That's an interesting question, Merry.
I have always thought that William "made something of himself" during his absence from Whitby, probably abroad. He was already 41 when he married Elizabeth in 1871, the same year as the census. I don't know when he reappeared at Whitby, but he was a "Master Tobacconist" which implies some degree of knowledge and training.
Elizabeth was 31 when she married. Her father was a cordwainer, and her brothers did moderately well. Two of Elizabeth's brothers were executors of William Lamb's will, along with her. As William died in 1881 they were only married 10 years. Only one son, another William Henry, survived. A daughter Sarah died as an infant.
The Lamb family were never wealthy, but in Huntingdon they had a reasonably comfortable life and are well documented there. William Henry's great-grandmother inherited land in Wales through her sister (subject of a Chancery case). Charles Lamb was apprenticed to a gunsmith, probably in Birmingham, where his wife Sarah Chambers was born. We know from her second marriage in 1842 that her father Joseph Chambers was a gunsmith too. There is a Chambers family of gunsmiths in Birmingham.
The gross amount of William's personal estate was £ 1,110 13 11. Not a fortune, but a healthy sum in 1881.
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