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Updated: May 24, 2025
Fitz-Gerald Venice Favourite Alpine Retreats Mrs. Arthur Bronson Life in Venice A Tragedy at Saint-Pierre Mr. Cholmondeley Mr. Browning's Patriotic Feeling; Extract from Letter to Mrs. Charles Skirrow 'Dramatic Idyls' 'Jocoseria' 'Ferishtah's Fancies'. The catastrophe of La Saisiaz closed a comprehensive chapter in Mr. Browning's habits and experience.
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.
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.
In The Two Poets of Croisic, which was written in London immediately after La Saisiaz, and which, though of little intrinsic importance, shows that Browning was capable of a certain grace in verse that is light, he pleads that the power of victoriously dealing with pain and transforming it into strength may be taken as the test of a poet's greatness: Yoke Hatred, Crime, Remorse, Despair: but ever 'mid the whirling fear, Let, through the tumult, break the poet's face Radiant, assured his wild slaves win the race.
He has repeatedly written or declared in the words of Charles Lamb:* 'If Christ entered the room I should fall on my knees; and again, in those of Napoleon: 'I am an understander of men, and he was no man. He has even added: 'If he had been, he would have been an impostor. But the arguments, in great part negative, set forth in 'La Saisiaz' for the immortality of the soul, leave no place for the idea, however indefinite, of a Christian revelation on the subject.
Fitz-Gerald from La Saisiaz: 'How lovely is this place in its solitude and seclusion, with its trees and shrubs and flowers, and above all its live mountain stream which supplies three fountains, and two delightful baths, a marvel of delicate delight framed in with trees I bathe there twice a day and then what wonderful views from the chalet on every side!
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.
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."
Browning published the first series of his 'Dramatic Idyls'; and their appearance sent a thrill of surprised admiration through the public mind. In 'La Saisiaz' and the accompanying poems he had accomplished what was virtually a life's work.
Soft and sweet as she appears, she is La belle Dame sans merci, and her worshipper is as desperately lost as the knight-at-arms of Keats's poem. Solitude and Society The volume which consists of La Saisiaz and The Two Poets of Croisic brings the work of this decade to a close.
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