Forty Centuries of Ink Part 26

"The Greeks, prepared skins called membrana.

"The people of Pergamus, parchment and vellum.

"The Hindoos, palm-leaves."

The written deeds of biblical time were kept in various styles of pottery (Jeremiah x.x.xii. 14). Handwriting on tiles was common in Egypt, a.s.syria and Palestine (Ezekiel iv. I). Such handwritings were on tablets of terra-cotta or common baked clay bricks.

One of the kind was fashioned by inscribing directly with a "stylus" on the clay, before baking. Another, were "moulds" made from older inscriptions or duplicates from the first kind.

The Hebrew term sepher, translated into English means a "book," and some authorities claim it is derived from the same root as the Greek , a stone, which would seem to point to engraved stones as the earliest kinds of records. Indeed nearly all the pa.s.sages in the Five Books of Moses, in which writing is mentioned, refer to records of this kind, or to tablets of lead or wood, occasionally described as coated with wax.

Long before the use of papyrus, or any like substance was known as a material for writing on, thin bricks were frequently utilized for such purposes.

The Chinese wrote on slips of bamboo which had been previously sc.r.a.ped to be afterwards submitted to intense heat which so hardened them, that a graver would cut lines with the same facility, as could be accomplished on soft metal like lead. These bamboo tablets were joined together by means of cords made of bark and when folded formed a "book." Different nations adopted other modes in their preparation of surfaces to engrave on. Many original specimens have come down to us which present definite evidence of the variety of materials and methods employed in their manufacture.

Hilprecht, "Explorations in Bible Lands," 1903, mentions many discoveries of such specimens. He says that more than four thousand clay tablets were discovered during the excavations of 1889 and 1900.

These relics call attention only to a very few discoveries of this character. There were other explorers who preceded Hilprecht in this direction, and who with him have thus secured tangible evidence which fully confirms all that has been said about the employment of the most ancient of writing instruments, the "stylus."

The diamond is also to be cla.s.sified under the head of "scratching implements" and many historical incidents are recorded of its use. One of the most interesting relates to Sir Walter Raleigh and Queen Elizabeth and to be found in Scott's "Kenilworth."

Sir Walter, using his diamond ring, wrote on a pane of gla.s.s in her summer-house at Greenwich:

"Fain would I climb, but that I fear to fall."

The maiden Queen adding the words:

"If thy mind fail thee, do not climb at all."

Biblical mention of the diamond, employed as a pen, is found in Jeremiah xvii. 1.

"The sin of Judah is written with a pen of iron, and with the point of a diamond."

It has not always been possible to decipher and interpret the character values of the most ancient hieroglyphics or picture writings inscribed on bricks, stone and metal slabs, and the Egyptian monuments. The means to do so were furnished as the result of a very fortunate accident or "find."

A French artillery officer in 1799 while excavating the foundations for a fortification near the Rosetta mouth of the Nile, found a curious black tablet of stone. On it were engraved three inscriptions, each of different characters and dialects.

The first of the three inscriptions was in hieroglyphic, then unreadable; the second in demotic or shorter script, also unknown, and the third in a living language pertaining to the time of Ptolemy Epiphanes, who reigned about 200 B. C.

This relic of antiquity is called the Rosetta stone.

Jean Francois Champollion, who with Dr. Thomas Young studied the intricacies of these writings, first established the fact that the three inscriptions on this stone were translations of each other. Dr. Young's investigations caused him to study the language included in the second inscription, and made his deductions, it is said, "by dint of thousands of scientific guesses, all but a few of which were eliminated by tests which he invented and applied; he at last discovered and put together the set of fundamental principles that govern the ancient writings."

Champollion, however, began at the bottom and having successfully translated the LIVING language, established a "key" or alphabet. Hence it became possible, although requiring some years, to solve the mystery of writings of 4000 or more years old.

Champollion pursued his discoveries so thoroughly in this direction as to be able to complete in 1829 an Egyptian vocabulary and grammar.

