Watching fellow passengers

Text 1: The Omnibus Philosopher, by Josiah Carrow

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

There is no school of human nature to compare with the twopenny omnibus. Twelve persons who would not, in any other circumstance, consent to sit in the same parlour are here packed knee to knee for the space of four miles. The banker’s clerk draws in his coat lest it should touch the basket of the washerwoman; the washerwoman, for her part, regards the clerk’s cuffs with a contempt that he does not suspect.

Nobody speaks. It is the first law of the omnibus that one may examine one’s neighbour minutely but must never be seen to do so. I have spent many happy journeys inventing histories for my fellow travellers: the pale young man, I decided, was a poet behind with his rent; the stout lady with the umbrella, a widow who had buried two husbands and was considering a third.

Above us all sits the driver, a ruler whom none of us can see, and at the step stands the conductor, who knows every one of us by our coins and none of us by our names. When at last I climb down, I feel that I have travelled through the whole of London without speaking to a single soul in it.

Text 2: The N29 After Midnight, by Rosa Delahaye

An original contemporary article.

The night bus is the most honest room in the city. At one in the morning it carries everybody the daytime keeps apart: office cleaners heading home, students still glittering from a party, a security guard eating noodles from a carton, a man in a very good suit who has clearly missed the last train and is trying to look as though he chose this.

We all observe the same unspoken rule. You may study your fellow passengers in the reflection of the dark window, but you must never meet their eyes. I play a private game of guessing. The woman with the hospital lanyard has just finished a twelve-hour shift. The boy clutching flowers has either been forgiven or is about to ask to be.

The driver sits behind his screen, a voice that says “Move down, please” and nothing else. We never see his face. When I get off at my stop the doors hiss shut behind me, and I realise I have shared forty minutes and three miles with twenty strangers and will never know whether any of my guesses were right.

Both writers describe travelling by bus among strangers.

What are the similarities between the ways the writers respond to their fellow passengers?

Draw on evidence from both texts to support your answer.