George Wright, “Mail Coaches on a Road”
When I was visiting my parents a couple of weeks ago, I took a shuttle between Sewanee and the Nashville airport and found myself thinking of those 18th century coach rides described by Samuel Johnson and Henry Fielding. Both authors used journeying with strangers as an opportunity to reflect upon human nature.
Were my fellow passengers and I determined to impress each other, as are the passengers in Johnson’s “A Journey on a Stage Coach” (The Adventurer, August 25, 1753)? Maybe somewhat. One of my fellow passengers was a Hollywood film editor, who impressed us all by revealing that she edited the television show Pretty Little Liars. Having learned this, part of me wanted to impress her back by demonstrating to her my knowledge, as a film professor, of editing strategies and famous editors. Here’s how Johnson describes his own passengers:
In a stage coach, the passengers are for the most part wholly unknown to one another, and without expectation of ever meeting again when their journey is at an end; one should therefore imagine, that it was of little importance to any of them, what conjectures the rest should form concerning him. Yet so it is, that as all think themselves secure from detection, all assume that character of which they are most desirous, and on no occasion is the general ambition of superiority more apparently indulged.
In Johnson’s coach ride, the passengers maintain a silence for the first leg of the journey but then animosities begin to arise:
[E]very one was apparently suspected of endeavoring to impose false appearances upon the rest; all continued their haughtiness in hopes to enforce their claims; and all grew every hour more sullen, because they found their representations of themselves without effect.
Thus we travelled on four days with malevolence perpetually increasing, and without any endeavor but to outvie each other in superciliousness and neglect; and when any two of us could separate ourselves for a moment we vented our indignation at the sauciness of the rest.
Fielding too mentions “bickerings” and “little animosities” in the introductory chapter of the last book (Book XVIII) of Tom Jones. In our case, we skirted one subject that could have set us off, which was Obamacare.
That’s because the film editor talked about how grateful she was to have health insurance, telling us that she knew from personal experience how medical bills could devastate someone who was uninsured. She added that her dependence was locking her into her current job, even though she was interested in trying other things. Another woman mentioned that “luckily we have Obamacare” and then, in case we had missed it, added, “I’m being sarcastic.” She went on to complain about all the freeloaders who would bankrupt America by insisting on having free healthcare.
Not skilled in public debate nor desirous of engaging in a disagreeable argument, I merely said something to the effect of “that’s one way of looking at it.” But what went through my mind was that even though someone in the shuttle had just mentioned seeing, close up, the financial devastation that can visit one who is uninsured, all she could think of was irresponsible “takers’ who were out to take her money and bankrupt America. The editor strategically changed the subject, although not after mentioning that it was only because she belonged to a union that she, as an independent contractor, had health insurance. Later she would mention all the people she knew that had never been able to get their jobs back after the writer’s strike of 2007. Were any of them, I wondered, unable to get health insurance now.
Who knows where we would have ended up after four days. In this case, however, the ride was only 90 minutes and our conversation was amicable. It was what Fielding describes in the final stage of a long journey, where people generally
make up at last, and mount, for the last time, into their vehicle with cheerfulness and good humor; since after this one stage, it may possible happen to us, as it commonly happens to them, never to meet more.
I wondered afterwards whether any minds would have been changed had we entered into a spirited debate about the pros and cons of Obamacare. Had we missed a valuable opportunity? After all we, as a nation, are all on this coach together, strangers though we may be to each other. This is a far more apt analogy than a car ride or an airplane ride since those methods of transport isolate us from each other. In a shuttle, by contrast, people are forced by their very proximity to interact. Like it or not, we are all in our social safety net programs together.
One aspect of Fielding that I love is his confidence (which he later lost) that we can all get along if we remain good humored about it. True, he then undermines his point by attacking anyone who disagrees with him. But I prefer to end today’s post with this note to his readers/fellow travelers:
And now, my friend, I take this opportunity (as I shall have no other) of heartily wishing thee well. If I have been an entertaining companion to thee, I promise thee it is what I have desired. If in anything I have offended, it was really without any intention.
How’s that for an approach to political discourse?
