ABSTRACT
The sole source for The magnetic lady to her patient is a very careful holograph given, or sent, under cover to Jane Williams. This MS (A) was at some point acquired by Trelawny, and on his death was inherited by his daughter Laetitia (Mrs Charles F. Call), who donated it in September 1907 to the University Library, King’s College, Aberdeen (MS 937); there is another MS copy of the poem in Trinity College Library, Dublin (TCD MS 7762–72/2231; written in an unknown hand, it has no textual authority: see MYRS viii 402–8). Written in A in S.’s hand on a cover sheet is To Jane./Not to be opened unless you are/alone, or with Williams. This folded sheet enclosed a bifolium, of the same paper type, containing the poem written on both sides of the first leaf. At the top of the recto of this leaf, above the title The magnetic lady to her patient, S. wrote, in an ink similar to that of the address on the cover sheet, For Jane & Williams alone to see. (There are short horizontal lines between these words and the title, between the title and the first stanza, and between the first and second stanzas (on the recto of the leaf), but not between the third and fourth or the fourth and fifth stanzas on the verso). The MS is undated, and it is not known when S. wrote the poem, or when he sent it to Jane Williams, but it almost certainly belongs to the period from mid-January to late June 1822 (probably early April, as suggested), during which time his attraction to Jane was strengthening. The injunction to secrecy suggests S.’s similar anxiety in sending To —— (‘The serpent is shut out from Paradise’) to the Williamses in January, and it is obvious that in both cases S.’s concern was to ensure that Mary should not learn of the poems he was writing and presenting to Jane.
