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Updated: June 12, 2025
Long since in Florence he had become acquainted with Miss Egerton-Smith, who loved music like himself, and was now often his companion at public performances in London. She was wealthy, and with too little confidence in her power to win the regard of others, she lived apart from the great world.
Miss Egerton-Smith was the companion and house-mate of Browning and his sister in their various summer wanderings from 1874 to 1877. In the first of these years the three friends occupied a house facing the sea at the village of Mers near Tréport. Browning at this time was much absorbed by his Aristophanes' Apology.
A touch of autumnal freshness had barely crept into the atmosphere of the Saleve, when a moral thunderbolt fell on the little group of persons domiciled at its base: Miss Egerton-Smith died, in what had seemed for her unusually good health, in the act of preparing for a mountain excursion with her friends the words still almost on her lips in which she had given some directions for their comfort.
La Saisiaz, the record of thoughts that were awakened during that solitary clamber to the summit of Salève after the death of Miss Egerton-Smith, is not an elegy, but it remains with us as a memorial of friendship.
The following summers were spent at Villers in Normandy , at the Isle of Arran , and in the upland country of the Salève, near Geneva. During the visit to the Salève district, where Browning and his sister with Miss Egerton-Smith occupied a chalet named La Saisiaz, he was, Mrs Orr tells us, "unusually depressed and unusually disposed to regard the absence from home as a banishment."
It was published in the early summer of 1873. London Life Love of Music Miss Egerton-Smith Periodical Nervous Exhaustion Mers; 'Aristophanes' Apology' 'Agamemnon' 'The Inn Album' 'Pacchiarotto and other Poems' Visits to Oxford and Cambridge Letters to Mrs. Fitz-Gerald St.
He still enjoyed the various pleasures and excitements of the London season; but it is noted by Mrs Orr that after the death of Miss Egerton-Smith he "almost mechanically renounced all the musical entertainments to which she had so regularly accompanied him." His daily habits were of the utmost regularity, varying hardly at all from week to week.
In 1872 Browning lost the warm-hearted and faithful friend who had given him such prompt, womanly help in his worst days of grief Miss Blagden. Her place in his memory remained her own. Miss Egerton-Smith might seem to others wanting in strength of feeling and cordiality of manner.
There was no engagement possible or actual, which did not yield to the discovery of its clashing with the day and hour fixed for one of these. His frequent companion on such occasions was Miss Egerton-Smith. Miss Smith became only known to Mr. Browning's general acquaintance through the dedicatory 'A. E. S. of 'La Saisiaz'; but she was, at the time of her death, one of his oldest women friends.
Suddenly the repose of La Saisiaz was broken up; the mood of languorous pleasure and drowsy discontent was at an end. While preparing to join her friend on a long-intended mountain climb Miss Egerton-Smith, with no forewarning, died. The shock was for a time overwhelming.
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