Take Pen in Hand

Though it is still sold in most department and drug stores for prices ranging from a modest fifty cents to a staggering {250, the fountain pen has been replaced as a common writing instrument by the ubiquitous ballpoint.

The ballpoint is a wonder of the age. It is efficient, inexpensive, easy to obtain, and nothing has ever existed that is better for filling out documents with carbons attached. It writes under water, under pressurization, and on top of Scotch tape and the seventy-cent spread. It will even write on paper, more often than not, but despite its near-perfection it is unloved. Like the little folded sheets of glossy tissue one finds in service-station rest rooms, it is accepted and used by almost everyone, but in very few hearts has it inspired genuine affection.

Why should this be? Because the ballpoint is merely a writing instrument and the fountain pen is a great deal more than a writing instrument: it is a means of expressing individuality; it is also a symbol of rank. Today we do not think much of the individual and we dismiss the concept of rank. Taking those lines in the Constitution more literally than the good gray authors of that document ever intended us to do, we appear to have resolved not only that all men are created equal but that they stay that way.

The nature of the ballpoint's principle (a steel ball rotates through a reservoir of special ink and thereby transfers a specific amount of ink from reservoir to paper as it is rolled on) guarantees that a line drawn by one man will have the same thickness and depth as that drawn by another, though one be a clerk and the other a king.

An object that has no personality of its own and that is incapable of taking on the personality of its owner inspires little pride of ownership, and thereby, little love or affection. Consequently, one is not overly dismayed at having some light-fingered passerby make off with his ballpoint (though why anyone should want to lift a ballpoint is a mystery). The victim knows perfectly well that he cap get another at the nearest dime store for very little money that will be so like his vanished pen that he will be unable to tell the difference between them. Even a pencil has more personality.

It is difficult to imagine a poem, play or novel of enduring worth being composed with a ballpoint pen. In fact, it is a testament to the low regard we have for the ballpoint that the same principle used in its design was adopted by the manufacturers of deodorants for statues.

The fountain pen, on the other hand, is a direct descendant of the noble quill, the dashing image of which persists today in the very word "pen" (from the Latin penna, "feather") and in such terms as nom de plume. There is something about nom de ballpoint that just does not fill the bill. Until a generation ago, manuscripts or letters could be works of art. There is a name for that art, calligraphy, but it is among the lost arts. You didn't just pick up a new fountain pen and use it. You learned it, as you would learn a difficult musical instrument; and when you were proficient enough to extract its greatest potential, you felt you had accomplished something important. In most primary schools, penmanship is no longer being taught. With everybody using ballpoints, the best one can hope for is legibility – grace and character are out of the question, and art is quite impossible to achieve.

So is versatility. No ballpoint has ever been a fraction as versatile as a good, well-trained, properly treated fountain pen. Even an im properly treated fountain pen had it over the ballpoint because character could be achieved in the script through the gradual accretion of paper fibers, fuzz and other debris in the pen's tip. With care, your pen could last a lifetime. As your personality changed, you could express this process by purchasing different sized nibs or points. Bold: a broad nib or stub. Put upon by the world: a fine nib. Conformist: a medium nib.

If the pen broke, you sent it to the factory or to a local man for delicate repairs. One never seriously considered abandoning an expensive fountain pen because it had stopped writing. This is not true of the ballpoint. It is an item to be used, abused and tossed aside. Many ballpoints are unrefillable and are destined for the trash can from the moment of their manufacture.

The filling of fountain pens was usually an adventure. You had to know exactly how hard to squeeze the little rubber bladder or how fast to pry out the device that would do the bladder-squeezing for you. The term "fountain pen" is descriptive of what could happen if you miscalculated. It would become a fountain indeed, geysering jets of jet-black ink permanently onto your newest palm beach suit.

With the ballpoint, there is no adventure. While you wait to be reminded to buy a refill, it manages to find a hiding place in the bottom of a drawer somewhere, and rather than look for it, you buy another. In that rare instance when you do have a refill handy, it is an absurdly dull and simple business to install, and by doing so you have changed the point as well as the ink supply.

This would never do with the fountain pen. We were told that the fountain pen had a special point made of cosmium, platinum, gold, indium or some other rare and precious metal. The tip was soft and would shape itself to the writing habits of the hand that used it. We learned that once this transformation had been wrought, no other person should be allowed to use it. By holding the pen at a different inclination or by pressing with a different weight, another person could ruin the point for our further use.

Perhaps this was not true, or perhaps it was only partially true. In any event, the notion served a valuable function. It gave us a sense of identification with the fountain pen and helped make it an extension of ourselves. We who believed it, who looked with suspicion at anyone who would suggest borrowing our fountain pen, were rewarded in a special fashion when we touched the pen to paper to sign our names. We put a little bit of ourselves on the paper and when we looked at what we had written we knew, as John Hancock knew, that there was a signature!