Whom God Hath Joined...

"Whom God Hath Joined..." was the fourth episode of the second series of the British television series, Upstairs, Downstairs. The episode is set in 1909.

Cast[]

Regular cast

• Rachel Gurney (Lady Marjorie Bellamy)
• Gordon Jackson (Mr. Agnus Hudson)
• Angela Baddeley (Mrs. Kate Bridges)
• Jean Marsh (Rose Bucke)
• David Langton (Richard Bellamy)
• John Alderton (Thomas Watkins)
• Nicola Pagett (Elizabeth Kirbridge)
• Patsy Smart (Roberts)

Guest cast

• Ian Ogilvy (Lawrence Kirbridge)
• Raymond Huntley (Sir Geoffrey Dillon)
• Bryan Coleman (Sir William Manning)

Background[]

The impulsive Elizabeth defies her parents and marries a poet, Lawrence Kirbridge, but he turns out to have no interest in sex and arranges for his publisher to make love to Elizabeth, and a child is conceived In Winter 1908, she becomes involved with a group of socialist poets, and upsets her parents by inviting them to tea. She also, under the influence of one member, Evelyn Larkin (Georgia Brown), accrues a bill of over £4 on shoes for street children, then refuses to pay for them. Her father intervenes, and pays for the shoes. After one argument with her parents, she runs away from home to stay with her friend Henrietta Winchmore, and is only discovered after Rose is forced to tell Hudson where Elizabeth is staying. Her father visits, and shortly after, Elizabeth and fellow poet Lawrence Kirbridge have tea at Eaton Place.

While Elizabeth is reluctant to marry, the head housemaid and friend Rose, persuades her it is the right thing to do. She and Lawrence Kirbridge, the Cambridge-educated maternal grandson of a Dorset baronet, marry in June 1909.^{[note 1]} They take their honeymoon in Vienna, and set up home in Greenwich.

The marriage is an unhappy affair from the start, and Lawrence does not wish to consummate the relationship. Lawrence 'arranges' for his publisher, the much older Sir Edwin Partridge, to make love to Elizabeth at a soiree the couple hosts.

Plot[]

Shortly before Christmas 1909, Elizabeth moves back to her parents' home at Eaton Place. Initially she says that she is coming to stay, whilst Lawrence is visiting his aunt in Shropshire. When Lawrence returns home, the only other person in the house is his valet Watkins. After Watkins has told Lawrence what has happened, Lawrence says that he loved his wife, but not in the way she wanted him to, and asks Watkins if he thinks he is homosexual, to which Watkins replies that he thinks Lawrence is a romantic.

Elizabeth informs her parents that her marriage has failed. The family solicitor, Sir Geoffrey Dillon, prepares for an annulment of the marriage on the grounds it has not been consummated. However, after an examination by a physician, it is discovered that Elizabeth is 3–4 months pregnant and she is forced by her father to divulge the identity of the father. In order to avoid a scandal, it is agreed that Lawrence will be sent abroad with an allowance, and the Greenwich house will be sold. Much to Lawrence's anger, the Bellamy family hire Watkins as a chauffeur.

What happens later in the series[]

Later, Elizabeth Kirbridge gives birth to a daughter, Lucy Elizabeth, in a London nursing home. To avoid scandal and since Lawrence is the legal father, he is asked to attend the baby's christening. Following the ceremony, he is never heard from again. Elizabeth, lacking maternal feelings, is indifferent to the baby and content to have Lucy be brought up in the nursery by Sarah and the servants.^[1]

Notes[]

References[]