How is Tellson's Bank described at the start of book two in A Tale of Two Cities?
Tellson’s Bank is described as “very small, very dark, very ugly, very incommodious.” It is an old-fashioned place, and the bank managers are proud of that fact. All this is testimony of its conservative (and therefore safe and reliable) way of doing business. It is not a product of the changing times. It is what it has always been and always will be. It is unchanging in a world that is in a state of flux. The American colonies are rebelling, and France is unsettled and will soon have a revolution. But Tellson’s Bank is always the same.
England at that time was a country firmly grounded in tradition. Not since the English Civil War over a hundred years previously has there been any question of things drastically changing in England itself. Tellson’s Bank thus serves as a symbol of the nation, unlike the situation in France. Mr. Lorry is...
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very proud of his bank, and lives his life by the same principles as does Tellson’s. In this he serves as a bedrock, along with the bank, in the midst of the storms rocking Europe.
What is humorous about the description of the Tellson's Bank office in A Tale of Two Cities?
Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities is a story about two men who switch places, resulting in one man dying in place of another. Tellson & Co., a bank at which Mr. Jarvis Lorry is employed, features in the novel as a place where secrets are kept and important work is done.
When Tellson & Co. is described, it's made to sound like a cramped, dark, and dreary place where things are generally damp and unpleasant. Dickens takes the stereotype of serious, important bankers and describes what a child might imagine their offices to be like.
The humorous twist to this description is the fact that the employees of Tellson & Co. are quite proud and pleased with the dreary nature of their building. The employees believe it to be, “the triumphant perfection of inconvenience.”
The humor in Tellson’s description comes from the fact that it is a terrible place, and seems to take pride in being awful. Tellson’s Bank is described as “the triumphant perfection of inconvenience” (2:1). It is “an old-fashioned place” that is small and dark. The people there seem to prefer it this way.
They were even boastful of its eminence in those particulars, and were fired by an express conviction that, if it were less objectionable, it would be less respectable. (2:1)
Everything is small, damp, crowded and musty. Even the money seems to be moldy. Even the men are old (if there are ever any young men, apparently they hide them until they are old). Tellson’s is out of touch, and old-fashioned.
Part of the humor comes from the disconnect between Tellson's and the people, and part from the bank being an exaggeration of what most of us do not like about banks. We see the stuffiness taken to an extreme.