[McElderry was an American educator and critic whose studies focus predominantly on the works of such American realists as Mark Twain, Henry James, and Thomas Wolfe. In the following essay, McElderry reveals James' intention of portraying Daisy as innocent by quoting a letter he wrote on the subject soon after the publication of his novella]

The best-known comment by Henry James on his story Daisy Miller is found in two long paragraphs at the beginning of his "Preface" to volume XVIII of the New York Edition. Written nearly thirty years after the original publication, the account is not very illuminating. James tells the anecdote on which he based him story, and explains that it was published in Cornhill after being rejected by a Philadelphia magazine. "Flatness indeed," he continues, "one must have felt, was the very sum of her story.… Yet from it, "a sufficiently brooding tenderness might eventually extract a shy incongruous charm." Years later a lady reproached him for wasting his talents in falsifying the heroine. To this he replied that "my supposedly typical little figure was of course pure poetry, and had never been anything else.…"

There is, however, a little-known letter written not long after Daisy Miller was published, which is much more specific in accounting for the story. It is preserved in a memoir of Mrs. Lynn Linton, together with Mrs. Linton's inquiry, which prompted James's letter. Mrs. Lynn Linton (1822-1898) was a well-known English novelist and journalist. In her earlier years she was a vigorous partisan for women's rights, but in 1868 (ten years before Daisy) she wrote a series of anonymous articles attacking "The Girl of the Period" for unfeminine traits. Mrs. Linton's concern for feminine manners continued for the rest of her life, and as she makes clear in her letter to James, involved her in an acrimonious dispute over Daisy Miler.

My Dear Mr. James,

As a very warm dispute about your intention in Day Miller was one among other causes why I have lost the most valuable intellectual friend I ever had, I do not think you will grudge me half a dozen words to tell me what you did really wish your readers to understand, so that I may set myself right or give my opponent reason. I will not tell you which side I took, as I want to be completely fair to him. Did you mean us to understand that Daisy went on in her mad way with Giovanelli just in defiance of public opinion, urged thereto by the opposition made and the talk she excited? or because she was simply too innocent, too heedless, and too little conscious of appearance to understand what people made such a fuss about; or indeed the whole bearing of the fuss altogether? Was she obstinate and defying, or superficial and careless?

In this difference of view lies the cause of a quarrel so serious, that, after dinner, an American, who sided with my opponent and against me, came to me in the drawing room and said how sorry he was that any gentleman should have spoken to any lady with the "unbridled insolence" with which this gentleman had spoken to me. So I leave you to judge of the bitterness of the dispute, when an almost perfect stranger, who had taken a view opposite to my own, could say this to me!…

Mrs. Linton's agitation had its effect. James replied with his customary grace, and with unusual definiteness.

My Dear Mrs. Linton,

I will answer you as concisely as possible—and with great pleasure—premising that I feel very guilty at having excited such ire in celestial minds, and painfully responsible at the present moment.

Poor little Daisy Miller was, as I understand her, above all things innocent. It was not to make a scandal, or because she took the pleasure in a scandal, that she "went on" with Giovanelli. She never took the measure really of the scandal she produced, and had no means of doing so: she was too ignorant, too irrefiective, too little versed in the proportions of things. She intended infinitely less with G. than she appeared to intend—and he himself was quite at sea as to how far she was going. She was a flirt, a perfectly superficial and unmalicious one, and she was very fond, as she announced at the outset, of "gentlemen's society." In Giovanelli she got a gentleman—who, to her uncultivated perception, was a very brilliant one—all to herself, and she enjoyed his society in the largest possible measure. When she found that this measure was thought too large by other people—especially Winterbourne—she was wounded; she became conscious that she was accused of something of which her very comprehension was vague. This consciousness she endeavoured to throw off, she tried not to think of what people meant, and easily succeeded in doing so; but to my perception she never really tried to take her revenge upon public opinion—to outrage it and irritate it. In this sense I fear I must declare that she was not defiant, in the sense you mean. If I recollect rightly, the word "defiant" is used in the tale—but it is not intended in that large sense; it is descriptive of the state of her poor little heart, which felt that a fuss was being made about her and didn't wish to hear anything more about it. She only wished to be left alone—being herself quite unaggressive. The keynote of her character is her innocence—that of her conduct is, of course, that she has a little sentiment about Winterbourne, that she believes to be quite unreciprocated—conscious as she was only of his protesting attitude. But, even here, I did not mean to suggest that she was playing off Giovanelli against Winterbourne—for she was too innocent even for that. She didn't try to provoke and stimulate W. by flirting overtly with G.—she never believed that Winterbourne was provokable. She would have liked him to think well of her—but had an idea from the first that he cared only for higher game, so she smothered this feeling to the best of her ability (though at the end a glimpse of it is given), and tried to help herself to do so by a good deal of lively movement with Giovanelli. The whole idea of the story is the little tragedy of a light, thin, natural, unsuspecting creature being sacrificed as it were to a social rumpus that went on quite over her head and to which she stood in no measurable relation. To deepen the effect, I have made it go over her mother's head as well. She never had a thought of scandalising anybody—the most she ever had was a regret for Winterbourne.

This is the only witchcraft I have used—and I must leave you to extract what satisfaction you can from it. Again I must say I feel "real badly," as D. M. would have said, at having supplied the occasion for a breach of cordiality. May the breach be healed herewith! … Believe in the very good will of yours faithfully,

H. James

And that—"as concisely as possible"—was James's intention in Daisy Miller. This was the method of the "brooding tenderness" which "eventually extract[ed] a shy incongruous charm" for James's most popular story.