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    Daisy Miller

    Daisy Miller

    2.9 28

    by Henry James, David Lodge (Editor)


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      ISBN-13: 9780141907871
    • Publisher: Penguin Books, Limited
    • Publication date: 06/28/2007
    • Sold by: Barnes & Noble
    • Format: eBook
    • Pages: 128
    • Sales rank: 291,163
    • File size: 2 MB

    Henry James was born in 1843 in Washington Place, New York, of Scottish and Irish ancestry. In addition to many short stories, plays, books of criticism, autobiography and travel, he wrote some twenty novels, the first published being Roderick Hudson (1875). They include The Europeans, Washington Square, The Portrait of a Lady, The Bostonians, The Princess Casamassima, The Tragic Muse, The Spoils of Poynton, The Awkward Age, The Wings of the Dove, The Ambassadors and The Golden Bowl.

    Born in South London on 28 January 1935, Professor David Lodge is Professor of English Literature at the University of Birmingham, where he taught from 1960 until 1987, when he retired to write full-time. Changing Places (1975), was Lodge's first book in a trilogy of campus novels with Small World (1984), and Nice Work (1988). His new novel, Author, Author: A Novel (2004), opens in December 1915 with the dying Henry James, and journeys back to the 1880s to explore James's 'middle years'. David Lodge lives in Birmingham.

    Philip Horne is Professor of English at University College London.


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    Brief Biography

    Date of Birth:
    April 15, 1843
    Date of Death:
    February 28, 1916
    Place of Birth:
    New York, New York
    Place of Death:
    London, England
    Education:
    Attended school in France and Switzerland; Harvard Law School, 1862-63

    Read an Excerpt

    Daisy Miller


    By Henry James

    OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA

    Copyright © 2016 Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
    All rights reserved.
    ISBN: 978-1-5040-3961-1


    CHAPTER 1

    PART I


    At the little town of Vevey, in Switzerland, there is a particularly comfortable hotel. There are, indeed, many hotels, for the entertainment of tourists is the business of the place, which, as many travelers will remember, is seated upon the edge of a remarkably blue lake — a lake that it behooves every tourist to visit. The shore of the lake presents an unbroken array of establishments of this order, of every category, from the "grand hotel" of the newest fashion, with a chalk-white front, a hundred balconies, and a dozen flags flying from its roof, to the little Swiss pension of an elder day, with its name inscribed in German-looking lettering upon a pink or yellow wall and an awkward summerhouse in the angle of the garden. One of the hotels at Vevey, however, is famous, even classical, being distinguished from many of its upstart neighbors by an air both of luxury and of maturity. In this region, in the month of June, American travelers are extremely numerous; it may be said, indeed, that Vevey assumes at this period some of the characteristics of an American watering place. There are sights and sounds which evoke a vision, an echo, of Newport and Saratoga. There is a flitting hither and thither of "stylish" young girls, a rustling of muslin flounces, a rattle of dance music in the morning hours, a sound of high-pitched voices at all times. You receive an impression of these things at the excellent inn of the "Trois Couronnes" and are transported in fancy to the Ocean House or to Congress Hall. But at the "Trois Couronnes," it must be added, there are other features that are much at variance with these suggestions: neat German waiters, who look like secretaries of legation; Russian princesses sitting in the garden; little Polish boys walking about held by the hand, with their governors; a view of the sunny crest of the Dent du Midi and the picturesque towers of the Castle of Chillon.

