The Celestial Omnibus

“The Celestial Omnibus” celebrates the transcendent power of art, which plays out through the triumph of Art and Childhood Innocence over Adult Weaponization of Intellectualism. These warring perspectives are embodied by the boy and Mr. Bons, respectively. Mr. Bons, obsessed with intellectualism, mistakes the purpose of art, whereas the boy’s innocence grants him truer understanding of art. An early allusion to Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, who wrote a poem called “Ode to Heaven,” establishes the characters’ relationships with art. Puzzled by their neighborhood’s “To Heaven” signpost, the boy asks neighbor Mr. Bons about its meaning. However, Mr. Bons reinforces the boy’s parents’ insistence that the sign is a Shelley-like joke. He wonders if the boy is familiar with Shelley’s work, as he respects it, but still dismisses the sign itself. He does not take Romanticism, its framing of art and imagination as portals to the sublime, seriously. Mr. Bons’s (whose name is “Snob” backward) real interest in art becomes clear when the boy’s mother mentions they own at least two volumes of Shelley; Mr. Bons recognizes an opportunity for competition and mentions he owns seven volumes. In pursuing gamesmanship, he reveals his tendency to use art to establish cultural superiority. Later, the boys’ parents demonstrate a different weaponization of knowledge by forcing their son to learn poetry—to differentiate between it and reality. When he returns home from riding the titular omnibus, his parents insist the horse-drawn carriage is imaginary. However, he retains his innocence and insists it was “the greatest day of his life” (Paragraph 3.1).

In contrast to the adults around the boy, the boy’s innate appreciation for art and beauty emerges as he takes a moment to observe his neighborhood and a sunset—a motif throughout the short story. As he meditates on the beauty of trees in the evening light, he is affected with “desires for something different” (Paragraph 1.15). In appreciating the transformative beauty of nature, he engages in Romantic philosophy. The comparison of the neighborhood to an “Alpine valley” underscores this point, as it is likely a reference to Shelley’s famous poem “Mont Blanc,” inspired by the Alpine peak.

The titular omnibus is also the story’s vehicle for its exploration of the power of art. The carriage is driven by and ferries living passengers to deceased literary figures—real and fictional—with its journey amongst the clouds being framed as a magical, almost spiritual, experience. This journey occupies a liminal space, taking the boy, and later Mr. Bons, from the physical space of Surbiton, London, to a distant shore connected by a rainbow—a motif, like the sunset, that illustrates the transformative beauty of nature, of learning on one’s own terms.

When the boy first decides to investigate his neighborhood’s “To Heaven” sign and alley, he notices an advertisement titled “Sunrise and Sunset Omnibuses”—with sunrise and sunset being liminal spaces in time, neither day nor night. However, before he can investigate further, his father takes him home. In the ensuing dialogue, the boy’s father criticizes him for imagining “he’d walky-palky up to Evvink!” (Paragraph 1.19). This infantilization of the boy stems from parental concern for his safety, but ultimately stunts his intellectual curiosity. Rather than nurture this curiosity in a healthy way, the boy’s parents assume his detour was a failure in differentiating reality from fiction. Thus, he seems caught between two extremes, as embodied by Mr. Bons—whose intellectualism commands his reverence—and his parents—whose appreciation for intellectual engagement is limited by their roles as working adults and parents. Ultimately, the boy disregards the skepticism of the adults around him. When the omnibus first appears at sunrise, he realizes he forgot his wallet—and thus has no money with which to buy a return ticket. However, driver Mr. Browne clarifies tickets cannot be paid with coin or exchange. On the omnibus, money is no object. Rather, the omnibus is an experience, one that prioritizes appreciation for art, literature, and nature over intellectualism.

The first driver, Mr. Browne, introduces himself as 17th-century British author Sir Thomas Browne, whose contributions to the medical field illuminated generations. The boy is unfamiliar with his work, but like he did with Romantic philosophy, he intuits the spirit of Sir Thomas’s work. As they ride, Sir Thomas claims to be a healer of “queasy souls,” and the boy admits he has felt similarly upon viewing a sunset (Paragraph 2.22). He feels “queasy,” decidedly different from the rigid adults around him—those satisfied with intellectual conventions. In this regard, the omnibus again serves as both symbol and allegory for creating and consuming art: In declining fare, it differentiates between Art and Materialism. The boy’s intuitive connection with Sir Thomas suggests a similar aversion to intellectualism. The driver, an acknowledged author, may steer the carriage (discussion), but the omnibus’s journey is only as rewarding as its passengers (openness to discussion). As the omnibus heads toward its destination, E. M. Forster explores the advantages of childhood innocence. A storm descends, but the boy is unafraid and later rejoices at the transformative sight of a rainbow.

When Mr. Bons revisits the boy’s family, the boy’s parents prompt him to recite John Keats’s sonnet “To Homer.” They laugh, while Mr. Bons encourages the boy to keep reading, as a teacher would a student. Whether intentional or not, the adults exhibit condescension. Yet, as the boy reads, he experiences a genuine transformation, crying, “[A]ll these words that only rhymed before, now that I’ve come back, they’re me” (Paragraph 3.16). Mr. Bons is curious but patronizing, promising the boy, “Some day, when you read more, you will understand what I mean” (Paragraph 3.21). He may be more receptive than the boy’s parents, but still doubts his artistic understanding and positions himself as intellectually superior. Thus, he seeks the omnibus to ultimately disprove it. When the omnibus appears, the new driver’s name is posted inside: The boy innocently mispronounces 13th-century Italian author Dante Alighieri’s name as “Dan someone” (Paragraph 3.37). However, Mr. Bons immediately recognizes Dante as the author of The Divine Comedy—a poem that follows traveler Dante through the three stages of the afterlife—Inferno, Purgatory, and Paradise. Mr. Bons’s own journey through liminality is eventually revealed to mirror Dante’s.

In addition to Dante’s name, his quote is written inside the omnibus: “Lasciate ogni baldanza voi che entrate,” or “Abandon all self-importance, ye who enter here” (Paragraph 3.40). Mr. Bons recognizes the quote, but assumes “baldanza” (self-importance) is an error, as the original quote used the word “speranza” (hope). In his haste to assert his intellect, he misses Dante’s warning. Though Mr. Bons reveres Dante, the boy is unimpressed and yearns for the company of Mrs. Gamp and Mrs. Harris, characters from Charles Dickens’s novel Martin Chuzzlewit. However, Mr. Bons considers these fictional characters intellectually inferior, and criticizes the boy for reading for leisure rather than study. He claims a “cultured person” (Paragraph 3.52) would appreciate meeting real-life figures like Homer and William Shakespeare (Paragraph 3.52). In other words, he conflates the boy’s innocence with a lack of culture.

However, Mr. Bons’s intellectualism actively prevents artistic experience. As the omnibus nears its destination, the boy enjoys the sensory thrill of the familiar rainbow. Mr. Bons is unable to see it or Greek hero Achilles, of Homer’s Iliad, waiting on the shore, and begs to return to the physical comfort of London rather than engage with fictional characters. He pleads for Dante’s help, insisting, “I have honored you. I have quoted you” (Paragraph 3.82). However, Dante insists “they that worship [poetry] must worship in spirit and in truth” (Paragraph 3.83). In other words, art is not about quoting names and such. Mr. Bons eventually exits the omnibus, only to fixate on London below, which causes him to fall. By contrast, the boy is crowned, as he embodies a true artist. The story concludes with a newspaper detailing the discovery of Mr. Bons’s mutilated body, a prosaic end to the intellectual elitism that destroyed him.