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 1903.

Plot

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.^[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. He later angrily asks his valet Thomas if he thinks he is homosexual. Lawrence 'arranges' for his publisher, the much older Sir Edwin Partridge, to make love to Elizabeth at a soiree the couple hosts. During Christmas 1909, 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, Lawrence is sent abroad with an allowance, and the Greenwich house is sold.

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.^[2]

References

1. ↑ According to Series One, she and Lawrence marry in 1909, however in Series Two everything is put back a year, and they are said to marry in 1908. This article follows the Series One date.
2. ↑ Whom God Hath Joined... - Updown.org.uk