    I hardly know whether it was the analogies or the differences that were uppermost in the mind of a young American, who, two or three years ago, sat in the garden of the "Trois Couronnes," looking about him, rather idly, at some of the graceful objects I have mentioned. It was a beautiful summer morning, and in whatever fashion the young American looked at things, they must have seemed to him charming. He had come from Geneva the day before by the little steamer, to see his aunt, who was staying at the hotel — Geneva having been for a long time his place of residence. But his aunt had a headache — his aunt had almost always a headache — and now she was shut up in her room, smelling camphor, so that he was at liberty to wander about. He was some seven-and-twenty years of age; when his friends spoke of him, they usually said that he was at Geneva "studying." When his enemies spoke of him, they said — but, after all, he had no enemies; he was an extremely amiable fellow, and universally liked. What I should say is, simply, that when certain persons spoke of him they affirmed that the reason of his spending so much time at Geneva was that he was extremely devoted to a lady who lived there — a foreign lady — a person older than himself. Very few Americans — indeed, I think none — had ever seen this lady, about whom there were some singular stories. But Winterbourne had an old attachment for the little metropolis of Calvinism; he had been put to school there as a boy, and he had afterward gone to college there — circumstances which had led to his forming a great many youthful friendships. Many of these he had kept, and they were a source of great satisfaction to him.

    After knocking at his aunt's door and learning that she was indisposed, he had taken a walk about the town, and then he had come in to his breakfast. He had now finished his breakfast; but he was drinking a small cup of coffee, which had been served to him on a little table in the garden by one of the waiters who looked like an attaché. At last he finished his coffee and lit a cigarette. Presently a small boy came walking along the path — an urchin of nine or ten. The child, who was diminutive for his years, had an aged expression of countenance, a pale complexion, and sharp little features. He was dressed in knickerbockers, with red stockings, which displayed his poor little spindle-shanks; he also wore a brilliant red cravat. He carried in his hand a long alpenstock, the sharp point of which he thrust into everything that he approached — the flowerbeds, the garden benches, the trains of the ladies' dresses. In front of Winterbourne he paused, looking at him with a pair of bright, penetrating little eyes.

    "Will you give me a lump of sugar?" he asked in a sharp, hard little voice — a voice immature and yet, somehow, not young.

    Winterbourne glanced at the small table near him, on which his coffee service rested, and saw that several morsels of sugar remained. "Yes, you may take one," he answered; "but I don't think sugar is good for little boys."

    This little boy stepped forward and carefully selected three of the coveted fragments, two of which he buried in the pocket of his knickerbockers, depositing the other as promptly in another place. He poked his alpenstock, lance-fashion, into Winterbourne's bench and tried to crack the lump of sugar with his teeth.

    "Oh, blazes; it's har-r-d!" he exclaimed, pronouncing the adjective in a peculiar manner.

    Winterbourne had immediately perceived that he might have the honor of claiming him as a fellow countryman. "Take care you don't hurt your teeth," he said, paternally.

    "I haven't got any teeth to hurt. They have all come out. I have only got seven teeth. My mother counted them last night, and one came out right afterward. She said she'd slap me if any more came out. I can't help it. It's this old Europe. It's the climate that makes them come out. In America they didn't come out. It's these hotels."

    Winterbourne was much amused. "If you eat three lumps of sugar, your mother will certainly slap you," he said.

    "She's got to give me some candy, then," rejoined his young interlocutor. "I can't get any candy here — any American candy. American candy's the best candy."

    "And are American little boys the best little boys?" asked Winterbourne.

    "I don't know. I'm an American boy," said the child.

    "I see you are one of the best!" laughed Winterbourne.

    "Are you an American man?" pursued this vivacious infant. And then, on Winterbourne's affirmative reply — "American men are the best," he declared.

    His companion thanked him for the compliment, and the child, who had now got astride of his alpenstock, stood looking about him, while he attacked a second lump of sugar. Winterbourne wondered if he himself had been like this in his infancy, for he had been brought to Europe at about this age.

    "Here comes my sister!" cried the child in a moment. "She's an American girl."

    Winterbourne looked along the path and saw a beautiful young lady advancing. "American girls are the best girls," he said cheerfully to his young companion.

    "My sister ain't the best!" the child declared. "She's always blowing at me."

    "I imagine that is your fault, not hers," said Winterbourne. The young lady meanwhile had drawn near. She was dressed in white muslin, with a hundred frills and flounces, and knots of pale-colored ribbon. She was bareheaded, but she balanced in her hand a large parasol, with a deep border of embroidery; and she was strikingly, admirably pretty. "How pretty they are!" thought Winterbourne, straightening himself in his seat, as if he were prepared to rise.

