“I should advise you then,” said Winterbourne, “to drive home as fast as possible and take one!”

  Giovanelli smiled as for the striking happy thought. “What you say is very wise. I’ll go and make sure the carriage is at hand.” And he went forward rapidly.

  Daisy followed with Winterbourne. He tried to deny himself the small fine anguish of looking at her, but his eyes themselves refused to spare him, and she seemed moreover not in the least embarrassed. He spoke no word; Daisy chattered over the beauty of the place: “Well, I have seen the Colosseum by moonlight—that’s one thing I can rave about!” Then noticing her companion’s silence she asked him why he was so stiff—it had always been her great word. He made no answer, but he felt his laugh an immense negation of stiffness. They passed under one of the dark archways; Giovanelli was in front with the carriage. Here Daisy stopped a moment, looking at her compatriot. “Did you believe I was engaged the other day?”

  “It doesn’t matter now what I believed the other day!” he replied with infinite point.

  It was a wonder how she didn’t wince for it. “Well, what do you believe now?”

  “I believe it makes very little difference whether you’re engaged or not!”

  He felt her lighted eyes fairly penetrate the thick gloom of the vaulted passage—as if to seek some access to him she hadn’t yet compassed. But Giovanelli, with a graceful inconsequence, was at present all for retreat. “Quick, quick; if we get in by midnight we’re quite safe!”

  Daisy took her seat in the carriage and the fortunate Italian placed himself beside her. “Don’t forget Eugenio’s pills!” said Winterbourne as he lifted his hat.

  “I don’t care,” she unexpectedly cried out for this, “whether I have Roman fever or not!” On which the cab-driver cracked his whip and they rolled across the desultory patches of antique pavement.

  Winterbourne—to do him justice, as it were—mentioned to no one that he had encountered Miss Miller at midnight in the Colosseum with a gentleman; in spite of which deep discretion, however, the fact of the scandalous adventure was known a couple of days later, with a dozen vivid details, to every member of the little American circle, and was commented accordingly. Winterbourne judged thus that the people about the hotel had been thoroughly empowered to testify, and that after Daisy’s return there would have been an exchange of jokes between the porter and the cab-driver. But the young man became aware at the same moment of how thoroughly it had ceased to ruffle him that the little American flirt should be “talked about” by low-minded menials. These sources of current criticism a day or two later abounded still further: the little American flirt was alarmingly ill and the doctors now in possession of the scene. Winterbourne, when the rumour came to him, immediately went to the hotel for more news. He found that two or three charitable friends had preceded him and that they were being entertained in Mrs. Miller’s salon by the all-efficient Randolph.

  “It’s going round at night that way, you bet—that’s what has made her so sick. She’s always going round at night. I shouldn’t think she’d want to—it’s so plaguey dark over here. You can’t see anything over here without the moon’s right up. In America they don’t go round by the moon!” Mrs. Miller meanwhile wholly surrendered to her genius for unapparent uses; her salon knew her less than ever, and she was presumably now at least giving her daughter the advantage of her society. It was clear that Daisy was dangerously ill.

  Winterbourne constantly attended for news from the sick-room, which reached him, however, but with worrying indirectness, though he once had speech, for a moment, of the poor girl’s physician and once saw Mrs. Miller, who, sharply alarmed, struck him as thereby more happily inspired than he could have conceived and indeed as the most noiseless and light-handed of nurses. She invoked a good deal the remote shade of Dr. Davis, but Winterbourne paid her the compliment of taking her after all for less monstrous a goose. To this indulgence indeed something she further said perhaps even more insidiously disposed him. “Daisy spoke of you the other day quite pleasantly. Half the time she doesn’t know what she’s saying, but that time I think she did. She gave me a message—she told me to tell you. She wanted you to know she never was engaged to that handsome Italian who was always round. I’m sure I’m very glad; Mr. Giovanelli hasn’t been near us since she was taken ill. I thought he was so much of a gentleman, but I don’t call that very polite! A lady told me he was afraid I hadn’t approved of his being round with her so much evenings. Of course it ain’t as if their evenings were as pleasant as ours—since we don’t seem to feel that way about the poison. I guess I don’t see the point now; but I suppose he knows I’m a lady and I’d scorn to raise a fuss. Anyway, she wants you to realise she ain’t engaged. I don’t know why she makes so much of it, but she said to me three times ’mind you tell Mr. Winterbourne.’ And then she told me to ask if you remembered the time you went up to that castle in Switzerland. But I said I wouldn’t give any such messages as that. Only if she ain’t engaged I guess I’m glad to realise it too.”

