After many a summer dies the swan

TABLE TALK DENIS BROGAN

R.M.S. 'Queen Elizabeth'—`Men are we and must grieve': and to have just finished my last voyage on what must be one of the last voyages of the 'Queen Elizabeth' is to evoke Words- worthian reflections, especially if one has been born and bred on the Clyde, since the 'Elizabeth' is the largest ship ever built on Clyde, the 'sacred river,' and we know that we shall never look upon her like again.

For reasons I have given in these pages, 1 never took to the 'Queen Mary.' Stylewise,' she reminded me too much of Queen Elizabeth's grandmother, majestic but not elegant, and her departure for Long Beach distresses me less than the departure of London Bridge in search of a river in Arizona. But the 'Elizabeth' is some- thing else again. Many of the faults and mis- fortunes of the 'Queen Mary' were avoided in the design of the 'Queen Elizabeth.' The 'Eliza- beth' had never known the humiliating years of rust in John Brown's empty yard or her belated and not totally successful competition with the 'Normandie' (suns lacrinme reruns et 1nentem mortalia tangent). She was launched defiantly in the dread autumn of 1938, put to sea secretly in 1940, and when I first sailed in her, was still a semi-converted trooper. I had every comfort except convenience when I travelled as a demi-semi-vw, but enjoyed every moment of the trip if only because the 'dreadful trip was done.' I have sailed in the 'Elizabeth' often since then and known her—and enjoyed her—in good and bad weather at all times of the year.

Usually I was not travelling First or, if I was, it was at somebody else's expense. 1 have only once paid for a first-class ticket on one of the great Cunard liners and that was on the `Queen Mary.' No doubt my feelings were exacerbated by the crisis that led to my having to travel First at my own expense, but even if I had been travelling free, I wouldn't have felt at home in her.

It was different with the 'Queen Elizabeth: First of all, on this last trip I was able to case the joint with impunity and immunity, as 1 had not always been able to do in the past.

The attempts of the Cunard to keep class lines rigid like an old-fashioned German court often failed. For it was necessary for stewards and other servitors to move freely from one class to another to help out, bring in fresh supplies of drink, etc, and that meant that there had to be semi-secret passages that were not locked. Some passengers spotted them the first day, and 'open sesame.' On the second and third days you could ask to have the class barriers lowered for you if you had a sufficiently confident manner or had the impudence to press a tip.

The 'Normandie' was less snooty. I had plenty of conversation with the French crew, devoted, to a man, to the working of 'systiVne d' and in full democratic sympathy with Figaro types circumventing Count Almaviva or whoever was the current head of the Compagnie Generale Transatlantique. I remember getting into con- versation with a mdcano of the car who walked along the main first-class deck of the 'Norman- die' tapping a glass box. I asked 'what for?' 1 have no idea. They tell me to do it so I do.'

The fate of the 'Normandie' is too painful to recount, especially as told by a kinsman of mine by marriage who asserted that the great ship was wrecked by the incompetence of the American Navy which had taken her over. But the 'Queen Elizabeth' was an adequate substitute. She sailed better than the 'Queen Mary,' as she did on this trip, although the weather was odious for June. I have sailed the Atlantic in every month of the

year and you never can tell: it was cold, dark,

wet. Had it not been for the calendar Ed have sworn, like the two shipwrecked niariners on a desert island, that it must have been Glasgow Fair. But the service of all kinds was excellent and intelligent.

True, the music provided was a little too Palm Court for my taste, but then tastes differ. The organist was remarkably like the Prime Minister and our ration of news was so meagre and so much devoted to France and the United States (with a little about the downfall of the profes- sionals at Wimbledon), that I did daily with the thought that Mr Wilson had taken a much- needed rest; but, as we passed the Scilly Isles (where, as Sydney Smith pointed out a long time ago, people live by taking in each other's wash- ing) without Mr Wilson's swimming off to his pleasant isle of Ayes, I decided that the organist was an imposter. It was only a little later that I remembered that our political organist was Mr Edward Heath and not Mr Harold Wilson. It is perhaps remembering this that alone en- ables one to separate them from each other.

As a sociologist, I was interested to note that the Cunard had let the barriers down, for many of the mature matrons in First Class were more Mums than Moms; but perhaps this was a result of the new affluence, and the old expense account figures from Madison Avenue and Beverly Hills were either crossing by plane or sailing in private yachts lent by Mr Onassis.

Another sociological phenomenon today was the prevalence of children. We have all been

taught (or I at any rate have been taught) that American children are all badly brought up. They are 'bould, unbiddable brats.' If this were ever true, it is not true today. The numer- ous children swarming about the 'Queen Eliza- beth' were on the whole well behaved, lively,

charming and quite capable of amusing them-

selves. The little boys, at any rate, were catered for by two sample expensive cars, a Jaguar and an MG. Into these they fitted themselves and had great fun pretending to drive. I cannot think that their driving and scuffling did the cars much good.

We were allowed to spend a few hours ashore at Cherbourg, a city I had often bride but had never really set foot in. I was delighted to see

that so many deep thinkers had been unhorsed

in France and equally delighted that as much space was given to that day's wearer of the ntaillnt jaune in the Tour de France as to the elderly leader who was condemned to the fate of George Brown or Buonaparte so short a time ago.

It was comforting to find the piers at South- ampton so admirably reorganised and so

admirably run, to find that the charming young Cunard lady had hired us a car from the agency that doesn't try as hard as the other, that, despite the strike or go-slow, England was still a green and pleasant land and that, like the people of Cherbourg, the people along 'the roll- ing English roads' accepted the fact that the situation was desperate but not serious.

Next week for predictions of red ruin.