    The young lady paused in front of his bench, near the parapet of the garden, which overlooked the lake. The little boy had now converted his alpenstock into a vaulting pole, by the aid of which he was springing about in the gravel and kicking it up not a little.

    "Randolph," said the young lady, "what are you doing?"

    "I'm going up the Alps," replied Randolph. "This is the way!" And he gave another little jump, scattering the pebbles about Winterbourne's ears.

    "That's the way they come down," said Winterbourne.

    "He's an American man!" cried Randolph, in his little hard voice.

    The young lady gave no heed to this announcement, but looked straight at her brother. "Well, I guess you had better be quiet," she simply observed.

    It seemed to Winterbourne that he had been in a manner presented. He got up and stepped slowly toward the young girl, throwing away his cigarette. "This little boy and I have made acquaintance," he said, with great civility. In Geneva, as he had been perfectly aware, a young man was not at liberty to speak to a young unmarried lady except under certain rarely occurring conditions; but here at Vevey, what conditions could be better than these? — a pretty American girl coming and standing in front of you in a garden. This pretty American girl, however, on hearing Winterbourne's observation, simply glanced at him; she then turned her head and looked over the parapet, at the lake and the opposite mountains. He wondered whether he had gone too far, but he decided that he must advance farther, rather than retreat. While he was thinking of something else to say, the young lady turned to the little boy again.

    "I should like to know where you got that pole," she said.

    "I bought it," responded Randolph.

    "You don't mean to say you're going to take it to Italy?"

    "Yes, I am going to take it to Italy," the child declared.

    The young girl glanced over the front of her dress and smoothed out a knot or two of ribbon. Then she rested her eyes upon the prospect again. "Well, I guess you had better leave it somewhere," she said after a moment.

    "Are you going to Italy?" Winterbourne inquired in a tone of great respect.

    The young lady glanced at him again. "Yes, sir," she replied. And she said nothing more.

    "Are you — a — going over the Simplon?" Winterbourne pursued, a little embarrassed.

    "I don't know," she said. "I suppose it's some mountain. Randolph, what mountain are we going over?"

    "Going where?" the child demanded.

    "To Italy," Winterbourne explained.

    "I don't know," said Randolph. "I don't want to go to Italy. I want to go to America."

    "Oh, Italy is a beautiful place!" rejoined the young man.

    "Can you get candy there?" Randolph loudly inquired.

    "I hope not," said his sister. "I guess you have had enough candy, and mother thinks so too."

    "I haven't had any for ever so long — for a hundred weeks!" cried the boy, still jumping about.

    The young lady inspected her flounces and smoothed her ribbons again; and Winterbourne presently risked an observation upon the beauty of the view. He was ceasing to be embarrassed, for he had begun to perceive that she was not in the least embarrassed herself. There had not been the slightest alteration in her charming complexion; she was evidently neither offended nor flattered. If she looked another way when he spoke to her, and seemed not particularly to hear him, this was simply her habit, her manner. Yet, as he talked a little more and pointed out some of the objects of interest in the view, with which she appeared quite unacquainted, she gradually gave him more of the benefit of her glance; and then he saw that this glance was perfectly direct and unshrinking. It was not, however, what would have been called an immodest glance, for the young girl's eyes were singularly honest and fresh. They were wonderfully pretty eyes; and, indeed, Winterbourne had not seen for a long time anything prettier than his fair countrywoman's various features — her complexion, her nose, her ears, her teeth. He had a great relish for feminine beauty; he was addicted to observing and analyzing it; and as regards this young lady's face he made several observations. It was not at all insipid, but it was not exactly expressive; and though it was eminently delicate, Winterbourne mentally accused it — very forgivingly — of a want of finish. He thought it very possible that Master Randolph's sister was a coquette; he was sure she had a spirit of her own; but in her bright, sweet, superficial little visage there was no mockery, no irony. Before long it became obvious that she was much disposed toward conversation. She told him that they were going to Rome for the winter — she and her mother and Randolph. She asked him if he was a "real American"; she shouldn't have taken him for one; he seemed more like a German — this was said after a little hesitation — especially when he spoke. Winterbourne, laughing, answered that he had met Germans who spoke like Americans, but that he had not, so far as he remembered, met an American who spoke like a German. Then he asked her if she should not be more comfortable in sitting upon the bench which he had just quitted. She answered that she liked standing up and walking about; but she presently sat down. She told him she was from New York State — "if you know where that is." Winterbourne learned more about her by catching hold of her small, slippery brother and making him stand a few minutes by his side.

