This week I received a hand-written letter from my mother: rich blue ink, on light blue paper. I'd recently given her a fountain pen, and she wielded it beautifully; with the ebullient curls of someone accustomed to cursive.
Like my father, her hand was trained in the 'fifties and 'sixties to write in flowing, looping motions. And my grandparents' and great-grandparents' handwriting was even more elegant and sometimes elaborate.
While improved by the fountain pen, my handwriting remains linear and jagged. And most of my male friends are similarly hampered - part gender, part generation, perhaps.
Of course, handwriting isn't the most crucial thing to perfect. What's written is more important than how (Proust's handwriting, for example, was terrible).
Still, as Umberto Eco suggests in a recent Guardian article ('The lost art of handwriting'), beautiful longhand does have some humble virtues.
9 comments:
sigh!
I miss handwriting. I used to be a copious letter writer. Recently I cleared out a lot of old letters from friends, little brown English envelopes that carried worlds and news and were poured over. Hard to transport and pour over an email, even if it is printed. Handwriting, no matter how polished (or not), pours forth the joy of living, does it not?
Was reading today about Colette and her blue paper and her Parker pen...am thinking of fountain pens too -
what sort of fountain pen would you recommend for a messy cack handed writer ( one that doesn't feel like one is roller blading on butter - ie. one that has a little control/grip)?
I hand write letters most weeks - time permitting - and one friend says she loves/dreads the thud of my letter landing on her door mat (no mail boxes in UK) because she knows it will be from me but that she will have to respond in kind! Email is so much faster and instant but I still prefer the anticipation and the puzzle of deciphering a hand written letter!
GG: You might start with a Parker Jotter - cheap, robust and not-at-all butter-smooth. I wrote Distraction with a Jotter and Sonnet. Review here. Let me know how you go...
RF: A 'thud' - sounds like a serious lump of correspondence...
I love handwriting and enjoy the unique styles of the people who write me. For instance my grandparents and their friends all have classic German handwriting which is very light and 'foreign' and a total mind trip to try and decipher. But I can recognize a letter from my grandmother immediately. So personal. I've gotten into the habit of writing letters often but now I need to work on my penmanship it seems. :)
Thanks, Jesse. Yes, the personality of each hand is a marvellous thing - even when it's marred by illegibility.
Can you show me an example of German handwriting?
Great post about handwriting. Colette? Gondal-girl mentioned Colette's parker pen? Any ideas where I can find some info on that?
Was it a Mandarin Yellow Duofold Parker?
G'day WritingInstruments - I've emailed GG with your question.
From memory I got it from a book called Belles Lettres - a book about the handwriting/manuscripts of French novelists - it mentions Colette's manuscript for the Shoot on the Vine? and her use of the yellow Duo fold
Thanks Gondal-girl! I'll check it out.
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