  But, as Winterbourne had originally judged, the truth on this question had small actual relevance. A week after this the poor girl died; it had been indeed a terrible case of the perniciosa. A grave was found for her in the little Protestant cemetery, by an angle of the wall of imperial Rome, beneath the cypresses and the thick spring-flowers. Winterbourne stood there beside it with a number of other mourners; a number larger than the scandal excited by the young lady’s career might have made probable. Near him stood Giovanelli, who came nearer still before Winterbourne turned away. Giovanelli, in decorous mourning, showed but a whiter face; his button-hole lacked its nosegay and he had visibly something urgent—and even to distress—to say, which he scarce knew how to “place.” He decided at last to confide it with a pale convulsion to Winterbourne. “She was the most beautiful young lady I ever saw, and the most amiable.” To which he added in a moment: “Also—naturally!—the most innocent.”

  Winterbourne sounded him with hard dry eyes, but presently repeated his words, “The most innocent?”

  “The most innocent!”

  It came somehow so much too late that our friend could only glare at its having come at all. “Why the devil,” he asked, “did you take her to that fatal place?”

  Giovanelli raised his neat shoulders and eyebrows to within suspicion of a shrug. “For myself I had no fear; and she—she did what she liked.”

  Winterbourne’s eyes attached themselves to the ground. “She did what she liked!”

  It determined on the part of poor Giovanelli a further pious, a further candid, confidence. “If she had lived I should have got nothing. She never would have married me.”

  It had been spoken as if to attest, in all sincerity, his disinterestedness, but Winterbourne scarce knew what welcome to give it. He said, however, with a grace inferior to his friend’s: “I dare say not.”

  The latter was even by this not discouraged. “For a moment I hoped so. But no. I’m convinced.”

  Winterbourne took it in; he stood staring at the raw protuberance among the April daisies. When he turned round again his fellow mourner had stepped back.

  He almost immediately left Rome, but the following summer he again met his aunt Mrs. Costello at Vevey. Mrs. Costello extracted from the charming old hotel there a value that the Miller family hadn’t mastered the secret of. In the interval Winterbourne had often thought of the most interesting member of that trio—of her mystifying manners and her queer adventure. One day he spoke of her to his aunt—said it was on his conscience he had done her injustice.

  “I’m sure I don’t know”—that lady showed caution. “How did your injustice affect her?”

  “She sent me a message before her death which I didn’t understand at the time. But I’ve understood it since. She would have appreciated one’s esteem.”

  “She took an odd way to gain it! But do you mean by what you say,” Mrs. Costello asked, “that she would have reciprocated one’s affection?”

  As he made no answer to this she after a little looked round at him—he hadn’t been directly within sight; but the effect of that wasn’t to make her repeat her question. He spoke, however, after a while. “You were right in that remark that you made last summer. I was booked to make a mistake. I’ve lived too long in foreign parts.” And this time she herself said nothing.

  Nevertheless he soon went back to live at Geneva, whence there continue to come the most contradictory accounts of his motives of sojourn: a report that he’s “studying” hard—an intimation that he’s much interested in a very clever foreign lady.

  NOTES

  PREFACE TO THE NEW YORK EDITION

  1. This excerpt is taken from the author’s Preface to the New York Edition of The Novels and Tales of Henry James (1907–9), volume XVIII.

  I

  1. blue lake: The lake upon which Vevey is situated is Lake Geneva.