    "Tell me your name, my boy," he said.

    "Randolph C. Miller," said the boy sharply. "And I'll tell you her name;" and he leveled his alpenstock at his sister.

    "You had better wait till you are asked!" said this young lady calmly.

    "I should like very much to know your name," said Winterbourne.

    "Her name is Daisy Miller!" cried the child. "But that isn't her real name; that isn't her name on her cards."

    "It's a pity you haven't got one of my cards!" said Miss Miller.

    "Her real name is Annie P. Miller," the boy went on.

    "Ask him his name," said his sister, indicating Winterbourne.

    But on this point Randolph seemed perfectly indifferent; he continued to supply information with regard to his own family. "My father's name is Ezra B. Miller," he announced. "My father ain't in Europe; my father's in a better place than Europe."

    Winterbourne imagined for a moment that this was the manner in which the child had been taught to intimate that Mr. Miller had been removed to the sphere of celestial reward. But Randolph immediately added, "My father's in Schenectady. He's got a big business. My father's rich, you bet!"

    "Well!" ejaculated Miss Miller, lowering her parasol and looking at the embroidered border. Winterbourne presently released the child, who departed, dragging his alpenstock along the path. "He doesn't like Europe," said the young girl. "He wants to go back."

    "To Schenectady, you mean?"

    "Yes; he wants to go right home. He hasn't got any boys here. There is one boy here, but he always goes round with a teacher; they won't let him play."

    "And your brother hasn't any teacher?" Winterbourne inquired.

    "Mother thought of getting him one, to travel round with us. There was a lady told her of a very good teacher; an American lady — perhaps you know her — Mrs. Sanders. I think she came from Boston. She told her of this teacher, and we thought of getting him to travel round with us. But Randolph said he didn't want a teacher traveling round with us. He said he wouldn't have lessons when he was in the cars. And we are in the cars about half the time. There was an English lady we met in the cars — I think her name was Miss Featherstone; perhaps you know her. She wanted to know why I didn't give Randolph lessons — give him 'instruction,' she called it. I guess he could give me more instruction than I could give him. He's very smart."

    "Yes," said Winterbourne; "he seems very smart."

    "Mother's going to get a teacher for him as soon as we get to Italy. Can you get good teachers in Italy?"

    "Very good, I should think," said Winterbourne.


    (Continues...)

    Excerpted from Daisy Miller by Henry James. Copyright © 2016 Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.. Excerpted by permission of OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA.
    All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
    Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

    Table of Contents

    Acknowledgements
    Introduction, Kristin Boudreau
    Henry James: A Brief Chronology
    A Note on the Text

    Daisy Miller: A Study

    Appendix A: Henry James on Daisy Miller

    1. From Henry James, Notebooks (11 November 1882)
    2. Eliza Lynn Linton, Letter to Henry James (1880)
    3. Henry James, Reply to Eliza Lynn Linton (1880)
    4. From Henry James, Preface to Daisy Miller (1909)

    Appendix B: Literary and Artistic Influences

    1. From Lord Byron, “Manfred: A Dramatic Poem” (1817)
    2. From Henry James, Review of Victor Cherbuliez’s Paule Méré (October 1873)
    3. From Henry James, Unsigned Note on Velázquez’s “Portrait of Pope Innocent X” (November 1874)

