The Sun.
London, England, 1856-03-10 00:00:00

MR. F.'S AUNT.

" This was an amazing little old woman, with a face like
a staring wooden doll too cheap fur expression, and a stiff
yellow wig parched unevenly on the top of her head, as if
the child who owned the doll had driven a tack through it
anywhere, so that it only got fastened on. Another remark-
able thing in this little old woman was, that the same child
seemed to have damaged her face in two or three places
with some blunt instrument in the nature of a spoon ; her
countenance, and particularly the tip of her nose, present-
ing the phenomena of several dints, generally answering
to the bowl of that article. A further remarkable thing
in this little old woman was, that she had no name but
Mr. F'. Aunt.

• • • • • • . • •
The major characteristics discoverable by the stranger
in Mr. F's Aunt, were extreme severity and grim tacitur-
nity; sometimes interrupted by a propensity to offer re-
marks, in a deep warning voice, which, being totally un-
called for by anything said by anybody,aud traceable to no
association of ideas, c mfounded and terrified the mind.
Mr. F's Aunt may have thrown in these observations on
some system of her own, and it may have been ingenious,
or even subtle; but the key to it was wanted."

So—in the middle of a neatly-served and well
cooked dinner of soup, soles, shrimp-sauce, and
potatoes—to begin with—Mr: F's Aunt, after re- ,
garding the company for ten minutes with a male-
volent gaze, delivers the following fearful remark-poi •
" When we lived at Henley, Barnes's gander was
stole by tinkers." So, too, when the dinner is well
over—finishing with mutton, a steak, and an
apple-pie " (nothing in the remotest way con-
nected with ganders)"—this same Mr. -F.'s Aunt
"strikes again, into the conversation like a clock,
without consulting anybody," with—" The monu-
ment, near London-bridge, was put up arter the
Great Fire of London, and the Great Fire of Lon-
don was not the fire in which your uncle George's
workshops was burned down." Until Arthur
Clennam (and no wonder) becomes absolutely
frightened by these sepulchral proclamations, and
Mr. F.'s aunt winds all up with the Solomonic
sentiment " I hate a fool !' to which she imparts
so extremely injurious and personal a character, by
levelling it straight at the visitor's head that it
becomes necessary to lead her from the room I [The
subject, by the way, of one of Phiz's hap-
piest illustrations giving us The Tug, The
Patriarch, the simpering Flora, and that staring
wooden doll with the face " too cheap for expres-
sion," that wonderful inventor of the system with-
out a key, " Mr. F. a Aunt"—all of them delight-
fully, inimitably.] As for the last, sad, charming,
beautiful chapter in the fourteenth number of
Little Dorrit, we can scarcely as yet, of course,
appreciate its full significanoe. That, be sure, iu
all good time, will duly appear in the dim, sorrow-
ful hereafter ! It hints already, we cannot but
believe and fear—the final death of dear exquisite
Little Dorrit--a homelier, older, yet scarcely
less child-like, or less poetical creation than
the angel-heroine of the dear " Old Curi-
osity Shop"—a Little Nell, not of the
rural roads, on the village green, or the ivy-man-
Aled church, but of the sordid, squalid, miry,