Drop-Ink Centre

Drop everything: let's talk droplets.

I happened to be reminded this week of the opening of George Eliot's Adam Bede:

With a single drop of ink for a mirror, the Egyptian sorcerer undertakes to reveal to any chance comer far-reaching visions of the past. This is what I undertake to do for you, reader. With this drop of ink at the end of my pen, I will show you the roomy workshop of Mr. Jonathan Burge, carpenter and builder, in the village of Hayslope, as it appeared on the eighteenth of June, in the year of our Lord 1799.

I can't claim to have read any further than this, dear readers, for I only have to see the name 'George Eliot' and I drop off to sleep. This antipathy goes back to my time as a student of 'A' level English Literature, when we were forced to read Silas Marner. Our teacher insisted that it was one of the finest novels ever written, and spent many interminable lessons discussing the eponymous hero's tendency to experience cataleptic seizures. This was, he insisted, symbolic of what capitalism did to the human spirit in the nineteenth century. My suggestion that perhaps Silas Marner had just been made to read Silas Marner was not well received. More recently, I decided to renew my dislike for Eliot's work when a now-retired colleague for whom I had remarkably little respect announced, in the week that Don DeLillo's Underworld was published, that Middlemarch was, and would always be, The Greatest Novel Ever Written. 'DeLillo's just a pretender', he sneered.

But back to Adam Bede. A colleague for whom I have huge amounts of respect drew my attention to this wonderful opening passage a couple of years ago, but, perhaps because of my longstanding feud with George Eliot, I managed to repress its existence until I saw the inky lines in print again several days ago. I know that I will never read Adam Bede, but I do think that there's something special about its 'inkipit'. What it recognizes so well, I think, is the possibility embodied in every drop of ink. With ink, we can go anywhere.

One of the things I like most about writing with real ink is the transformation of every drop of coloured fluid into sentences that didn't exist until I put pen to paper. Yes, users of ballpoint or rollerball pens can also turn a blank page into one teeming with meaning, but there's a crucial difference when a fountain pen is involved: the writer was responsible for filling the pen, either from a bottle or with a cartridge. In other words, he or she has come into close (sometimes very close) contact with the shapeless liquid, has placed it tenderly inside a writing instrument, and can then watch as the formless substance miraculously emerges drop by drop from the nib to find a form recognizable to all those who can read the language in question. To put matters differently, a user of a fountain pen has made the writing instrument capable of forming drops of ink, and is then intimately present as those drops drop into place, into shapes, into meaning.

The narrator of Adam Bede appears to recognize this: from that single drop of ink at the end of the pen can come a description of 'the roomy workshop of Mr. Jonathan Burge, carpenter and builder, in the village of Hayslope, as it appeared on the eighteenth of June, in the year of our Lord 1799'. From the fluid, a vision. From the drop, a universe. And all of this where there was previously nothing. The blank page receives the drops and starts to signify.

I am typing these words less than a metre from a box containing dozens of bottles of ink. (When did I last count or catalogue them? Will my urge to collect ever show signs of dropping off?) It's a little dizzying to think about how many drops lie within, how many words and worlds I could create at the drop of a hat, but that sense of inkfinite possibility is part of what drives the Penquod and prevents it from ever dropping anchor.

It's late; I'm fit to drop. Thanks for dropping by.

Inks in use today: Sailor Grey; Diamine Chocolate Brown.

Obviously Five (x10,000) Believers

Fifty thousand satisfied customers.

I haven't had chance to update Ink Quest this week, dear readers, as I've been buried beneath mountains of work. A full post about the glory of a drop of ink dangling from the end of a pen will follow, I hope, within the next few days.

But while I've been neglecting my duties at the helm of the good ship Penquod, the pages of this blog have received visitor number 50,000. A small drop in the ocean that is the internet, of course, but I like to think that each person whose eyes have found their way to Ink Quest has gone away filled with the spirit of ink. And misanthropy.

While you're waiting for the next thrilling inkstalment, you may wish to consider the two following items:

1. A fascinating response to my recent post about the writing instruments used by Roland Barthes in his Carnets du voyage en Chine.

