A longtime reader and I met for the first time on Monday and had dinner together. A retired aid worker who spent years in Africa, he lives in the Texas Hill Country. Gary is a confirmed reader, a book hound, the sort who keeps a pen and a list in his pocket. Conversation was effortless. He mentioned recently reading a book that brought tears to his eyes. A few movies and some music have done that to me but never a book. Of course, I’m an insensitive brute, though I immediately thought of the writer who has given us more sad scenes than any other: Henry James. I tried to quote from memory the final sentence of his short novel Washington Square (1880). I had the rhythm but not all of the words in their proper order:
“Catherine, meanwhile, in
the parlor, picking up her morsel of fancy-work, had seated herself with it
again – for life, as it were.”
Catherine Sloper’s naïve,
rather dull goodness is abused by the charming fortune hunter Morris Townsend
and even more painfully by her father, Dr. Sloper, who, ironically, sees
through Townsend’s scam. Loyalties torn, innocence betrayed, a life unlived – “for
life, as it were.” That final sentence is devastating. One of the reasons it
works, apart from the halting cadence, is James’ choice of morsel. Every
other usage I know refers to food.
The word in English is
old, dating from the days of Anglo-Norman and Old French. Its principal meaning
is what you would expect: “a bite or mouthful; a small piece of food.”
Dr. Johnson uses it
comically in the August 19, 1758, issue of The Idler. Jack Whirler, a
dervish of busyness, “always dines at full speed. He enters, finds the family
at table, sits familiarly down, and fills his plate; but while the first morsel
is in his mouth, hears the clock strike, and rises.”
The OED gives
several shades of meaning. Here is the one closest to James’ usage: “a small
piece or amount (of anything), esp. one cut or broken from a mass; a
fragment.” Something small and broken, not unlike Catherine’s life. “Fancy-work”
is embroidery, purely ornamental.
2 comments:
Trollope's Last Chronicle of Barset had me in tears twice, once when Septimus Harding (the most lovable good character I've ever encountered in fiction) died, and once at the book's conclusion, when Trollope bid farewell forever to the people and place that had come to mean so much to him - and to me.
Yes, Thomas Parker. That episode in Trollope was particularly poignant. It's been years since I read it, but you made me recall the pang afresh.
Post a Comment