A character in The Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1931–1934

June Miller

Henry Miller's wife, who crosses from New York and takes over the book. Nin's fascination with her runs a hundred pages and ends badly.

What they want in in Nin's account

To be taken as the person she believes she is, and never pinned to one version of it.

June Miller in the atlas — books, places, and life

The book

Cover of The Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1931–1934 by Anaïs Nin

The Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1931–1934Anaïs Nin, 1966

The century's most famous journal opens on Louveciennes, 1931 — Miller at the table, June in the doorway, and a woman writing it all down as it happens.

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At a glance

In the book: 'June' — Henry Miller's wife, over from New York; Nin never gives her a surname
Where she appears: The first half of the volume; she crosses the Atlantic twice and leaves for good in the middle of it
What Nin calls the friendship: A secret language of undertones, and a steady collection of discrepancies
The real person: June Miller · 1902–1979 · New York

Who they are in the book

Spoiler-free

June Miller was Henry Miller's second wife. She had stayed behind in New York to earn the money that sent him to Paris, and for the first weeks of the diary she exists only as his subject — a woman he cannot get a straight answer out of, whose account of her own childhood changes every time he checks it. Nin listens to those stories for weeks before she meets her.

Then June comes out to Louveciennes, walks out of the dark garden into the light of the door, and Nin writes that she has seen the most beautiful woman on earth. By the end of the same evening the admiration has been damaged: she decides the talk is posturing and that the woman in front of her is acting a part. The friendship keeps that double shape for as long as it lasts — lunches, champagne, a dance in a restaurant that gets them stopped by a waiter, a kiss in a taxi, and alongside it a running record of the lies.

Both Millers want Nin as a witness against the other. June says Henry made a character out of her and then punished her for it. Henry says she is empty and destructive. Nin ends up refereeing their marriage from a chair in their kitchen while writing a book of her own about June, the prose poem that became House of Incest.

How the book draws them

Appearance, manner, and tone — as the book sketches them, in our words.

The entranceShe walks out of the darkness of the garden into the light of the door: a startling white face, burning dark eyes, an evenness of teeth. Nin writes that her beauty drowned her, and that by the end of the evening the talk had killed the admiration (page 26).
The storiesTo Henry she has been a Romanian gypsy's daughter whose parents kept a night club, and a child born on the road to a circus magician and a trapeze artist. When he holds one story against another she abandons it and starts a new one, and told him a faithless magician was true as well (pages 19–20).
What she spends money onA shabby black dress, a shabby cape, an old violet hat, cotton stockings, a hole in the sleeve. When any money arrives it goes on strawberries in winter, caviar, bath salts and perfume. She washes laundry to be able to buy scent (pages 25, 33, 37, 40).
The steamship agencyTrying to get her fare to New York reduced, she leans across the counter with her face in her hands until the clerk asks her for a drink, and she accepts a time she has no intention of keeping. Nin stands and watches the picture she had built of June come apart (page 44).
The referee sceneClichy. The three of them are sitting on Henry's bed discussing who will pay the printer when he says, very quietly, that he cannot work while she is in the flat. June weeps until her body shakes, then says he is the wrong man for her, and Nin follows her into the dark bathroom and holds her (pages 148–150).
The last nightShe drinks until she is sick, tells both of them they are clever and cruel, and is put to bed. In the morning she comes to the station and buys Nin a bunch of violets. Nin throws them under the seat of the train (pages 156–158).
The books about herShe read Henry's manuscript and wept that it was not her, and she quarrelled with Nin's prose poem too, for not being an exact portrait. Nin concludes that June holds an image of herself that matches nobody else's (page 144).
The exitThe night before Henry leaves for London she takes the money Nin had given him for the trip. His account of the door closing has her turning round to tell him he now has the last chapter for his book (page 165).

Their ending, and the commentary — spoilers aheadHow the book leaves them, what happened after, and what the record says. Open when you're ready.

June sails back to New York in the middle of the volume and does not return to it.

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