Young Man with Fountain Pen

 

Writing in pen in the Canterbury Tales

 

"Sick-hearted Damian in Venus' fire

Is so consumed, he's dying with desire;

And so he took his courage in his hand

To end a grief he could no longer stand

And with a pen that he contrived to borrow

He wrote a letter pouring out his sorrow,

After a fashion of a song or lay,

Indited to his lady, dazzling May,

And wrapped it in a purse of silk apart

To hang inside his shirt, upon his heart.

Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales, 1392.

Dunhill pen set of Tom Wolfe

 

 There was a large handsome leather-bound desk blotter, a gold Dunhill pen-and-pencil set mounted on an onyx pedestal, a collection of paperweights and medals imbedded in Lucite, several of which had been inscribed to Revered Reginald Bacon by civic organisations, a stack of papers held down by a paperweight consisting mainly of the letters WNBC - TV in thick brass, an intercom with a row of buttons, and a large box-shaped ashtray with leather sides framed in brass and a brass grillwork over the top.

 

Tom Wolfe, The Bonfire of the Vanities, first published 1987.

Blue and red pencil of Borges

 

I found what I knew I would find. The American watch, the nickel chain and the square coin, the key ring with the incriminating useless keys to Runeberg's apartment, the notebook, a letter which I resolved to destroy immediately (and which I did not destroy), a crown, two shillings, and a few pence, the red and blue pencil, the handkerchief, the revolver with one bullet.

Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths, first published 1962.

Pencils in the time of Covid

Community spirit in the time of Covid: one of the neighbours is sharing writing and drawing supplies during the first lockdown in north London!