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Excerpt from Bentley's Miscellany, Vol. 16
The name of the lodger who played the flute in bed, on the second floor of the house in Windmill-street, occupied by the funny gentleman and his friend, was Fipps - Mr. Rasselas Fipps. He was a harmless looking young man, with a long nose: and his mouth was puckered into a perpetual simper from long practice on his instrument which gave him a lively expression, although his nature was grave. Perhaps it was this harmless disposition that made him very popular amongst the fairer portion of the visitors to Gravesend, coupled with his musical propensities; for he knew a great number of ladies. Oftentimes as the benighted traveler returned from Cobham, he heard the dulcet notes of Mr. Fipps's pipe - he was equally great upon the flageolet - floating in the soft and mellow eventide; and at a turn of the road would discover Mr. Fipps reclining in a pastoral attitude against a stile, whilst two or three ladies, seated on logs of timber, listened to him in wrapt admiration, and donkeys browsed at their side, in classical grouping. The style of Mr. Fipps's playing was usually ambitious, and of a high school - indeed, he sometimes attempted to grasp such lofty notes that bystanders trembled for his bloodvessels; but in moments of light distraction he would essay the gay quadrille or popular waltz; and then, when nobody was by, the ladies would dance a gentle measure upon the green sward, calling each other "dear," and laughing timidly, as though they blushed to find themselves thus employed, as is their wont on such occasions, from sylvan dances to the first quadrille after supper at evening parties. So that the life of Mr. Fipps might be considered as Arcadian; and he would have formed, with his fair companions, a sort of drop-scene of the nineteenth century, had any artist sketched them.
During the early periods of their residence Mr. Joe Jollit did not get on very well with Mr. Fipps. He pronounced him "slow;" and indeed what could be expected from a man who dined every day upon soda water and periwinkles; for such did the jocular Jollit affirm was the case. And having won an opal smelling-bottle and two mother-of-pearl salt-spoons, at Tulley's bazaar, he persuaded the elegant young lady with the long black curls, who personated the fickle goddess, - anything but blindly, - to change these prizes for an octave flute, upon which he accompanied Mr. Fipps through the wall, in an uncertain obligato.
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