'A Small Piece or Amount (of Anything)'

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.