Shelley's Ghost

Jane Williams had an attractive singing voice and was an accomplished musician. Shelley tried to procure her a harp – her favourite instrument – from his friend Horace Smith in Paris, and when this proved too expensive gave her this Pisan-made guitar. ‘I have contrived to get my musical coals at Newcastle itself’, he told Smith.

Jane Williams kept the guitar for the rest of her life, and left it to her daughter, Mrs Prudentia Lonsdale. Mrs Lonsdale’s nephew (Jane's grandson), John Wheeler Williams, purchased the guitar after her death, and sold it to a Shelley devotee, Captain E.A. Silsbee, on the understanding that it was presented to a British institution. It was received by the Bodleian at a formal ceremony on 21 June 1898. It was still in fine condition, as if little used – according to Richard Garnett, it had not been played since Shelley's death.

Jane Williams; (1884) her daughter, Prudentia Lonsdale; (purchase, 1897) Prudentia's nephew, J.W. Williams; (purchase, 1898) Edward A. Silsbee; (gift, 1898) Bodleian.

Shelley’s Guitar, no. 148 & p. ix.

See references in full

Mauro Giuliani, transcription for guitar duet of the Overture to Rossini's opera, Elisabetta, regina d'Inghilterra (9:18). Performed by Ulrich Wedemeier (1st Guitar, on an instrument made by Gennaro Fabricatore in 1830) and Taro Takeuchi (2nd Guitar: G.B. Fabricatore, 1798). Track 7 from the CD The Century That Shaped The Guitar, (c) The Guitar Museum, UK, 2006 (Reel Time Records RTR 301), used by kind permission of James Westbrook, The Guitar Museum. See also Taro Takeuchi's webpage.

The six-string guitar made in Pisa by Ferdinando Bottari around 1815 or 1816 is in generally good condition, though not in playing order. To provide a parallel example of its sound, this duet is played on guitars made in 1798 and 1830 by two generations of the most famous family of Italian guitar-makers, Fabricatore of Naples. The instrument of 1798 is one of the earliest surviving examples of the guitar with six single strings, marking the very beginning of the Classical Guitar. The transcription by Giuliani is a contemporary arrangement from Rossini's opera. The Shelleys might well have heard Fabricatore guitars played during their visit to Naples in the winter of 1818-19, when they attended Rossini operas at the Teatro di San Carlo, just reopened after a disastrous fire. Rossini's Elisabetta had received its first performance there in 1815. Mary Shelley wrote to Marianne Hunt on 12 March 1819 that 'Nothing is heard in Italy now but Ros[s]ini & he is no favourite of mine -- he has some pretty airs -- but they say that when he writes a good thing he goes on copying it in all his succeeding operas for ever and ever'.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
James Westbrook, The century that shaped the guitar: (from the birth of the six-string guitar to the death of Tárrega): incorporating 'The Guitar Museum', ([Hove], 2005); Mary Shelley Letters, i, p. 89.