2. A truly bizarre piece of plagiarism, in which a post from this very blog has somehow been merged with dubious adverts for bizarre items.

Perhaps I should ask the thief responsible for the second item if s/he could keep Ink Quest going while I'm busy. The list of blogs mentioned in his/her profile suggests that there is no end to his/her talent.

To the next fifty thousand! Enc(o)re un effort!

Ink in use today: Diamine Chocolate Brown.

-caust and Effect

Is ink etymologically aware?

Colleague and honorary Penquod crew member Daphne called me into her office yesterday afternoon to relay some urgent news: she had been happily writing with her Sheaffer-Turquoise-filled fountain pen, admiring the delicate blue colour of her words, when the ink suddenly took on a life of its own. As she wrote the word 'Holocaust', she related, the ink changed from blue to brown ... and then back to blue again as soon as she began to form the next word in the sentence. She showed me the evidence. 'Holocaust' stood out on the page, the only non-turquoise mark in sight. Could I, she asked, explain the inkident?

I have known inks to change colour slightly if the pen is left uncapped and unused for several minutes. Waterman Havana Brown, for instance, often becomes a curious shade of green if the dormant nib is exposed to the air for a period of time. But I have never known a pale turquoise to become a burnt brown. Besides, Daphne had not put her pen to one side before the inkident occurred; she had, she said, stopped writing for no more than two or three seconds.

I have been thinking about this mystery all night; I have not slept a wink. I have weighed up numerous explanations for the dramatic eruption of the colour brown.

At first, I wondered if Daphne's pen was somehow connected across time to the Holocaust. Had its original owner perished in one of the camps, and was the nib performing an act of remembrance by highlighting the word? (Was it a Shoah show-er in certain words, in other words?) I quickly rejected this explanation when I remembered that Daphne's Sheaffer was purchased as new by her within the last couple of years.

I then moved on to a more prosaic hypothesis. Had traces of a previous colour of ink suddenly surfaced from within the pen and mixed with the turquoise to produce the brown? It's true that Daphne had been using a red cartridge before she switched to the blue, and it's also true that fountain pens are fond, if not thoroughly rinsed between colours, of producing some interesting new shades all by themselves. But I'm not sure that this explains yesterday's inkident. When Daphne showed me the sheet of notes, it was clear that 'Holocaust' had erupted in brown without the slightest warning or waning. The words on either side of the highlighted term were pure turquoise in colour; there was not even the tiniest hint of brown before or after 'Holocaust'. The emphasis was emphatic.



[NOTE: Dramatic reconstruction. Every effort has been made to preserve factual accuracy, but Penquod Productions Ink. has reimagined certain details.]

After hours of rigorous scientific contemplation, I finally discovered the root of the inkident: the root itself. 'Holocaust' and 'ink' are etymologically linked, cast together as words by '-caust', for 'Holocaust' -- which literally means the burning of all -- goes back to 'kaustos', the Greek for 'burnt', and 'ink' gets its name from 'encaustum', the caustic writing fluid used by Roman emperors, which in turn goes back to the Greek 'egkauston'.

My theory, then, is this: Daphne's turquoise ink (encaustum) became brown when she wrote the word 'Holocaust' (holo + kaustos) because of a sudden etymological collision. And the ink chose to register this fact performatively by making itself appear burnt (kaustos) upon the page. The inkident was caused, in other words, by -caust.

Now that I have solved the mystery, I can finally sleep. I am burnt out; I can burn the midnight oil no longer. These, dear readers, are the lengths to which I go to bring you the burning issues of our times. Thus ends today's burnt offering.

Encaustum in use today: Diamine Chocolate Brown.

