Bleak House Ink and Quill Spotting

In the dark alleys of Bleak House’s plot ink abounds. Dickens’ labyrinth Chancery Court case of Jarndyce v. Jarndyce which permeates the plot of Bleak House is itself laid out in interminable ink markings. Legal proceedings, love letters, communications, missives, wills and testaments, all in ink - ink stored in stoneware pots, in ink wells, at the tip of goose quills. Clerks are dipping their quills in ink as does the scheming lawyer Tulkinghorn, Caddy Jellyby is covered in it, and it is Nemo’s skilful way with quill and ink that sets the wheels of revelation in motion. 

The BBC 2005 Bleak House adaptation does not do justice to Dickens' novel, but the ink geek can indulge in some ink and quill spotting:

Mr Tulkinghorn’s quill

 

"Here, in a large house, formerly a house of state, lives Mr Tulkinghorn. …  He has some manuscript near him, but is not referring to it.With the round top of an inkstand and two broken bits of sealing-wax, he is silently and slowly working out whatever train of indecision is in his mind. 

Now, tbe inkstand top is in the middle: now, the red bit of sealing-wax, now the black bit. That’s not it. Mr Tulkinghorn must gather them all up, and begin again."

Caddy Jellyby’s quill. 

"But what principally struck us was a jaded and unhealthy-looking, though by no means plain girl, at the writing-table, who sat biting the feather of her pen, and staring at us. I suppose nobody ever was in such a state of ink. ... She would not sit down, but stood by the fire, dipping her inky middle finger in the egg-cup, which contained vinegar, and smearing it over the ink stains on her face, frowning the whole time and looking very gloomy."

Nemo's ink

"It is a small room, nearly black with soot, and grease, and dirt. In the rusty skeleton of a grate, pinched at the middle as if Poverty had gripped it, a red coke fire burns low. In the corner by the chimney, stand a deal table and a broken desk: a wilderness marked with a rain of ink. "

 Nemo's handwriting

"Jarndyce and Jarndyce, Snagsby.”

“Yes, sir.” Mr Snagsby turns up the gas, and coughs behind his hand, modestly anticipating profit. Mr Snagsby, as a timid man, is accustomed to cough with a variety of expressions, and so to save words.

“You copied some affidavits in that cause for me lately.”

“Yes, sir, we did.”

“There was one of them,” says Mr Tulkinghorn, carelessly feeling — tight, unopenable Oyster of the old school! — in the wrong coat-pocket, “the handwriting of which is peculiar, and I rather like.

 Mr Snagsby's ink

Mr Snagsby has dealt in all sorts of blank forms of legal process; in skins and rolls of parchments; in paper - foolscap, brief, draft, brown, white, whitey-brown, and blotting; in stamps; in office-quills, pens, ink, India rubber, pounce, pins, pencils, sealing-wax, and wafers.

What is the paper label on the ink stoneware? Is it Stephens' Ink? Henry "Inky" Stephens started producing his blue-black "writing fluid" already in 1834 so the ink was presumably in circulation by the time Dickens' wrote his novel (1852-3). So congrats for historical accuracy to whoever was in charge of props in the BBC production.

Stephens Blue Black Writing Fluid