Downton Abbey (TV Series)
Episode #2.2 (2011)
Maggie Smith: Violet Crawley, Dowager Countess of Grantham
Quotes
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Violet, Dowager Countess of Grantham : [drolly, after a dinner guest gets food spilled on her and the butler suffers an apparent heart attack, to another guest] You'll find there's never a dull moment with this house.
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Lady Edith Crawley : I said I could drive the tractor.
Violet, Dowager Countess of Grantham : Edith! You are a *lady*, not Toad of Toad Hall!
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[Lady Sybil and Isobel are proposing setting up a convalescent home at Downton Abbey]
Violet, Dowager Countess of Grantham : I think it's a *ridiculous* idea.
Lady Sybil Crawley : Why?
Violet, Dowager Countess of Grantham : Because this is a house, not a hospital.
Lady Mary Crawley : Granny, a convalescent home is where people rest and recuperate.
Violet, Dowager Countess of Grantham : But if there are relapses. What then? Amputation in the dining room? Rescuscitation in the pantry?
Cora, Countess of Grantham : It would certainly be the most tremendous disturbance. If you knew how chaotic things are as it is.
Isobel Crawley : But when there's so much good can be done.
[Violet stamps her stick on the floor]
Violet, Dowager Countess of Grantham : I forbid it! To have strange men prodding and prying around the house. To say nothing of pocketing the spoons. It's out of the question.
Cora, Countess of Grantham : I hesitate to remind you, but this is my house now - Robert's and mine. *We* will make the decision.
Violet, Dowager Countess of Grantham : [pause] Oh, I see. So now I'm an outsider... who need not be consulted.
Cora, Countess of Grantham : Since you put it like that, yes.
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Violet Crawley, Dowager Countess of Grantham : The truth is neither here nor there. It's the look of the thing that matters.
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Lady Rosamund Painswick : But Mary seems to have blotted her copybook in some way. So she needs a suitable marriage that will mend her fences.
Violet, Dowager Countess of Grantham : Well, how do we know Carlisle is suitable? Who is he? Who'd ever heard of him before the war?
Lady Rosamund Painswick : Sir Richard is powerful and rich and well on the way to a peerage. Of course, he may not be all that one would wish, but Mary can soon smooth off the rough edges.
Violet, Dowager Countess of Grantham : Well, you should know.
Lady Rosamund Painswick : What do you mean by that? Marmaduke was a gentleman.
Violet, Dowager Countess of Grantham : Marmaduke was the grandson of a manufacturer.
Lady Rosamund Painswick : His mother was the daughter of a baronet.
Violet, Dowager Countess of Grantham : Maybe, but they were no great threat to the Plantagenets.