In
the intervals he sought relief in reading, in conversation,--which
especially turned upon classic literature,--in freedom of thought and
action, and in play with the children of the house. I can remember
well one day when we were both for some long time engaged in gambols,
broken off by my terror at his screwing up his long and curling
hair into a horn, and approaching me with rampant paws and frightful
gestures as some imaginative monster.
It was at this time that the incident happened which has been
mentioned by my father. A poor woman had been attending her son before
a criminal court in London. As they were returning home at night,
fatigue and anxiety so overcame her that she fell on the ground in
convulsions, where she was found by Shelley. He appealed to a very
opulent person, who lived on the top of the hill, asking admission for
the woman into the house, or the use of the carriage, which had just
set the family down at the door. The stranger was repulsed with
the cold remark that impostors swarmed everywhere, and that his own
conduct was "extraordinary." The good Samaritan, whom the Christian
would not help, warned the uncharitable man that such treatment of the
poor is sometimes chastised by hard treatment of the rich in days
of trouble; and I heard Shelley describe the manner in which the
gentleman retreated into his mansion, exclaiming, "God bless me, Sir!
dear me, Sir!" In the account of the occurrence given by my father,
he has omitted to mention that Shelley and the woman's son, who had
already carried her a considerable way up the main hill of Hampstead,
brought her on from the inhospitable mansion to our house in their
arms; and I believe, that, the son's strength failing, for some way
down the hill into the Vale of Health Shelley carried her on his back.
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