For another misfortune which occurred in Our Street we were much more
compassionate. We liked Danby Dixon, and his wife Fanny Dixon still
more. Miss C. had a paper of biscuits and a box of preserved apricots
always in the cupboard, ready for Dixon's children--provisions by
the way which she locked up under Mrs. Cammysole's nose, so that our
landlady could by no possibility lay a hand on them.
Dixon and his wife had the neatest little house possible, (No. 16,
opposite 96,) and were liked and respected by the whole street. He was
called Dandy Dixon when he was in the dragoons, and was a light weight,
and rather famous as a gentleman rider. On his marriage, he sold out and
got fat: and was indeed a florid, contented, and jovial gentleman.
His little wife was charming--to see her in pink with some miniature
Dixons, in pink too, round about her, or in that beautiful gray dress,
with the deep black lace flounces, which she wore at my Lord Comandine's
on the night of the private theatricals, would have done any man
good. To hear her sing any of my little ballads, "Knowest Thou the
Willow-tree?" for instance, or "The Rose upon my Balcony," or "The
Humming of the Honey-bee," (far superior in MY judgment, and in that
of SOME GOOD JUDGES likewise, to that humbug Clarence Bulbul's
ballads,)--to hear her, I say, sing these, was to be in a sort of small
Elysium. Dear, dear little Fanny Dixon! she was like a little chirping
bird of Paradise. It was a shame that storms should ever ruffle such a
tender plumage.
Well, never mind about sentiment. Danby Dixon, the owner of this little
treasure, an ex-captain of Dragoons, and having nothing to do, and
a small income, wisely thought he would employ his spare time, and
increase his revenue. He became a director of the Cornaro Life Insurance
Company, of the Tregulpho tin-mines, and of four or five railroad
companies. It was amusing to see him swaggering about the City in his
clinking boots, and with his high and mighty dragoon manners. For a time
his talk about shares after dinner was perfectly intolerable; and I for
one was always glad to leave him in the company of sundry very dubious
capitalists who frequented his house, and walk up to hear Mrs. Fanny
warbling at the piano with her little children about her knees.
It was only last season that they set up a carriage--the modestest
little vehicle conceivable--driven by Kirby, who had been in Dixon's
troop in the regiment, and had followed him into private life as
coachman, footman, and page.
One day lately I went into Dixon's house, hearing that some calamities
had befallen him, the particulars of which Miss Clapperclaw was desirous
to know. The creditors of the Tregulpho Mines had got a verdict against
him as one of the directors of that company; the engineer of the
Little Diddlesex Junction had sued him for two thousand three hundred
pounds--the charges of that scientific man for six weeks' labor in
surveying the line. His brother directors were to be discovered nowhere:
Windham, Dodgin, Mizzlington, and the rest, were all gone long ago.
When I entered, the door was open: there was a smell of smoke in the
dining-room, where a gentleman at noonday was seated with a pipe and
a pot of beer: a man in possession indeed, in that comfortable pretty
parlor, by that snug round table where I have so often seen Fanny
Dixon's smiling face.
Kirby, the ex-dragoon, was scowling at the fellow, who lay upon a little
settee reading the newspaper, with an evident desire to kill him. Mrs.
Kirby, his wife, held little Danby, poor Dixon's son and heir. Dixon's
portrait smiled over the sideboard still, and his wife was up stairs
in an agony of fear, with the poor little daughters of this bankrupt,
broken family.
This poor soul had actually come down and paid a visit to the man in
possession. She had sent wine and dinner to "the gentleman down stairs,"
as she called him in her terror. She had tried to move his heart, by
representing to him how innocent Captain Dixon was, and how he had
always paid, and always remained at home when everybody else had fled.
As if her tears and simple tales and entreaties could move that man
in possession out of the house, or induce him to pay the costs of the
action which her husband had lost.
Danby meanwhile was at Boulogne, sickening after his wife and children.
They sold everything in his house--all his smart furniture and neat
little stock of plate; his wardrobe and his linen, "the property of a
gentleman gone abroad;" his carriage by the best maker; and his wine
selected without regard to expense. His house was shut up as completely
as his opposite neighbor's; and a new tenant is just having it fresh
painted inside and out, as if poor Dixon had left an infection behind.
Kirby and his wife went across the water with the children and Mrs.
Fanny--she has a small settlement; and I am bound to say that our mutual
friend Miss Elizabeth C. went down with Mrs. Dixon in the fly to the
Tower Stairs, and stopped in Lombard Street by the way.
So it is that the world wags: that honest men and knaves alike are
always having ups and downs of fortune, and that we are perpetually
changing tenants in Our Street.