Downton Abbocalypse Now
By:
January 26, 2012
Downton Abbey, the British TV period drama series, has sent addicted viewers scrambling to read or re-read E.M. Forster’s Howards End (1910), Ford Madox Ford’s Parade’s End tetralogy (1924–28), and other early 20th century novels novels whose titles might or might not suggest the end of the world as wealthy and upper-middle-class Brits and Americans then knew it.
From his first appearance in Episode Four, Tom Branson (Allen Leech), the family’s chauffeur, connects with the politically engaged Lady Sybil Crawley (Jessica Brown-Findlay). According to the fan-created Downton Abbey wiki, little is known about Branson’s early life, except that he grew up in Ireland and in May 1913 came to work at Downton as the chauffeur.
When Branson discovers that Sybil is politically minded, he engages her in conversation about the rights of women. Sybil remarks that it “seems rather unlikely: a revolutionary chauffeur.” Branson replies, “I’m a socialist, not a revolutionary and I won’t always be a chauffeur.”
HiLobrow would like to add another end-of-the-world novel to the Downton Abbey reading list. In Jack London’s Radium Age science fiction apocalypse The Scarlet Plague (written during the era in which Downton Abbey is set, and first serialized in 1912; currently being serialized on this website), when a plague sweeps across the globe, the social order is overturned. A humble chauffeur and a wealthy woman end up together — but it’s no love match!
London, a socialist like Branson, first hints at this fact in our second installment, published today.
“The first Chauffeur was Bill, a common fellow, as I said before,” the old man expounded; “but his wife was a lady, a great lady. Before the Scarlet Death she was the wife of Van Worden. He was President of the Board of Industrial Magnates, and was one of the dozen men who ruled America. He was worth one billion, eight hundred millions of dollars — coins like you have there in your pouch, Edwin. And then came the Scarlet Death, and his wife became the wife of Bill, the first Chauffeur. He used to beat her, too. I have seen it myself.”
Branson and Sybil — if their upstairs/downstairs romance strikes you as tediously middlebrow, get your hilo kicks by reading The Scarlet Plague.
In 2012, HiLoBooks will serialize, then reissue in beautiful paperback form (in May; PRE-ORDER NOW), Jack London’s 1912 science fiction novel The Scarlet Plague. Introduction by HILOBROW’s Matthew Battles. More information here.