This Pen is No More

As I’ve said on these pages before, I have many fountain pens; each one is a favorite in its own right. A gunbarrel gray Mont Blanc I bought in Cambridge, Mass, in or around 1993 died today, the victim of negligence as it dropped out of my hand.

I’ve dropped this pen before, always lucky it didn’t fall straight onto the nib. It has a very loose cap, and attempts to fix it have only made it worse. But today, I can only blame my clumsiness.

Oh the agony.

This pen’s qualities: wrote like butter. Nib fine but not scratchy. I had just written about 550 words of my novel with it. It seemed to be liking the voice of Willie, one of the twin brothers in love with my heroine languishing in a Confederate prison in Richmond.

I didn’t take the pen anywhere because of the loose cap, so it became my stay-on-the-counter pen, the one I wrote with in my journal over the years. It paired perfectly with Clairefontaine. We made a morning triad.

In case you’ve been asleep all day, the Democrats took control of the House and, now, the Senate. On a day when I might have been in mourning for a tool I’ve used a great deal over the last fifteen years, a pen so lovely it has felt like an extension of my hand, I’ve felt little but euphoria.

It is a bittersweet day, though, at the end. RIP, dear friend.