The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 | Page 4

kept
alive the flame of pure religion in the sheltering obscurities of Hog-lane,
and the vicinity of the Seven Dials!
Deputy, under Evans, was Thomas Tame. He had the air and stoop of a
nobleman. You would have taken him for one, had you met him in one
of the passages leading to Westminster-hall. By stoop, I mean that
gentle bending of the body forwards, which, in great men, must be
supposed to be the effect of an habitual condescending attention to the

applications of their inferiors. While he held you in converse, you felt
strained to the height in the colloquy. The conference over, you were at
leisure to smile at the comparative insignificance of the pretensions
which had just awed you. His intellect was of the shallowest order. It
did not reach to a saw or a proverb. His mind was in its original state of
white paper. A sucking babe might have posed him. What was it then?
Was he rich? Alas, no! Thomas Tame was very poor. Both he and his
wife looked outwardly gentlefolks, when I fear all was not well at all
times within. She had a neat meagre person, which it was evident she
had not sinned in over-pampering; but in its veins was noble blood. She
traced her descent, by some labyrinth of relationship, which I never
thoroughly understood,--much less can explain with any heraldic
certainty at this time of day,--to the illustrious, but unfortunate house of
Derwentwater. This was the secret of Thomas's stoop. This was the
thought--the sentiment--the bright solitary star of your lives,--ye mild
and happy pair,--which cheered you in the night of intellect, and in the
obscurity of your station! This was to you instead of riches, instead of
rank, instead of glittering attainments: and it was worth them altogether.
You insulted none with it; but, while you wore it as a piece of
defensive armour only, no insult likewise could reach you through it.
_Decus et solamen._
Of quite another stamp was the then accountant, John Tipp. He neither
pretended to high blood, nor in good truth cared one fig about the
matter. He "thought an accountant the greatest character in the world,
and himself the greatest accountant in it." Yet John was not without his
hobby. The fiddle relieved his vacant hours. He sang, certainly, with
other notes than to the Orphean lyre. He did, indeed, scream and scrape
most abominably. His fine suite of official rooms in
Threadneedle-street, which, without any thing very substantial
appended to them, were enough to enlarge a man's notions of himself
that lived in them, (I know not who is the occupier of them now)
resounded fortnightly to the notes of a concert of "sweet breasts," as
our ancestors would have called them, culled from club-rooms and
orchestras--chorus singers--first and second violoncellos--double
basses--and clarionets--who ate his cold mutton, and drank his punch,
and praised his ear. He sate like Lord Midas among them. But at the
desk Tipp was quite another sort of creature. Thence all ideas, that were

purely ornamental, were banished. You could not speak of any thing
romantic without rebuke. Politics were excluded. A newspaper was
thought too refined and abstracted. The whole duty of man consisted in
writing off dividend warrants. The striking of the annual balance in the
company's books (which, perhaps, differed from the balance of last
year in the sum of 25_l._ 1_s._ 6_d._) occupied his days and nights for
a month previous. Not that Tipp was blind to the deadness of things (as
they call them in the city) in his beloved house, or did not sigh for a
return of the old stirring days when South Sea hopes were young--(he
was indeed equal to the wielding of any the most intricate accounts of
the most flourishing company in these or those days):--but to a genuine
accountant the difference of proceeds is as nothing. The fractional
farthing is as dear to his heart as the thousands which stand before it.
He is the true actor, who, whether his part be a prince or a peasant,
must act it with like intensity. With Tipp form was every thing. His life
was formal. His actions seemed ruled with a ruler. His pen was not less
erring than his heart. He made the best executor in the world: he was
plagued with incessant executorships accordingly, which excited his
spleen and soothed his vanity in equal ratios. He would swear (for Tipp
swore) at the little orphans, whose rights he would guard with a
tenacity like the grasp of the dying hand, that commended their
interests to his protection. With all this there was about him a sort of
timidity--(his few enemies used to give it a worse name)--a something
which, in reverence to the dead, we will