ABSTRACT
To Jane. The invitation and To Jane — The recollection are companion pieces closely linked by their shared inspiration in a walk taken by S. in company with Jane Williams and Mary on Saturday 2 February 1822, and recorded in Mary’s journal entry for that day: ‘Go through the Pine Forest to the sea with Shelley and Jane’ (Mary Jnl i 393; Edward Williams’s journal also records the walk, Gisborne Jnl 128). Up to the departure for Villa Magni in late April 1822 Mary records taking frequent walks with Jane alone, but only two walks with S. alone are noted, on 19 and 28 February (Mary Jnl i 398, 400). However, the 2 February walk was the only one taken by S. and the two women together, and both of the poems written to commemorate it are evidently expressive of the tensions and complex dynamics of relations between the three (see notes, and To — — (‘The serpent is shut out from Paradise’), ‘General Headnote to S.’s Poems to Jane Williams’). BSM xix assumes that Trelawny claims to have been present on the 2 February walk (pp. liv-lv) in his account of discovering S. engaged in drafting With a guitar. To Jane, but Trelawny’s description of his walk in the pine forest of the Cascine outside Pisa refers only to its taking place ‘on one of those brilliant spring mornings we on the wrong side of the Alps are so rarely blessed with’ (Recollections ch. 8; Records ch 8 is identical). February 2 is at any rate clearly too early a date for the composition of With a guitar. To Jane (see headnote).
