It might be amusing to take the viewpoint of the fictitious average office worker who would never dream of using a fountain pen (heaven forfend!) and probably has little idea of what one is, beyond the notion that it involves a bottle of ink, a thing that is a catastrophic accident waiting to happen, for the clumsy among us.
The other things he may have heard are that fountain pens are prone to leaking and also supplying blots, especially at the bottom of a page of otherwise blameless text. Unlike the reliable and trustworthy Crystal Bic, the fountain pen cannot be casually cast aside but must be capped and laid down gently. How inconvenient!
The fact that the fountain pen is not held at the wrist-wrenching angle of the ballpoint is unknown to him and would not be understood if it were to be brought to his attention. Line variation is neither here nor there. If the ballpoint doesn’t do it, it’s of no consequence. In any case, if you want to be fancy there are gel pens and nylon tips. No need to be fussing with the inconvenience of a fountain pen.
Of course all of the above is myth rather than fact or generalisation from an occasional incident but I’m sure they are commonly-held beliefs.
The dear old queen is gone from us. She used a fountain pen to sign documents and there has been much discussion about which fountain pen she used. I imagine she had all the fountain pens she might have wanted and used whatever came to hand. Her father had a fondness for Wyverns and used a couple of crocodile-skin-covered ones. And what of King Charles III? Is he a fountain pen user? Time will tell.
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I wonder what ink she used, Essri or Diamine Registrars?
I don’t know that but someone told me her usual pen was a Parker 51
I had a customer here a week last Friday, the pen she had, had been used by the Queen, my customers company, The Scottish Widows had a visit from Her Majesty and she was to sign something, they had put out a ballpoint ! My customer rushed and got her MB144, for the Queen to use, which I serviced back to full use last Friday
That’s a good story, Eric!
i have quite a few of them, a recent customer from the USA, who I had tried to put off, as I normally don’t take work from USA, due to customs issues, was the actor Peter Coyote. BTW, Daniel Day Lewis uses modern Conway Stewart pens 😉 KR Eric
Judging from what we saw yesterday, it seems King Charles III is a fountain pen user, as he chose to sign with his fountain pen (with a screw on cap)…
I believe that was a silver Montblanc.
I believe that King Charles uses a Montblanc Silver Solitaire 146. He has used it for many years and fills it with an organic black ink. He was at one point famous for sending government ministers various handwritten notes known in Whitehall as the “black spider letters”. Queen Elizabeth was said to have used the same two Parker 51 fountain pens that she had owned since the 1950s to sign official documents. Apparently, she had them serviced periodically and the old Newhaven factory kept parts spare exclusively for the Queen.
Thank you, Adrian.
The Daily Mail has a feature up today (September 16) saying that the king is now carrying his own fountain pen (type unspecified). This, after the mishaps with various “desk pens” when he went to sign some official documents right after his accession.
Good man — always carry your own pen!
I believe that the silver Montblanc that he used at one stage is his own pen. It wasn’t the pen that leaked.