their relationship than by what she had said. Children were thoughtless creatures, even his Miss Mary. Had he reacted appropriately? Had he said the right thing? He didn't know.

Getting to Know You

"You're quiet tonight."

He was. He didn't even know why he'd invited Mrs. Hughes to join him for a sherry this evening. The afternoon's conversation with Miss Mary had so troubled him that he ought to have taken the time to sort it out in his own mind. And then, at the first opportunity, he had spoken up to the housekeeper. What had possessed him? Their evening sherry was not a necessary ritual. He might have skipped it without comment from her.

"I saw Miss Mary in with you earlier." Mrs. Hughes took a sip of her drink and waited.

She was very good at that. Even as he'd taken to unburdening himself of some of the cares of the day, he'd been able to see clearly enough what she was doing. She gave him openings. Whether he chose to take them up or not she left in his hands, never pressing him beyond the initial overture. Sometimes he held his own counsel. But at other times he did confide in her and found her quite supportive. They did not always agree and that could be aggravating. But she listened, offered advice when asked, and kept his confidence. These were three very desirable traits in a woman.

He sighed. "Things are getting more complicated with Miss Mary."

She gave him a quizzical look. "How so?"

"She asks questions." He put his sherry glass down and folded his hands before him. "She says things. Things I can no longer overlook or put down to childishness."

"She's growing up," Mrs. Hughes said circumspectly.

"She is," he said with a resigned sigh.

She smiled at this and that puzzled him. "What was it this time?"

He proceeded cautiously. Trusting Mrs. Hughes had come rapidly in professional matters, but he was more wary on matters closer to his heart. And she had already indicated a degree of impatience with his affection for Miss Mary.

"There was some ... friction ... with her sister, Miss Edith."

"That's only natural," the housekeeper said complacently. "Although she does carry it too far sometimes," she added acerbically. Mrs. Hughes had a good memory and the cowshed incident had given her some insight into the relationship between the elder Crawley girls and not to Miss Mary's credit.

He agreed, but did not say so. As far as he was concerned, they were at loggerheads when it came to Miss Mary and it benefited neither of them to confront the matter head on. "She said something I found disturbing," he went on carefully. "Alarming, really, and I reprimanded her for having spoken so." Mrs. Hughes did not need to know the details. No doubt she would have found Miss Mary's remark even more shocking than he did.

She nodded approvingly at this. "As any responsible parental figure must, Mr. Carson, if the circumstances warrant it," she said, and then added, "Perhaps she was testing you."

That was a thought. "I don't know if I'm up to this." It was the thought that had preyed on his mind all afternoon. He wasn't even conscious now of saying it aloud.

"Oh, I think you are, Mr. Carson," Mrs. Hughes said. There was sometimes a flippant tone to her words which made him think she might be laughing at him, but it was absent from this statement. He breathed more freely.

"And she'll forgive you," she went on, apparently interpreting his being out of sorts to mean that he worried for Miss Mary's good opinion. "She values you too much to throw you over for a necessary correction."

He was pleased that she should say so and gave her a grateful smile. He was fairly confident that that was the case. Miss Mary herself had realized she had crossed a line. And their relationship, always warm, had grown that much stronger over the past year of His Lordship's absence. She needed boundaries and the ones he held her to made more sense to her than the seemingly arbitrary rules of her governess.

And he was pleased, too, that Mrs. Hughes did not push him on the subject of Miss Mary's indiscretion. She might be concerned for his distraction, but she wasn't prying. He was himself of the view that no one needed to know everything, and it appeared that she adhered to this principle as well. It prompted him to be more forthcoming in a different direction.

"We were talking about the concentration camps." Carson did not explain the camps to Mrs. Hughes as he had to Miss Mary. The housekeeper was an avid reader of the papers and was almost as informed as he was on the ongoing agony of the South African war. On more than one occasion she had made what he thought ill-considered remarks suggesting that the Liberal opposition might have a valid point or two.

He expected Mrs. Hughes to react to his disclosure. But she said nothing, only giving him a look that made clear her exasperation. On the rare occasions when he'd seen her with the upstairs children, he'd noticed that she did not talk down to them as other adults sometimes did. Like him, she paid other people - no matter who they were - the compliment of her respect. But she did not share his confidence that children, and Miss Mary in particular, ought to be told just anything, even if they did ask.

"She read about it in The Times," he added, though he suspected this would not improve matters. "She might have come across it upstairs," he said defensively.

"And?" she said, ignoring his feeble deflection.

"She asked me what they were and I gave her ... the general picture."

They stared at each other for a moment, she grim, he defiant.

"How did you get from ... that ... to Miss Edith?"