    Appendix C: Henry James and the Craft of Fiction

    1. From Henry James, Hawthorne (1879)
    2. From Walter Besant, The Art of Fiction (1884)
    3. From Henry James, “The Art of Fiction” (1884; revised 1888)
    4. From Henry James, Preface to The Portrait of a Lady (1908)

    Appendix D: Contemporary Reviews of Daisy Miller (1878-82)

    1. From “Editor’s Easy Chair,” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine (June-November 1878)
    2. From The New York Times (10 November 1878)
    3. From Harper’s New Monthly Magazine (December 1878)
    4. From “Recent Novels,” The Nation (19 December 1878)
    5. From The North American Review (January 1879)
    6. From John Hay, “The Contributor’s Club,” Atlantic Monthly (March 1879)
    7. From William Dean Howells, Letter to James Russell Lowell (22 June 1879)
    8. From “New Books,” Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine (July-December 1879)
    9. From “Henry James, Jr.,” Century Magazine (November 1882)

    Appendix E: Henry James and the Craft of Drama

    1. From Henry James, “The Parisian Stage,” The Nation (9 January 1873)
    2. From Henry James, “Tennyson’s Drama,” The Galaxy (September 1875)
    3. From James’s Letters and the Notebooks
      1. Letter to William James (6 February 1891)
      2. Letter to Elizabeth Lewis (15? December 1894)
      3. Letter to William and Alice James (29 December 1893)
      4. James, Notebooks (22 January 1899)
    4. From Henry James, “Note” to Theatricals: Second Series (1895)
    5. From Henry James, Preface to The Awkward Age (1908)

    Appendix F: From Henry James, Daisy Miller: A Comedy in Three Acts (1883)

    Appendix G: Contemporary Reviews of Daisy Miller: A Comedy in Three Acts (1883)

    1. From “Literary Notes,” The Independent (29 March 1883)
    2. From “Miscellaneous,” San Francisco Chronicle (30 September 1883)
    3. From “Daisy Miller as a Comedy,” Literary World (6 October 1883)

    Appendix H: On Henry James’s Revisions

    1. William James, Letter to Henry James (4 May 1907)
    2. Max Beerbohm, “A Nightmare, Mr. Henry James Subpoenaed as Psychological Expert in a Cause Célèbre” (1908)
    3. Henry James, Letter to William James (17-18 October 1907)
    4. Parallel Texts from the 1879 and 1900 Editions of Daisy Miller

    Appendix I: The Nineteenth-Century New Woman

    1. From Eliza Lynn Linton, The Girl of the Period and Other Social Essays (1868; reprinted 1883)
    2. From Eliza Lynn Linton, Modern Women and What Is Said of Them (1868; reprinted 1870)
    3. Henry James, Review of Modern Women and What Is Said of Them (22 October 1868)
    4. From Florence Hartley, The Ladies’ Book of Etiquette and Manual of Politeness (1875)
    5. From From Lucy H. Hooper, “American Women Abroad,” The Galaxy (June 1876)
    6. From From Albert Rhodes, “Shall the American Girl Be Chaperoned?,” The Galaxy (October 1877)

    Appendix J: Nineteenth-Century Travel

    1. From William Wetmore Story, Roba di Roma (1862)
    2. From From Alice A. Bartlett, “Some Pros and Cons of Travel Abroad,” Old and New (October 1871)
    3. From Henry James, “The Old Saint-Gothard: Leaves from a Note-book ” (22 October 1868)
    4. From “Preface,” Cook’s Tourist Handbook for Northern Italy (1875)
    5. From Switzerland, and the Adjacent Portions of Italy, Savoy, and the Tyrol: Handbook for Travellers (1877)
    6. Descriptions of Swiss Sights
      1. From Switzerland, and the Adjacent Portions of Italy, Savoy, and the Tyrol: Handbook for Travellers (1877)
      2. From Handbook for Travellers in Switzerland, and the Alps of Savoy and Piedmont (1867)
    7. Descriptions of Italian Sights and Challenges
      1. From Italy: A Handbook for Travellers (1893)
      2. From A Handbook of Rome and Its Environs (1873)

