Whatever may have been the cause, about the year 1433 writing-quills were so scarce at Venice, that it was with great difficulty men of letters could procure them. We learn at any rate, that the well-known Ambrosius Traversarius, a monk of Camaldule, sent from Venice to his brother, in the above year, a bunch of quills, together with a letter, in which he said, “They are not the best, but such as I received in a present. Show the whole bunch to our friend Nicholas, that he may select a quill; for these articles are indeed scarcer in this city than at Florence[1239].” This Ambrosius complains likewise, that at the same period he had hardly any more ink, and requested that a small vessel filled with it might be sent to him[1240]. Other learned men complain also of the want of good ink, which they either would not or did not know how to make. Those even who deal in it seldom know of what ingredients it is principally composed.
[The softness of quill pens and the constant trouble required to mend them naturally led to the search for some substitute. Metals have supplied this, and the manufacture of metallic pens now gives occupation to an immense number of persons. Steel and other metallic pens have long been made occasionally[1241], but were not extensively used on account of their stiffness; this was remedied by Mr. Perry, who, in 1830, introduced the use of apertures between the shoulder and the point. Numerous other improvements have been made, the metals have all had a trial, and pens can now be obtained of almost every form and quality. Perhaps the most perfect and durable, although the most expensive, are those in which the pen is made of gold, with a nib of osmium and iridium. The total quantity of steel annually employed in the manufacture of pens has been estimated at 120 tons, from which upwards of 200,000,000 pens are produced. One Birmingham manufacturer employed in 1838, 300 persons in making steel pens. They are also extensively manufactured in London and Sheffield. When first introduced, steel pens were eight shillings a gross; they afterwards fell to four shillings a gross, and now they are procured at Birmingham for fourpence a gross[1242]!]
FOOTNOTES
[1208] See Fabricii Bibliotheca Antiquaria, p. 959. Reimmanni Idea Systematis Antiquitatis Litterariæ, 1718, 8vo, p. 169. Astle’s Origin and Progress of Writing, 4to.
[1209] Plin. lib. xvi. cap. 35. Martial, lib. xiv. epigram. 38.
[1210] Plin. lib. c. Catullus, carm. xxxvi. 13, mentions Cnidus arundinosa. Ausonius, epist. iv. 75, calls the reeds Cnidii nodi.
[1211] Plin. lib. xvi. cap. 36.
[1212] Bauhini Pinax Plantar, p. 17: Arundo scriptoria atro-rubens. Hist. Plant. ii. p. 487. Theatrum Botan. p. 273.
[1213] “Their writing-pens are made of reeds or small hard canes of the size of the largest swan-quills, which they cut and slit in the same manner as we do ours; but they give them a much longer nib. These canes or reeds are collected towards Daurac, along the Persian Gulf, in a large fen supplied with water by the river Hellé, a place of Arabia formed by an arm of the Tigris, and another of the Euphrates united. They are cut in March, and, when gathered, are tied up in bundles and laid for six months under a dunghill, where they harden and assume a beautiful polish and lively colour, which is a mixture of yellow and black. None of these reeds are collected in any other place. As they make the best writing-pens, they are transported throughout the whole East. Some of them grow in India, but they are softer and of a paler yellow colour.”—Voyages de Chardin, vol. v. p. 49.
[1214] “It is a kind of cane which grows no higher than a man. The stem is only three or four lines in thickness, and solid from one knot to another, that is to say filled with a white pith. The leaves, which are a foot and a half in length, and eight or nine lines in breadth, enclose the knots of the stem in a sheath; but the rest is smooth, of a bright yellowish-green colour, and bent in the form of a half-tube, with a white bottom. The panicle or bunch of flowers was not as yet fully blown, but it was whitish, silky, and like that of other reeds. The inhabitants of the country cut the stems of these reeds to write with, but the strokes they form are very coarse, and do not approach the beauty of those which we make with our pens.”—Voyage du Levant, vol. ii. p. 136.