The Sun.
London, England, 1856-06-12 00:00:00

LITERATURE.

Little Dorrit. No. VII. By Charles Dickens*
Paucks is " coming out," and promises to be
Trump as well as a Tug ! Not, however, by any
means in his capacity as the Tug does this same
marvellous Pancks give promise of turning up t%
Trump-card after all. For in that capacity, namelY,
as the snorting assistant of that " first-rate bun?'
bug of a thousand guns" (owner of " that " bead)
the Patriarch Casby—Well ! to employ Mr.
pier-
nish's rather vague but very expressive phrase °I
wonderment—" As to. Pancks, he does, he reall
does, he does indeed !" Sending a swell of terror
on before him, in Bleeding Heart Yard, and leaf"
ing it in his wake (on Rent-day)—cruising about
hither and thither, lashing the tide of the yard in'
to a most agitated and turbid state—and allowing
it to settle down at last into calm water again, only
about two hours after he is seen fuming away on
the horizon at the top of the steps ! This—as tu7
Tug, remember ! Now, in his new and but just
dawning character as the Trump—Pancks apPear,
before us not so much as the Pancks of the Pao,
shyly lingering in the wake of his big bland hum'
bug of a Proprietor, but as a bran new creation
entitled one " Paucks the Gipsy, fortune-telling '•
Yes, fortune-telling ; and the fortune he promises
to tell, the fortune of no other than dear Little
Dorrit herself—Amy, the child of the Marshalsea.
How all this new state of things comes about it is
for Mr. Dickens alone to relate ; and how excl°l-
sitely he does relate it the readers of this month's
number for the most part know, of course, already.
Thanks to chapters 23, 24, and 25, " Machinery
in Motion," " Fortune-Telling," and " Conspira-
tors and Others," there is even now perceivable-7
not afar off—the close of Book One of the present
fiction, the significant heading of which it may be
recollected was " Poverty." Poverty, no doubt,
as contradistinguished from Book Two—lachet
That second division of the tale of " Little Dorrit?,
we really seem to be entering upon in splendid
earnest, under the guidance of the queer little fen-
low with the black, bristly hair, standing up about
his head in prongs, the old note-book still rustling
between the accustomed finger and thumb, Pancks
the Tug hardly any longer, though blowing °k.
the steam loudly as ever to the last, 1311,:
Pancks the Gipsy Fortune - Telling !
to the events recounted in the new number, soul'
of them appear to give promise of turning out to
.
be occurrences of very great importance. Exees
t
lent Arthur Clennam, for instance, and hone
Daniel Doyce, enter into partnership. P 1.03,
sant, little, laughing, well-tempered John Bap
t's
Cavaletto turns up anew under Arthur's patronage
as a lame foreigner with a stick, recently out of ene
of the London Hospitals, and now located snugly
in one of the sky-parlours in a well-known corner
of Bleeding Heart Yard—Plornish's ! The way in
which Mr. Baptist, as he is called, is assisted by
Mrs. Plornish in regard to his English vocabulary
is a matter to be read of and roared over ! So
true is it to the reality in such matters--*
reality in itself so infinitely ridiculous. They
the Bleeding Hearts generally, who were kin
hearts withal—spoke to him (Mr. Baptist) "in wed
loud voices as if he were stone deaf." Simply be-
cause he was quite ignorant of the English law
guage ! " They constructed sentences," we are
told, by way of teaching him our native tongue
in all its purity, " such as were addressed by
the savages to Captain Cook, or by I'l'
day to Robinson Crusoe." But Mrs. 1"101'
nish above all, we learn, was particularly in
genious in this art, and attained so much celebrity
for saying " 'Me ope you leg well soon,' that it
considered in the Yard but a short remove indeed
from speaking Italian !" In the midst of all,
however, there is' obviously a latent fear about PO! •
John Baptist, of being terrified some fine day or
, ugly night, by the sudden apparition, in Bleeding
Heart Yard of—Rigaud the Murderer ! Insomuch
is this nameless terror indirectly rendered aPPit
rent, that we close the seventh number of " Litw-
Dorrit" with a firm conviction that some evening'
on Pancks the Gipsy climbing up to Mr. Baptist
humble garret to look in as usual in a friendly WAY
with a " Hallo, old chap ! Altro !" expecting
ta
ir
have his greeting returned to him according
custom, with an " Altro, signore, altro, altre.
