WRITING INK.
(To the Editor.)
I see in your admirable work one of the never ending disquisitions about making writing ink. As I have used as much as most people in the threescore and ten years of my life, and my father used perhaps three times as much, and we never were nor are troubled, I suppose we manage as well as most folks—and as it is begged of me to a great amount, I infer that others like it.
I improve a little on my father’s plan, by substituting a better vehicle, and the knowledge of this improvement I obtained from a lady to whom a Princess Esterhazy communicated it.
It is so convenient, that whenever I go to Leamington, Brighton, Tunbridge, or such places of temporary residence, I send to a chemist’s my recipe, reduced to the quantity of half a pint; and my ink is in use as soon as it comes, improving daily.
My home quantities are these:
Three quarts of stale good beer, not porter.
Three quarters of a pound fresh blue Aleppo galls, beaten.
Four ounces of copperas.
Four ounces of gum Arabic in powder.
Two ounces of rock alum.
This is kept for a week in a wide-mouthed pitcher close to the fire, never on it, frequently stirred with a stick, and slightly covered with a large cork or tile.
My small quantity is—
Half a pint of good beer.
Two ounces of galls.
Half an ounce of copperas.
Ditto of gum Arabic.
Quarter of an ounce of rock alum.
It will never mould or lose its substance or colour. The large quantity will bear half as much beer for future use. If it thickens, thin it with beer.
I adopt the Italian ladies’ method of keeping the roving of a bit of silk stocking in the glass, which the pen moving, preserves the consistency of the liquid and keeps the fingers from it.
If you have seen better ink than this, I yield my pre-eminence.[4]
BLACKY.