"I was telling her about my brother," he said. "To change the subject. And ... she made an ill reference to Miss Edith." That was as much as he wanted to say.

But he needn't have worried. The impassive expression with which Mrs. Hughes had listened thus far gave way to a more kindly one. "James. It must have broken your mother's heart to lose a bairn."

He looked up sharply at this unexpected remark. "It did," he said. "And my father's, too, in his way. But...how do you know of that?"

She came over faintly pleased with herself for having surprised him with her knowledge. "I've seen the grave, walking in the church yard."

"Why would you do that?" He visited the church yard often, but he knew the people there. She did not have that excuse.

"I like to go for walks on my half-day. And I live here now," she said, as if responding to his thoughts. "It's a way to get to know the people of Downton, now and then. Charles and James," she said, speaking the names with some deliberation. "Your parents liked good, traditional names."

"Erm." He was a little startled to hear his given name fall from her lips. It had been some years now since anyone at Downton had used it. "Good common sense names," he said firmly, scrambling to recover his poise, although it was also only what he thought.

"You grew up here."

He wasn't quite sure how they had gotten from Miss Mary's troubles to his own past, but he was glad enough to leave the disturbing conversation of the afternoon behind him. And he was just a little curious as to why Mrs. Hughes was taking him in this direction. He was not concerned. It was harmless enough.

"I did," he said. "My father and grandfather before him, and indeed my great-grandfather served the Crawleys of Downton Abbey. They were grooms, all of them. They worked in the stables." He watched her carefully, wondering what she would make of that. It was no secret, of course, and he'd never tried to hide it. Indeed, he was proud of his family's service. But she might not have known this, being an outsider. What would she make of the regal butler of Downton Abbey now that she knew his antecedents?

"Good, honest work," she said firmly. "My people were farmers. In Argyll."

When they parted at the end of the evening, she going up directly and he tidying up his pantry before following her, he felt unaccountably calmer than he had done when she had appeared at his door. Why this should be so he did not know. He hadn't told her of Miss Mary's great transgression, but then he hadn't needed to do so. The details were unimportant. The critical element was that he had acted properly in the matter with Miss Mary. For so long he had played the indulgent uncle, enjoying her spirited ways but taking little responsibility for any waywardness on her part. But she was growing up and that would mean greater dilemmas ahead. And if she were to continue to visit him - and he earnestly hoped she would - he would perhaps be called upon to draw lines and stand his ground upon them more often. God help him.

He made the rounds of the house before retiring and as he did so his mind turned in another direction. The conversation with Mrs. Hughes had been of a different sort tonight. They had ventured into new territory. On sober reflection, he thought she might have taken him that way quite deliberately as a way to defuse his tension over what had happened earlier. Even without knowing exactly what that was, she had discerned his unease and offered him a distraction. The digression into their separate pasts had given him some perspective and steadied him. This took him a little by surprise. Mr. Finch had told him that a butler's life was a lonely one, that he could not expect to find friendship within the confines of the house in which he worked.

He did not know that he would call Mrs. Hughes a friend. But she had proved her worth not only to the house but to him once again. And they were learning more of each other.

*AUTHOR'S NOTE. Mary is reading Winston S. Churchill's letter to The Times entitled "'Methods of Barbarism,'" June 28, 1901, The Times, page 12.

Britain didn't invent the concept of the "concentration camp," but did use this strategy during the war in ways Carson describes here. In order to undermine the fighting ability of the guerrilla-type forces of the determined Boers, the British Army under General Roberts and then General Kitchener inaugurated a "scorched earth" policy making the land inhospitable for a military force dependent on the civilian population for support. Gathering the civilian population in camps both deprived the Boer military of their supply networks and also provided for people whose livelihood had been destroyed. The whole strategy got out of hand – numbers mushroomed, the British were at first unprepared to feed and house so many, and the administrative and medical services were not up to the job, in addition to the impact of concentrating large numbers of persons in poor conditions with the consequent spread of disease. Some 27,000 Boers died in the camps and somewhere between 14,000 and 20,000 Africans, the latter held in separate camps.

Carson's view here is more sympathetic to the British Army than many of his contemporaries were or even history has been. Many in Britain were alarmed and appalled, and worked to ameliorate the situation and end the war. Among them were activist women - Emily Hobhouse, who investigated the (white) camps on her own, and Millicent Fawcett who headed the Fawcett Commission, to which Carson alludes. Changes were made. Conditions improved. But the camps remained a black mark on the British record and a central point in subsequent Boer nationalist campaigns.

It is important to note here, however, that modern understanding of the term "concentration camp" is heavily coloured by the history of Nazi Germany. The British camps were not of the same fabric in intent, organization, or effect, and ought not to be confused with them.