June Miller
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June Miller
Biography
June Mansfield Miller was the notorious and mysterious second wife of Henry Miller. She was born on (January 28th, 1902 in Bukovina, in the Carpathian Mountains of Austria. She was born Juliet Smerth or Smerdt, the daugter of Wilhelm and Francis Budd Smerth. She emigrated with her family to the United States and arrived in the United States on July 10, 1907 at the age of five. She would reside in New York City for much of the rest of her life, excepting a tour of Europe and stints in Paris.
She attended public school in New York City. In Sexus, Miller writes that she claimed she graduated from Wellesly College, but later in the Rosy Crucifixion he writes that she never finished high school. Kenneth Dick, after interviewing June, quotes her as saying "My formal education amounted to about three and a half years of High School. I was working on a scholarship to Hunter College." Somewhere around 1917-1919, she went to work as a Taxi Dancer, first at the Orpheum Dance Palace and then at Wilson's dance palace in Times Square. At Wilson's in 1923 she met Henry Miller when she was 21 and he was 31. Henry Miller left his second wife to marry June in Hoboken, New Jersey on June 24, 1924.
In October of 1926, Jean Kronski, an artist and poet, moved in with them. June cultivated a very close relationship with Jean, often preferring Jean's affections to Henry's. This phase of her relationship with Jean is the central piece of the autobiographical fictional novel Crazy Cock by Henry Miller. This living arrangement soon fell apart and Jean and June left for Paris together in April of 1927. However, in the month of June they started to quarrel, and in July June came back to Henry. They subsequently left for a tour of Europe, settling in Paris.
In 1931, June met writer Anaïs Nin, who became obsessed with her and, just as Henry Miller did, used her as a biographical archetype in many of her subsequent writings. June also figured prominently in Incest and Henry and June, which later became a movie.
June and Henry divorced by proxy in Mexico in 1934.
After divorcing Miller she married Stratfor Corbett (probably) in 1935, who worked either for the New York Life Insurance Comapny or as a public relations officer for the U.S. Government. Shratford left her in 1947, for the actress Rite Le Roy. Her life deteriorated at this point and she lived in a series of cheap hotels around New York City, such as the Hotel Continental on 95th Street. She was in touch with Miller during this period through the post, and he sent her money through friends and bookstores such as the Gotham Book Mark.
During the 1950s, June was admitted to psychiatric wards where she received electric shock treatments, during which she broke several bones after falling off the operating table from which she never fully recovered. In 1954 she began volunteering as a social worker. In 1961 she met Miller again, where he was shocked at her deterioration.
In the late 1960s, June moved to Arizona with one of her brothers, where she is probably buried.
Though she expressed a desire to write an autobiography, she never wrote anything other than letters, but she had enormous literary influence over the works of Miller and Anaïs Nin.
References
- Kenneth C. Dick, Henry Miller: Colossus of One
- Robert Furguson, Henry Miller, A Life
- Henry Miller, Crazy Cock (formerly titled Lovely Lesbians), (as 'Hildred')
- Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer (as 'Mona')
- Henry Miller, Tropic of Capricorn (as 'Mona')
- Henry Miller, The Rosy Crucifixion I
- Henry Miller, The Rosy Crucifixion II
- Henry Miller, The Rosy Crucifixion III
- Anaïs Nin, The Diary of Anaïs Nin
- Anaïs Nin, Henry and June
- Anaïs Nin, House of Incest (as 'Sabina')
- Anaïs Nin, Incest (book): The Unexpurgated Diary of Anais Nin, 1931-1932
- Anaïs Nin, A Spy in the House of Love
- Stephen Starck, June Scattered In Fragments
