From Calamus to Quill.
It is most interesting to trace the evolution of the pen, beginning with the calamus and stilus—the reed and erasing bodkin—and ending with a fountain-pen of the most improved make. In ancient days great care was taken in the selection of the choicest reeds, the best-cured parchment, and the daintiest waxen tablets. Egypt grew the best reeds, though they were also found in Armenia, Persia, and Italy. The modern Turks and Moors prize the Persian reeds above all others, splitting the points in the same manner as our grandfathers prepared their goose-quills. The oldest account known respecting quills is found in a work of St. Isidore's, who died in 636. Alcuinus, who lived in England, speaks of his pen, so the familiar article must have been in use almost as long as the art of writing was known in the country. Perhaps steel pens would have been more popular when first introduced if all had known that the quills were pulled from the living geese!
Dr. Warner told his stationer that with one quill pen, old when he took it up, he wrote an "ecclesiastical history," two volumes folio, and a "dissertation on the Book of Common Prayer," both first and final draughts. Byron wrote the "Bride of Abydos" in one night, without once mending his quill, while Andrew Borde, physician to Henry VIII., and the original "Merry Andrew," wrote a book of nearly three hundred pages, 12mo., in the same manner. Camden wrote of the quill with which he composed the Britannia,
"With one sole pen I wrote this book,
Made of a gray goose quill;
A pen it was when I it took,
And a pen I leave it still."
Launcelot Claymore.