PS (4.15pm): As I have mentioned in previous posts, the Sitemeter tracker attached to Ink Quest gives me regular updates on who is reading the blog. I never know precise identities, of course, but I do get information about geographical location, ISP, length of visit, and so on. I am alarmed to discover that someone at the institution where I work appears to be making his or her way systematically through the Ink Quest archive, sometimes spending up to forty minutes lost in my deathless prose. This can only mean one thing: my cover is blown, and I am no longer anonymous. I have little doubt that The Management is watching, taking notes, assembling the case against me, and plotting my sudden disappearance in an unfortunate 'accident'. If you never hear from me again, dear readers, I would like Chief Justice Earl Warren to lead the inkquest into the Ink Quest inkident.

Which Side Are You On?

'Are we the baddies?'

I take this line from a sketch by David Mitchell and Robert Webb, in which two German SS officers suddenly experience a moment of enlightenment. 'Hans, I've just noticed something', says the one. 'Have you looked at our caps recently? [...] They've got skulls on them [...] Hans, are we the baddies?' Readers of Ink Quest not familiar with the routine can watch the whole thing here:



This sketch has been on my mind for the last couple of days, dear readers, because I have started to wonder if Ink Quest has spent nearly four years fighting on the side of evil, not against it.

My troubles began on Friday afternoon. My entire department had been sent to a conference room in a hotel for an 'Away Day'. (I won't bother to parody this event, as it managed to leap beyond parody all by itself.)



During one of the coffee breaks, I found myself in conversation with a colleague who grew up in Soviet-era Poland. We somehow got around to discussing ink (he brought the topic up, honestly), and he asked if my love of fountain pens went back to my school days. Was I, he asked, required to use an inkwell and dip pen while learning to write? I reported that I wasn't, and he then related how his schooling in Poland had been one filled with ink. (I don't know precisely when this was, but it must have been at some point in the 1960s, I think.) Each child's desk, he reported, sported an inkwell, and the caretaker would come around every day with a giant bottle of ink to replenish the containers. Learning to write, he added, was all about learning to dip a stylus-like pen into the inky depths.

I told him that this sounded like utopia, and I related how I'd been forced to use a ballpoint pen when learning to write in school. 'When I'm in charge', I said, 'those hideous creations will be banned.' What my colleague said next came as something of a shock.

Fountain pens, he announced in response to my desire to ban ballpoints, were prohibited in his Polish school. Not because, as I immediately suspected, they were the sign of capitalist, bourgeois decadence, but because they were believed to spoil children's handwriting. Only the dip pen, ran the rule, could produce proper writing. All hell broke loose, he continued, when his parents bought him a fountain pen and sent him to school with it. (I don't know my colleague well enough to know why and when he moved from Poland to the UK, but I wonder if his entire family was forced to seek political refuge here following the inkident in question. Were they sent into exile because he chose not to dip?)

I have always maintained that the ballpoint pen kills elegant handwriting. (Has anything but a simian scrawl ever been produced with a biro? The great Roland Barthes had it right when he remarked that a Bic was good for nothing but churning out 'pisse copie'.) But what if I've been wrong all along? What if the fountain pen -- the sacred instrument upon which Ink Quest relies -- is just as damaging? What if the only instrument capable of preserving the art of handwriting is the stylus-like dip pen?

In other words, I have been plunged into an exinkstential crisis. Perhaps I am one of 'the baddies'. Perhaps I have devoted nearly 350 posts to evil. Perhaps I've been on the wrong side from day one. Perhaps the Penquod should be sunk, the blog deleted without a trace, and all of my fountain pens thrown onto a bonfire. Perhaps we should let only the stylus style us. Which side am I on? I feel side-swiped.

Inks in use today: Diamine Chocolate Brown; Diamine Majestic Blue. (These two new acquisitions are delightful. With the Chocolate Brown, Diamine has finally come up with a proper dark brown. It's not quite as dark as, say, Noodler's Walnut, but it's getting there. It's similar to Private Reserve Chocolat, but I think it's slightly darker. The Majestic Blue, meanwhile, is a lovely saturated colour that reminds me very much of the mythical Parker Penman Sapphire. Both inks flow magnificently and offer some wonderful shading.)

Scrap Age

Scrap everything.

