Afternoon Tea, Part Two

HISTORY INSISTS that the Duchess of Bedford, on a visit to the Duke of Rutland in 1840, grew uncomfortable peckish as she awaited supper. It wouldn’t be served until at least 8 PM. She asked for a snack. It consisted of tea and some feathery sandwiches. Friends joined her, both for the refreshment and a chance to catch up on the news.

Thus was born afternoon tea, or “low tea,” as it’s sometimes termed, owing to the low tables (now, inappropriately, called “coffee tables”) on which it was served. Which also distinguishes it from “high tea,” which is a meal unto itself, a tradition born during the Industrial Revolution, when workers returned home ravenous. High tea is dinner; low tea is scones and cucumber sandwiches.

The latter is the ritual practiced each afternoon at 3:30 on board the Queen Mary when the ship isn’t easing in or out of port. A large ballroom, the Queen’s Room, is the main service area, but such can be the overflow that the Britannia Restaurant may be pressed into service.

Cunard presents this as an elegant ritual capturing the refined nature of Victorian-era ease. White-gloved servers circulate to refill your cup from polished silver service when they’re not tempting you with trays of sandwiches and scones and other sweets.

A wonderful idea, in theory. If you want to indulge, you have three choices: line up early outside the Queen’s Room; push in after the start of the event and hope for the best; get your goodies and tea from the seventh-deck buffet. Because it can be a scene of madness.

After all, it’s free food for everyone and a sizeable number of passengers are American. This means they take way too much even as they take up way too much space. Or I should say “we,” because I’m one of the worst offenders.

Susan and I went in search of afternoon tea our first full day of sailing, already late to the party when we set off. There’s a server hierarchy on board the ship, so the busy waiter who greeted us indicated the lack of table space even as he turned us over to a captain (service, not ship’s), who guided us on over to the Britannia, an odd half-flight up from where we were. There we were seated at the remaining two seats at an eight-top, which meant that there were six people waiting to bore us with their appalling lack of conversational topics.

In this, of course, my wife eagerly joins.  That is, she enjoys learning where these folks (they were all Americans) are from and how Uncle Marvin insisted they should sail and good thing there’s this tea cuz there was barely anything to eat at dinner last night and sure hope there are some good shows to see and ...

Which hardly does credit to the amount of complaining we heard. There’s a peculiar bonding ritual conducted over complaints when you’ve been raised in the cult of victimhood, a cult that includes anyone you’ve stood behind in a supermarket line. I figured I’d be excused from conversation if my mouth were full, but quickly realized that was stopping nobody else at the table.

As soon as we were seated a server stopped by with tea. Someone at the table asked if there’d be sandwiches. “Coming, coming,” murmured the server. This, I learned, would be a constant refrain. Those treats-laden trays couldn’t arrive fast enough. Crustless finger sandwiches arrived and vanished; scones and clotted cream did likewise. Little cake-slices. More sandwiches. More scones, dropped into the insatiable maw of this table. Likewise at the tables around us. The Duchess of Bedford’s dignified soirée had degenerated into a free-for-all, helped by the fact that it was free.

Or at least a no-extra-charge part of an ocean voyage that proffers food, via dining room, buffet, or room service, at all hours. You need only push the feeder bar with your paw and a cascade of tasty morsels fills your bowl.

But let me praise the dignity of those busy servers. Each arrives with teapot or salver containing enough to satisfy a table or two but no more, circling back to a pantry station even as those thus denied holler in abject hunger. Amazing how easy it is to act like you’re starving even as your downing that third or fourth scone!

We avoided afternoon tea the following day, but the day after that I felt the pull. The pangs. The reckless appeal of those pastries. We visited the buffet area, where you help yourself. Where everyone there is so occupied, crowding the displays of sandwiches and sweets. Where you intrude your tongs at your peril, lest you should be perceived as cutting in line. Not that anyone is hissing, “I was here first.” You’re more likely simply be elbowed out of the way, pushed back to where the timid await their elusive turns.

Back to the Queen’s Room for our next shot at afternoon tea, this time taking a place in line well before the starting bell. Lucking into a rare table for two, right under the lifesize portrait of her recently deceased majesty. Then, at last, with that endlessly supply of bad-for-me food and no-one to chat with but my wife, I was truly able to enjoy my misanthropic self.