This visit of Shelley was followed by his presenting Harriet Westbrook
with a copy of his new romance, _St. Irvyne_, which led to some
correspondence. It was now Harriet's turn to visit Shelley, sent also
by his sisters with presents of their pocket money. Shelley moreover
visited the school on different occasions, and even lectured the
schoolmistress on her system of discipline. There is no doubt that
Harriet's elder sister, with or without the cognisance of their
father, a retired hotel-keeper, helped to make meetings between the
two; but Shelley, though young and a poet, was no child, and must have
known what these dinners and visits and excursions might lead to; and
although the correspondence and conversation may have been more
directly upon theological and philosophical questions, it seems
unlikely that he would have discoursed thus with a young girl unless
he felt some special interest in her; besides, Shelley need not have
felt any great social difference between himself and a young lady
brought up and educated on a footing of equality with his own sisters.
It is true that her family acted and encouraged him in a way
incompatible with old-fashioned ideas of gentility, but Shelley was
too prone at present to rebel against everything conventional to be
particularly sensitive on this point.
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