Re: The Pages of Punch
1931: You can fool some of the people some of the time
The snooty sales assistant is demonstrating one of the basic tenets of salesmanship. If you have a weak case just assert the opposite of the truth with utter conviction. It often works particularly if you are dealing with a customer lacking in confidence like the one pictured here.
The fountain pen argument is irrelevant. The owner of a fountain pen does not need an inkwell. The pen will be refilled when necessary straight out of the inkbottle. For the old-fashioned person who needs an inkwell the general popularity of fountain pens is totally irrelevant whereas the amount of ink that it can hold is the only issue.
There is no feeling of nostalgia in my mind when thinking about inkwells. Instead it brings back memories of the classroom with an inkwell fitted into each desk. It was the duty of the ink monitor to keep each inkwell replenished every day. We had those pens with wooden handles and steel nibs. The trick was to get exactly the right amount of ink onto the nib. Then I needed to place the nib onto the paper at exactly the right angle. After that it was important to press the pen down with the right amount of force. Too little and what you wrote wasn’t legible. Too hard and you got a blot and you could even ruin the nib when it became ‘crossed’. For a clumsy schoolboy like me these were all obstacles in the way of producing the neat handwriting that was desired.
All this changed for the better when I was given a fountain pen as a birthday present. This was the 1940s technological equivalent of the mobile phone for today’s youngsters. Refilling it was easy and involved no mess. Now at last I could concentrate on the words instead of the messy business of using the old technique.