Carried by someone else

Text 1: In a Chair up Milsom Street, by Henry Lisle

An original journal written in a nineteenth-century voice; a period simulation, not an archival document.

The doctor having forbidden me to walk further than the Pump Room, I have this week been obliged to go about Bath in a chair, pushed by a chairman named Coggins. I had imagined it would be restful. It is nothing of the kind. A grown man of four-and-twenty, sitting in a wicker box with a tartan blanket tucked about him while another man, older and a good deal poorer, toils behind him up Milsom Street, is not resting; he is enduring a lesson in humility.

Coggins himself is perfectly content. He talks the whole way, over my shoulder, about the price of coals and the failings of the Corporation, and he takes the hills at a steady trot, breathing like a bellows, refusing every suggestion that I should get down and walk. “You’re my living, sir,” said he, when I pressed him. “Don’t go taking it away.”

What I cannot grow used to is the looking. From the chair one sees everybody’s waistcoat buttons, and everybody looks down upon one with that particular kindness reserved for infants and invalids. Yesterday I gave Coggins a shilling over his fare. He touched his hat. I am not sure which of us was the more relieved.

Text 2: Being Pedalled, by Freya Dunmore

An original contemporary article.

I had always been rude about pedicabs. They seemed to me the most ridiculous way to travel: a tourist lounging on a padded bench while some poor student pedals them up a hill in the rain. Then I sprained my ankle on the way out of a festival show, it was midnight, there were no taxis, and a young man called Tomás rang his bell at me.

The first thing I learned is that it is excruciating to be pedalled. Every time the road went uphill I could hear him breathing, and I sat very still, as if making myself smaller might help. Twice I offered to get out and hop. He laughed and said he’d carried a stag party of six the night before, so I was basically a holiday. He chatted all the way, about his marine biology degree and the best chips in town.

People on the pavement looked at me as though I were either a queen or an idiot. At a red light a group of lads cheered. When we arrived I tipped him far more than the fare. He thanked me and pedalled off whistling, and I hobbled to my door feeling that I had been given a lift by someone who was much better at life than me.

Both writers describe travelling through a city in a vehicle powered by another person.

What are the similarities between the writers’ experiences of being transported by someone else?

Draw on evidence from both texts to support your answer.