The Rosetta stone after remaining in the possession of the French for many years was captured by the English on the defeat of the French forces in Egypt and is now in the British museum.

As writing with liquid colors on papyrus or a.n.a.logous materials which could be used in the form of rolls, gradually came into vogue, the calamus or reed pen, pencil brush (hair pencil), or the juncas, a pen formed from a kind of cane, were more or less employed.

The "calamus" followed the "brush," just as

phonographic writing which denotes arbitrary sounds or the language of symbols, came after the picture or ideographic writing.

The places where the calamus grew and the modes of preparing them are variously discussed by different ancient and modern writers. Some claim that the best reeds for pen purposes formerly grew near Memphis on the Nile, near Cnidus of Caria, in Asia Minor, and in Armenia. Those grown in Italy were estimated to have been of but poor quality. Chardin calls attention to a kind to be found, "in a large fen or tract of soggy land supplied with water by the river h.e.l.le, a place in Arabia formed by the united arms of the Euphrates and Tigris. They are cut in March, tied in bundles, laid six months in a manure heap, where they a.s.sume a beautiful color, mottled yellow and black." Tournefort saw them growing in the neighborhood of Teflis in Georgia. Miller describes the cane as "growing no higher than a man, the stem three or four lines in thickness and solid from one knot to another, excepting the central white pith." The incipient fermentation in the manure heap dries up the pith and hardens the cane. The pens were about the size of the largest swan's quills.

They were cut and slit like a quill pen but with much larger nibs.

In the far East the calamus is still used, the best being gathered in the month of March, near Aurac, on the Persian Gulf, and still prepared after the old method of immersing them for about six months in fermenting manure which coats them with a sort of dark varnish and the darker their color the more they are prized.

The "brush" also holds its career of usefulness, more especially in China and j.a.pan.

The earliest examples of reed pen writing are the ancient rolls of papyrus which have been found buried with the Egyptian dead. Some of these old relics of antiquity are claimed to have been prepared fully twenty centuries or more before the Christian era.

The "reed" pen for ink writing held almost undisputed sway until the sixth century after the Christian era, when the quill (penna) came into vogue.

Reed pens preserved in excellent condition were found in the ruins of Herculaneum.

"When he had finished, he dried the bamboo-pen on his hair, and replaced it behind his ear, saying, 'Yak pose' (That is well). 'Temou chu' (Rest in peace), we replied; and, after politely putting out our tongues, withdrew." Abbe Hue at Lha-Ssa.

CHAPTER XXVI.

INK UTENSILS (QUILL PEN STEEL PEN).

THE QUILL PEN THE MOST SUCCESSFUL AND FITTING OF ALL WRITING INSTRUMENTS--TENDENCY TO "WEAR"

OUT--THE SOMETIMES AFFECTION FOR OLD PENS--DR.

HOLLAND'S LINES ON THE PEN--SELECTION OF QUILLS TO BE MADE INTO PENS--METHOD OF PREPARING THEM--BYRON'S ESTIMATION OF HIS QUILL PEN--ITS INVENTION BEFORE THE SIXTH CENTURY UNCERTAIN-- EMPLOYMENT OF THE REED AND QUILL PEN TOGETHER UNTIL THE TWELFTH CENTURY--WHEN THE STEEL PEN CAME INTO VOGUE--WHO WAS ITS INVENTOR--SOME OBSERVATIONS ABOUT IT--QUANt.i.tY OF MATERIAL SIXTY YEARS AGO CONSUMED IN PEN MANUFACTURE--A FEW REMARKS ABOUT GOLD, FOUNTAIN AND STYLOGRAPHIC PENS--MORE STEEL USED IN THE MANUFACTURE OF PENS THAN IN THAT OF SWORDS AND GUNS--POETICAL LINES ABOUT THE PEN.