  2. Ocean House … Congress Hall: These are two large hotels in the American resort towns of Newport, Rhode Island, and Saratoga, New York, respectively.

  3. Castle of Chillon: A medieval castle built on an island in Lake Geneva. It is well known from Byron’s “The Prisoner of Chillon” (1816), which is alluded to later in the text.

  4. “Academy”: James refers to the Academy of Geneva, which was to become, several years later, the University of Geneva.

  5. the cars: The railway cars.

  6. courier: A person employed to make travel arrangements.

  II

  1. Forty-Second Street: Murray Hill, the East Side district bordered on the north by Forty-second Street, was, at the time, one of the most fashionable areas of Manhattan.

  2. comme il faut: A French phrase meaning “proper” (literally, “as it should be”).

  3. oubliettes: An oubliette is a dungeon whose only entrance is through a trapdoor at the top. From the French word for “to forget.”

  4. unhappy Bonnivard: A sixteenth-century prisoner in the Castle of Chillon and the hero of Byron’s 1816 poem “The Prisoner of Chillon.”

  III

  1. ‘Paule Méré’: Paule Méré was a novel by Victor Cherbuliez (1829–99) published in 1865.

  2. infant Hannibal: Hannibal (247–183 B.C.) was the general who led the Carthaginians against Rome in the Second Punic War. His father, Hamilcar Barca, was a general who led forces against Rome in the First Punic War and, according to Livy, made his son pledge eternal hostility to Rome when still a child.

  3. Pincio: A large public park situated on a hill that gives views of the entire city.

  4. amoroso: “Boyfriend” in Italian.

  5. victoria: A light four-wheeled carriage for two with a folding top.

  IV

  1. Elle s’affiche, la malheureuse: “She’s making a scene, the poor girl” in French.

  2. cavaliere avvocato: An Italian phrase that translates as “gentleman lawyer” and may be related to the minor title of distinction cavaliere, which is analogous to the British title “knight.”

  3. marchese: Marquis.

  4. qui se passe ses fantaisies: “Who lives as she wishes” in French.

  5. Velasquez: The Spanish court painter Diego Velázquez (1599–1660).

  6. du meilleur monde: “Of the best society” in French.

  7. “Manfred”: A dramatic poem published by Byron in 1817. The lines referred to are from Manfred’s soliloquy in the beginning of Act III, Scene iv: “upon such a night/I stood within the Coliseum’s wall,/ ’midst the chief relics of almighty Rome.”

  8. perniciosa: Malaria, the “fever” mentioned earlier.

  A NOTE ON THE TEXT

  Daisy Miller was first published in 1878, in the June and July numbers of The Cornhill Magazine. The text for this Modern Library edition is taken from the New York Edition of The Novels and Tales of Henry James (1907–9), volume XVIII, which incorporates the author’s extensive revisions. While we have retained the original spelling and punctuation, we have modified the spacing in contractions throughout the novel; also, on this page, we have changed “so for” to “so far.”

  READING GROUP GUIDE

  1. Henry James is as much an international writer as an American. Shortly before his death he became a British citizen in protest of America’s unwillingness to come to the defense of Britain and France in the early years of World War I. He spent much of his adult life abroad, observing Europeans, Americans in Europe, and what he called “Europeanized Americans,” those who had lived for so long in Europe that they had taken on many—although not all—European traits and values. Many of Henry James’s novels and stories depict these three types of characters in interplay. How does James explore the American-versus-European theme in Daisy Miller? What are some of the ways that the Millers differ from Winterbourne, his aunt, and Mrs. Walker?

  2. Henry James was always interested in children and young adults, and Daisy Miller is one of his most successful creations. She is more vibrant than sophisticated, “a child,” as James describes her, “of nature and of freedom.” Some have argued that her plain name (the unpretentious flower, the common profession) symbolizes her simplicity. Do you agree with this? Why does Daisy Miller make a full-blooded protagonist? Is Daisy Miller an innocent, unaffected young woman? Are there hints of her self-awareness? Does she demonstrate a desire to manipulate others?

