At this time Shelley found it difficult to pay his lodgings and to buy food.  It is said that his sisters saved their pocket-money to support him:  and we know that he paid them frequent visits at their school on Clapham Common.  It was here that his characteristic hatred of tyranny displayed itself on two occasions.  “One day,” writes Miss Hellen Shelley, “his ire was greatly excited at a black mark hung round one of our throats, as a penalty for some small misdemeanour.  He expressed great disapprobation, more of the system than that one of his sisters should be so punished.  Another time he found me, I think, in an iron collar, which certainly was a dreadful instrument of torture in my opinion.  It was not worn as a punishment, but because I poked; but Bysshe declared that it would make me grow crooked, and ought to be discontinued immediately.”  The acquaintance which he now made with one of his sister’s school friends was destined to lead to most important results. (It is probable that he saw her for the first time in January, 1811.) Harriet Westbrook was a girl of sixteen years, remarkably good-looking, with a brilliant pink and white complexion, beautiful brown hair, a pleasant voice, and a cheerful temper.  She was the daughter of a man who kept a coffee-house in Mount Street, nick-named “Jew” Westbrook, because of his appearance.  She had an elder sister, called Eliza, dark of complexion, and gaunt of figure, with the abundant hair that plays so prominent a part in Hogg’s relentless portrait.  Eliza, being nearly twice as old as Harriet, stood in the relation of a mother to her.  Both of these young ladies, and the “Jew” their father, welcomed Shelley with distinguished kindness.  Though he was penniless for the nonce, exiled from his home, and under the ban of his family’s displeasure, he was still the heir to a large landed fortune and a baronetcy.  It was not to be expected that the coffee-house people should look upon him with disfavour.

Shelley paid Harriet frequent visits, both at Mrs. Fenning’s school and at Mount Street, and soon began a correspondence with her, hoping, as he expressly stated in a letter of a later date, by converting her to his theories, to add his sister and her “to the list of the good, the disinterested and the free.”  At first she seems to have been horrified at the opinions he expressed; but in this case at least he did not overrate the powers of eloquence.  With all the earnestness of an evangelist, he preached his gospel of freethought or atheism, and had the satisfaction of forming his young pupil to his views.  He does not seem to have felt any serious inclination for Harriet; but in the absence of other friends, he gladly availed himself of her society.  Gradually she became more interesting to him, when he heard mysterious accounts of suffering at home and tyranny at school.  This was enough to rouse in Shelley the spirit of Quixotic championship, if not to sow the seeds of love.  What Harriet’s ill-treatment really was, no one has been able to discover; yet she used to affirm that her life at this time was so irksome that she contemplated suicide.