    Appendix K: “Roman Fever”

    1. From Peter S. Townsend, M.D., An Account of the Yellow Fever, as it Prevailed in the City of New York, in the Summer and Autumn of 1822 (1823)
    2. From Charles Darwin, The Voyage of the Beagle (1839)
    3. From Florence Nightingale, Notes on Nursing: What It Is, and What It Is Not (22 October 1868)
    4. “Miasma,” from A Dictionary of Medical Science (1895)

    Appendix L: Daisy Miller and the Tradition of Pragmatism

    1. From Charles Sanders Peirce, “The Fixation of Belief,” Popular Science Monthly (November 1877)
    2. From William James, Pragmatism (1907)
    3. Henry James, Letter to William James (17 October 1907)

    Works Cited and Recommended Reading

    What People are Saying About This

    Daniel Mark Fogel

    "Everything about this edition commends it to instructors, students, and general readers alike. Kristin Boudreau's authoritative introduction provides an excellent orientation, no less for seasoned scholars than for students discovering Henry James. The text of the novella is well chosen—the 1879 Harper edition, capturing the freshness of James's early style (as opposed to the ornate 1909 revision), but with the benefit of James's revisions of the first magazine and book versions. Twelve appendices offer contemporary materials that cast strong and helpful lights on key aspects of James's art and of the literary and cultural contexts of this early masterpiece."

    Linda Simon

    "Kristin Boudreau's fascinating and accessible introduction sets James's Daisy Miller in biographical, literary, historical, philosophical—and even medical—context. Appendices provide ample and well-chosen primary material, including selections focused on the nineteenth-century New Woman; the prevalence and treatment of 'Roman fever'; and James's literary and artistic influences, aims, and revisions. Anyone teaching James's popular novella will find Broadview's new edition a superb resource."

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    Travelling in Europe with her family, Daisy Miller, an exquisitely beautiful young American woman, presents her fellow-countryman Winterbourne with a dilemma he cannot resolve. Is she deliberately flouting social convention in the outspoken way she talks and acts, or is she simply ignorant of those conventions? When she strikes up an intimate friendship with an urbane young Italian, her flat refusal to observe the codes of respectable behaviour leave her perilously exposed. In Daisy Miller James created his first great portrait of the enigmatic and dangerously independent American woman, a figure who would come to dominate his later masterpieces.

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    From the Publisher
    The critical faculty hesitates before the magnitude of Mr. Henry James’s work.”—Joseph Conrad
    EBOOK COMMENTARY
    »Ein Flirt, begonnen in Vevey am Genfer See, fortgesetzt und tragisch beendet in Rom: Henry James erzählt in seiner 1878 erschienenen, jetzt schön von Britta Mümmler neu übersetzten Erzählung ›Daisy Miller‹ mit dem eleganten Hauch, mit der Leichtigkeit, die dem Flirt angemessen ist.«
    Harald Loch, Osnabrücker Zeitung 24.10.2015
    Linda Simon Skidmore College
    "Kristin Boudreau's fascinating and accessible introduction sets James's Daisy Miller in biographical, literary, historical, philosophical—and even medical—context. Appendices provide ample and well-chosen primary material, including selections focused on the nineteenth-century New Woman; the prevalence and treatment of 'Roman fever'; and James's literary and artistic influences, aims, and revisions. Anyone teaching James's popular novella will find Broadview's new edition a superb resource."
    Daniel Mark Fogel University of Vermont
    "Everything about this edition commends it to instructors, students, and general readers alike. Kristin Boudreau's authoritative introduction provides an excellent orientation, no less for seasoned scholars than for students discovering Henry James. The text of the novella is well chosen—the 1879 Harper edition, capturing the freshness of James's early style (as opposed to the ornate 1909 revision), but with the benefit of James's revisions of the first magazine and book versions. Twelve appendices offer contemporary materials that cast strong and helpful lights on key aspects of James's art and of the literary and cultural contexts of this early masterpiece."
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