  3. In discussing the origins of the novella in his Preface to the New York Edition, Henry James tells of hearing the story of an innocent but eager American girl who has recently visited Italy and “picked up” a Roman of vague identity. What in this secondhand anecdote do you think appealed to James, inspiring him to, as he put it, “dramatise, dramatise!” Does James do more than dramatize? Does he moralize?

  4. James describes Winterbourne, an American who resides in Geneva, as having “an old attachment for the little capital of Calvinism.” When James introduces him, Winterbourne is in a hotel lobby in Vevey while he waits for his aunt, who is upstairs. Essentially, however, he is waiting for something else. How would you describe Winterbourne and why do you think he is susceptible to Daisy’s charms? Is he an honest man? How does his surname fit into James’s scheme of identifying characters?

  5. Does James present Giovanelli as a complicated, fully imagined character, or is Giovanelli merely the proverbial mysterious stranger? Does James explore Giovanelli’s subtleties with as much insight as he applies to Daisy and Winterbourne? What attracts Daisy to Giovanelli? Is this attraction plausible? Why at the end of the novel does he say, “If she had lived I should have got nothing. She never would have married me”?

  6. What do you make of Daisy’s fate? Why do you think James set the novel’s tragic event in the Colosseum?

  THE MODERN LIBRARY EDITORIAL BOARD

  Maya Angelou

  •

  Daniel J. Boorstin

  •

  A. S. Byatt

  •

  Caleb Carr

  •

  Christopher Cerf

  •

  Ron Chernow

  •

  Shelby Foote

  •

  Stephen Jay Gould

  •

  Vartan Gregorian

  •

  Richard Howard

  •

  Charles Johnson

  •

  Jon Krakauer

  •

  Edmund Morris

  •

  Joyce Carol Oates

  •

  Elaine Pagels

  •

  John Richardson

  •

  Salman Rushdie

  •

  Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.

  •

  Carolyn See

  •

  William Styron

  •

  Gore Vidal

  OTHER MODERN LIBRARY PAPERBACK CLASSICS BY HENRY JAMES

  The Bostonians

  INTRODUCTION BY A. S. BYATT

  Includes newly commissioned endnotes

  0-8129-6996-0; trade paperback; 496 pp.

  The Portrait of a Lady

  INTRODUCTION BY ANITA BROOKNER

  Includes newly commissioned endnotes

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  The Turn of the Screw & In the Cage

  INTRODUCTION BY HORTENSE CALISHER

  0-375-75740-6; trade paperback; 257 pp.

  Washington Square

  INTRODUCTION BY CYNTHIA OZICK

  includes newly commissioned endnotes

  0-375-76122-5; trade paperback; 288 pp.

  What Maisie Knew

  INTRODUCTION BY DIANE JOHNSON

  Includes newly commissioned endnotes

  0-375-76008-3; trade paperback; 320 pp.

  The Wings of the Dove

  INTRODUCTION BY AMY BLOOM

  Includes newly commissioned endnotes

  0-8129-6719-4; trade paperback; 768 pp.

  Available at bookstores everywhere

  www.modernlibrary.com

  HENRY JAMES

  Henry James was born in New York City on April 15, 1843, of Scottish and Irish ancestry. His father, Henry James, Sr., was a whimsical, utterly charming, maddeningly open-minded parent—a Swedenborgian philosopher of considerable wealth who believed in a universal but wholly unformed society. He gave both Henry and his elder son, William, an infant baptism by taking them to Europe before they could even speak. In fact, Henry James later claimed that his first memory, dating from the age of two, was a glimpse of the column of the Place Vendôme framed by the window of the carriage in which he was riding. His peripatetic childhood took him to experimental schools in Geneva, Paris, and London. Even back in the United States he was shuffled from New York City to Albany to Newport to Boston and finally to Cambridge, where in 1862 he briefly attended Harvard Law School. “An obscure hurt,” probably to his back, exempted him from service in the Civil War, and James felt he had failed as a man when it counted most to be one and he vowed never to marry.

 

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