Snob Appeal

As a 25 year old, I spent two months in London. I went over with great anticipation, having watched British movies from childhood and I loved the way the Brits sounded and looked and behaved in those films.

Within a month I missed America and Americans intensely. The Brits did not wear well. I used to go have dinner at Earl's Court, which is where you could get an inexpensive meal and lots of Americans hung out there and I'd just drink in those familiar accents wafting around the room.

But Downtown Abbey rekindled those latent feelings of the Anglophile.  Spending an hour among men who wear white tie every night to dinner in their own homes, with ladies in evening gowns and head bands and tiaras, sipping wine, throwing witty lines about the table, has a sort of intoxicating effect. 

But the best part is talking about the shenanigans the next day. Here, in New Hampshire, there are so few people to talk about Downton with. When you find one, it becomes a sort of secret society--New Hampshire townies who watch Downton. Even if they get frustrated by it, the slow pace, the story lines which drone on--Bates and Anna: will they ever be happy?--fellow Downton aficionados form a club.

Even if you don't meet many, you know they are out there, like the secret book readers of Fahrenheit 451 --secretly watching at home Sunday nights. And you never know where you'll find them--there's a screening of Downton coming up at the opera house in Rochester, New Hampshire! Rochester is a town where you'd expect to see enthusiasm for NASCAR or gun shows, but Downton?  Portland, Maine also has movie theatre screenings, like the Rocky Horror Picture show, but Maine is schizophrenic and you know there are blue bloods lurking about in the woods and on the coast up there. 

I think Downton watchers ought to wear a little pin on their collars, "DA" or something so you can nod to them at Hannafords or Market Basket, and know, even here in the state where men wear belts and suspenders to hold up their jeans and they change their buffalo plaid wool shirts from red to blue once a week, you know there are Downton groupies out there, indistinguishable among the Ug wearing women walking along the street in Exeter. 

In Washington, DC, it was school decals on the back window of your car that signaled you were dreaming about your ascension in society, fantasizing about your life among the upper crust. Here, it would be that "DA" pin on your collar. Doesn't matter your ethnicity, what college you did (or did not) attend, what sort of car you drive, how big your house is, where you vacation--if you are a Downton person, you are one of us. 

This is Downton's swan song. A guilty pleasure. I'll miss it.