THE quills belonging to the feathers of birds seem to have been the most successful and fitting of all materials for pens, for, though steel and other metals are now used for this purpose to an immense extent, there is a power of adaptation in a quill pen which has never yet been equalled in metal. Quills, however, like other things, have a tendency to "wear out," and the trouble resulting from the necessity of frequently mending quill pens and a desire to write with more rapidity have been the main causes of the introduction of steel subst.i.tutes. A kind of affection has often been felt by an author or official, or their admirers, for the pen with which he has written any large or celebrated work or signed some important doc.u.ment; old worn-out pens, as well as new ones, have been preserved as memorials in connection with such matters, and Dr. Holland, who translated Pliny's "Natural History" in the sixteenth century, recorded an exploit connected with it in the following lines:

"With one sole pen I wrote this book, Made of a gray goose-quill: A pen it was when it I took A pen I leave it still."

The quills employed for pens were generally those of the goose, although the crow, the swan, and other birds yielded feathers which were occasionally available for this purpose. Each wing produced about five good quills, but the number thus yielded was so small that the geese reared in England could not furnish nearly enough for the demand, hence the importation of goose quills from the Continent was very large.

The process surrounding the manufacture of a quill pen proves of considerable interest.

"The geese are plucked of their feathers three or four times a year, the first time for the sake both of the quills and the feathers, but the other times for the feathers only. The pen quills are generally taken from the ends of the wings. When plucked the quills are found to be covered with a membranous skin, resulting from a decay of a kind of sheath which had enveloped them; the interior vascular membrane, too, resulting from the decay of the vascular pith, adheres so strongly to the barrel of the quill as to be with difficulty separated, while, at the same time, the barrel itself is opaque, soft, and tough. To remove these various defects the quills undergo several processes. In the first instance, as a means of removing the membraneous skin, the quills are plunged into heated sand, the high temperature of which causes the external skin of the barrel to crack and peel off, and the internal membrane to shrivel up. The outer membrane is then sc.r.a.ped off with a sharp instrument, while the inner membrane remains in a state to be easily detached. For the finest quills the heating is repeated two or three times. The heat of the sand, by consuming or drying up the natural moisture of the barrel, renders it harder and more transparent. In order to give the barrel a yellow color, and a tendency to split more readily and clearly, it is dipped in weak nitric acid, but this was considered to render the quill more brittle and less durable, and was therefore a sacrifice of utility for the sake of appearance."

"Oh! nature's n.o.blest gift--my gray goose quill!

Slave of my thoughts, obedient to my will, Torn from thy parent bird to form a pen, That mighty instrument of little men!"

BYRON.

To locate an exact period for the invention of the quill pen is impossible. It could hardly have been in use before the fourth century, probably not earlier than two centuries later. Some writers have a.s.sumed that it was employed by the Romans, but as no distinct mention is made of them by early cla.s.sical authors we must accept the only information at hand.

Isidore (died A. D. 636) and contemporaries state that the quills of birds came into use as pens only in the sixth century. It is also known, St. Brovverus being the authority, that in his time (seventh century) the calamus or reed pen and the quill pen were employed together, the calamus being used in the writing of the uncial (inch) letters and capitals, and the quill for smaller letters. Mention is also made by many writers of the five centuries which followed Isidore's time of the calamus, indicating that notwithstanding it had been superseded by the quill it was still a favorite writing implement in some places.

The use of the "steel pen" did not spring immediately from that of the "quill pen." There were several intermediate stages adopted before the fitness of steel for this purpose was sufficiently known, From about 1800 to 1835 the number of proposed subst.i.tutes for the quill pen was very considerable.

Horn pens, tortoise-sh.e.l.l pens, nibs of diamond or ruby imbedded in tortoise sh.e.l.l, nibs of ruby set in fine gold, nibs of rhodium and of iridium imbedded in gold,-- all have been adopted at different times, but most of them have been found too costly for general adoption.

Steel is proved to be sufficiently elastic and durable to form very good pens, and the ingenuity of manufacturers has been exerted to give to such pens as many as possible of the good qualities possessed by the quill pen.