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Lady Mary Crawley was born five months before the fifty-fourth anniversary of the Victorian reign. Until she turned ten, God Save the Queen was played in every official ceremony of the empire. Her name was the same as two queens regnant of England, not to mention a few consorts and their Scottish counterparts. Taking everything under consideration, nobody ought to be surprised that she was born believing in her own might and ability to rule the world, and so she was. The first-born child of the Earl of Grantham wanted the world, and damned were those that dared to set themselves on her path.
As a little girl, Mary strived to be the perfect heir to her papa. Even before she learned to read, she would snatch the papers from the breakfast table, after he was finished with them. She was made literate by the headlines of The Times , Globe , and The Yorkshire Post , to her governess’s perpetual obliviousness. She liked papers better than books – they were shorter, and way more relevant – but her passion was riding, alright. She took to it following the same logic she applied to everything else: it was expected of a Lord’s heir – but she found she had a talent for it. While her sisters played with their toys (Sybil) or buried their noses in books (Edith), Mary played Atalanta on her own reenactment of the Calydonian boar hunt of her own, leaping into trees and horsebacks. She was perfect and, for a while, she believed it to be enough. What nobody saw fit to inform her until she was out of the nursery, was that she could never be her father’s heir, solely because of her gender.
Lady Mary, quite contrary,
Will you cease causing a row?
With the knowledge she would never inherit, came the awareness of what was expected of her. Patrick, dull and boorish, represented everything that frustrated her. His presence in the house had been an unremarkable thing to her as a child when, suddenly, the boy who believed he would catch the dreaded lurgy if he played too much with them was made heir to it all.
There wasn’t anything entirely wrong with him, but he wasn’t fit to lead (not as she was) and yet he would lead anyway. Everyone said it was quite neat , the unspoken arrangement between cousins, and it undoubtedly was – only, if asked, little Mary would’ve liked the rest of her life to be more than neat . She would have gladly given him to Edith (who was so enchanted with him to the point of letting a wedge grow between them) if that didn’t make her sister countess and Mary untitled. It drove her to decide that, if she found a duke or a marquess, Edith could become the Countess of Grantham .
Mary had never wished him dead. No matter how ill-matched they might be, Patrick was still a figure of her childhood, the boy who would never live long enough to know his mind. His death had been shocking, tragic even. She wished she could have mourned him properly, as a cousin, unshadowed by the staggering amount of relief she felt.
Lady Mary, quite contrary,
Do you have a heart to show?
In many ways, Matthew was her chance of redemption in life. He was good, in a way none of them could claim to be – and, in his goodness, he saw a reflection of it on her. Mary didn’t think she was the person he imagined her to be but, for the brief period they had been together and alive, she imagined one day she might become it. Someone gentler, more forgiving, a person capable of showing her true emotions without guile or ploys.
She gave him a son, she became a mother and, lying there in her hospital bed, she saw a glimpse of that woman. A loving wife, a nurturing mum – strong, of course, but unbarbed too. Swathed by such a large amount of happiness that any threat would be rendered harmless by an everlasting source of contentment. Mary had been sure that even if she lost Downton, even if she lost her standing or her fortune, she would still have her family, her best friend, and the proof of their love. Not many miles away from the room where she envisioned that woman, their husband gave his last breath, taking one of them with him.
Lady Mary, quite contrary,
Have you turned stone cold?
It was nearly funny, how many choices were taken out of her hands. When she had finally chosen to become someone worthy of love and grace, the one supposed to love her was taken away. She couldn’t even choose to go with him, for she had a son she never bargained for (not for raising alone, at least) and a state with him. Move on with your life , everybody said, but she didn’t know how to be the person she had become without Matthew, and she had altered the one she was before him too much to go back.
It was like trying to glue a glass shredded to pieces, only to find some of them went missing – the effort could only produce something deformed, not meant for human appraisal. She was meaner than any of her past selves, brittle and sour. Edith, of course, was her victim.
For all the loyalty and love she owed her sister, Mary could never find within herself to like her. When she was born, the baby had represented a shift of attention from the first-born daughter, something her toddler self could never quite abide by. As they grew older, Mary found many more reasons to dislike the other. Always whining, never quite able to keep up. If being a spoilsport were a crime, her sister would be imprisoned for life. People were supposed to grow out of these failings, but that supposition was a lie more often than not. Edith never did, not really, neither did Mary. If she were to think deeper, she would find nobody around her had either. All someone could hope was to learn how to hide their flaws better. Humans rarely grow better, but they do grow wiser – and finer at pretending, that too. Once in a while, they catch themselves satisfied in their webs of make-believe, and one ought to live for such moments.
Lady Mary, quite contrary,
Are you jolly with your folly?
Life’s surprises come in many forms, some of them pleasing, others not so much. For a while, she believed to have lost the ability to love along with Matthew and that self who was loved by him when, in reality, neither was lost as much as it was unattainable. But life does go on and one finds within oneself the capacity of working with the cards one is dealt.
Mary became the sovereign in the lands of Grantham, if not the monarch de jure but rather the monarch de facto – her husband’s heir instead of her father’s. She loved Tony, and Charles, and even Evelyn – but it was in Henry that she found the promise of mutual happiness.
The first daughter of the Earl of Grantham was born with mother and father, grandparents, aunts, uncles and distant cousins, servants and a dowry. The whole ordeal of living had given her sisters and brothers, friends and family, sons and daughters, husbands and lovers, and great achievements to go with them.
Mary, Mary, quite contrary,
How does your garden grow?
With cockle shells, and silver bells,
And pretty maids all in a row.