Ink Quest has very little interest in political debate and current affairs, but an item in the budget recently unveiled by the British Chancellor of the Exchequer has caught my eye. In an attempt to boost the ailing car industry, Mr Darling announced that motorists trading in a car of more than ten years of age will receive £2000 towards a new vehicle. Similar schemes have already worked wonders elsewhere in Europe, it seems, so the British economy will be back in the fast lane within weeks, I'm sure.

But why stop there? Why not extend the scrappage scheme to other commodities? What's so special about cars? (I ask this last question as the exasperated father of a toddler who spends every waking moment playing with, and talking about, cars. He has even taken to grabbing the 'In Gear' supplement as soon as I sit down with the Sunday Times, pointing jubilantly at the ill-dressed figure on the front, and shouting 'Clarkson! Clarkson!') Why not give the economy a further boost by offering cash incentives to people who trade in their biros for fountain pens?

This brilliant idea came to me yesterday morning as we were wandering around the open-air National History Museum in St. Fagans. (Don't get me started on the monstrous lack of apostrophe. This can only be the fault of the colonizers, for the original Welsh name was simply Sain Ffagan.) One of the most striking features in the hundred-acre site is the sixteenth-century manor house (known, for some reason, as the 'castle'). I was too busy chasing Baby Ink to read the explanatory text in detail, but I believe that the house has been set out as it would have been in the nineteenth century, so visitors step back in time as soon as they cross the threshold.

I, of course, immediately started to look for vintage writing instruments and related objects. I didn't have to look far, for several of the rooms contained rather elegant writing desks, inkwells, and dip pens. Before I could take detailed notes, however, Baby Ink's friend toddled a little too close to one of the security barriers, and the warning alarm sounded throughout the house. We weren't actually asked to leave by the guard who came rushing up the stairs, but we thought it wise to make our way out before one of the marauding pair destroyed a priceless piece of the past.

Seeing the inkwells in so many of the rooms of the manor house brought home once again just how much our relationship to ink and writing instruments has changed over the years. These days, whether a fountain pen or a ballpoint is involved, we tend to take our writing instruments with us as we move around our domestic spaces. When ink, at a certain point in time, made its way inside the barrel -- when the dip pen dipped out of sight, in other words -- it suddenly became portable. Before that, by way of contrast, carrying a pen around would have made little sense, as it would, generally speaking, not have contained ink; the magical fluid would have sat in an inkwell, and the solid writing instrument would have been repeatedly dipped. Who, under such circumstances, would have wanted to risk calamitous spillages by carrying a precarious, open inkwell from room to room? Keeping a supply of ink in various places around the house would have been much more sensible.

But what does any of this have to do with my scheme for rewarding people who trade in ballpoints for fountain pens? Well, dear readers, it's perfectly simple: my idea is that every house in the land has a fountain pen in each room. And each room, moreover, will have a space set aside for inky activities. I have looked back to the nineteenth century, in other words, and I can see a way forward through the stormy waters. If every household in this green, unpleasant land is strongly encouraged to buy, say, eight fountain pens -- with financial support from the state, of course -- the economy will be thriving in no time. And if the deal is that every ballpoint pen in Britain be traded in at the same time, then we'll rid the nation of biros before the year is out. (I realize that this is starting to sound a bit like something inkvented by Mao Zedong, but I have, in my defence, just finished reading Roland Barthes' account of his bizarre trip to China in 1974.)

Yes, dear readers, the Great Ballpoint Scrappage Scheme is hereby officially inkaugurated. From the credit crunch comes the triumphant crunching of biros into a million tiny pieces. The salvation of the economy begins at home (oikos).

There is just one problem: as far as I know, Mr Darling is not a reader of this blog. I will, then, need to take a trip to Downing Street to inkform him of my plans. I will write this entry out by hand on my finest sheets and with exquisite ink, and I will gather up every ballpoint pen currently lurking beneath the roof of Ink Towers. (The Inkette likes to annoy me by buying packs of ten.) When the Chancellor answers the door of No. 11 , I will proudly hand over my obsolete biros and the text of my historic Scrap Paper.

Ink in use today: Diamine Sepia.