altro !"—he will peer in, startled, upon the glower'
ing visage and haggard form of Rigaud the nut'
throat, that evil genius of poor, honest Cavalettn•
It is observable among the most laughter-moving
portions of this present instalment of " Little
Dorrit" that that wonderful person Mr. F.'s Aunt
comes out, if possible, in greater force than ever'" ,_.
breaking in abruptly upon a conversation be"
t ween Flora Casby and Arthur Clennarn,
with the following inexorable and awful state:,
meat—" There's mile-stones on the Dover Road la
Becoming more and more intimately acquainted
with her character in the present additional en"
startling development of it, we don't at all wonde,f,
at the mild Plornish growling in the passage
Little Dorrit that she (Mr. F.'s Aunt) is one "
is a old wixen," if ever he met with such, adding',
contemplatively, " The way she snapped a person:
head off, dear me !" being unable, in fact, at first
to get his mind away from her altogether—saying'
as if in excuse of himself, "For she is, Ido assure,
you, the winegariest party !" Flora herself shin,'",
forth in her turn hardly less than her esteemed rani-
tive by marriage—her explanation of the oddness
of the name of Little Dorrit being of itself sun`,"
ciently characteristic—" of all the strange name
I ever heard, the strangest, like a place down
the country with a turnpike, or a favourite pony
or a puppy, or a bird, or something from a see
shop to be put in a garden or flower-pot and COO
up speckled;" and again, when she has Little Do r"
rit herself with her, domesticated for a day unae.;
the Patriarch's roof, as her needlew'oman--b%
characteristically this same Flora gossips ab°ll,
her departed lord, closing her brief record of I'D
history with the announcement that " gout dying
upward soared with Mr. F. to another sphere!'
Mr. F.—(hardly less wonderful in his way thrill
his Aunt)—of whose portrait we read that 6 the
artist had given it a head that, in an intellectual
point of view, would have been top heavy for
,Shakspere." The Chiverys, by the way, are I°t
altogether forgotten, either, in the present number*
For, of Mr. Chivery, the father, we learn, in illus-
tration of a constitutional taciturnity eminently
befitting a turnkey, that "he locked himself
up as carefully as he locked up the Marshalsea
debtors " it being thereupon jocosely hinted
that " even his custom of bolting his Way'
may have been part of an uniform whole r
Of Mr. Chivery, the son, otherwise Young
John, we hear much, moreover, in connection
with the Ruggs of Pentonville—persons
dwelling is the Home of Pancks—the inner dour
within the street door of which tenement is de"
scribed as "poised upon a spring and starting open
with a click like a trap ! ' The said Ruggs, aided
and abetted byYoung John, being the Conspirator•
already referred to in the mention of the heading
of the last chapter of " Little Dorrit" just pu:
lished—conspirators in complicity with Pancks, tbo
Trump, not the Tug, " Pancks the Gipsy" in the
practice of his new-found craft of fortune-telling'
Divers curious matters appear to be already lite'
rally " upon the cards" held by Pancks, and dui"
tributed by him among himself and the other cur
spirators—mysteries relating to a churchyard it
Bedfordshire, to an inquiry in York, to a church
in London, to a Family Bible, a stone, a Still-W¢
baby, a clerk in Durham, and an old seafaring gall'
tleman in Dunstable—all bearing, of course, upon
the hopes and fears, the Riches or the Poverty, °
"A, .8, C, D. DA, DE, DI, DO Dictionary
order—Dorrit. That's the name, sir !"—Amy, the
Child of the Marshalsea.