5 YEARS AGO ON MACFILOS
What were you up to five years ago?
Well, I was enjoying a reunion with the iconic (overused word, that, but in this case well-justified) Parker 51 fountain pen.
At the age of 17, I saved up the enormous sum of six guineas (£6.30 now, about enough for a coffee and a currant bun) to buy my first Parker 51.
I bought it at Boots the Chemists at the Manchester Royal Exchange. This duck-egg–blue pen with a brushed silver cap confirmed in me my love of writing, something I enjoy even now when almost everything is punched out on a keyboard and real paper documents are a relative rarity.
Then, however, the Parker 51 and an Olympus SG5 (typewriter that is, not a camera) was truly aspirational.
In 2016, all these memories flooded back when I discovered Henry the Penman and his penucopia of delights.
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It was August 18th in 1961 and my parents 10th wedding anniversary. We were still living in Porto Novo in what was then called Dahomey, a year after the country became independent from France. My parents gave each other Parker 51 pens, one in black and one in dark red. A moment of tenderness caught and remembered.
Those pens wrote hundreds of airmail letters back to family in England describing a life that was beginning to change as we were “encouraged” to return home.
I’m rereading all those letters and scanning them to share with the next generation to marvel at how different life was back then. The ink has faded a bit but the stories written with those two Parker 51’s still shine through.
Wonderful anecdote. I am afraid that the art or writing with traditional instruments is fast disappearing. There is something so satisfying about writing with a good fountain pen on beautiful paper. I try my best to keep it alive, but increasingly I find weeks going by without my putting pen to paper.
Incidentally, I love the way a random comment on an ancient blog post can revive interest among current readers.
Parker 51’s are solid writing instruments. I still have an aero-metric version which works and writes well.
Thanks, H.C. Good to know that posts from eight years ago are still going the rounds. I quite agree with you.
Mike
I was sorry to read (on his website) that Henry died in June 2020.
I was sorry to read that Henry died last year.
https://www.henrysimpole.com/henry-simpole-rip
Thanks for posting this, Andrew. I ought to have checked, but didn’t think. What a nice man and he will be missed by his family and many customers.
Lovely images of Henry the Penman in the link back to then.
Is he still there with his business?
And the bottle of classic Quink ink recognisable in the centre of the black&white image – them were messy days.
£6 6/- is £6.30.
Yes right. What did I say? Must have been hallucinating. Ah yes, probably thinking £6 6s but thanks and I’ve put it right.
£6/6/0 is 6 guineas. I’ve got a Parker 51 from schooldays, but I’m mighty tempted to buy another of the re-released 51s – https://www.cultpens.com/c/q/brands/parker/parker-51
My Empire Aristocrat portable, in grey crackle-finish paint, still gets its keys tickled occasionally.
Yes indeed, I paid six guineas for the 51 in 1958, I think. That was two weeks’ wages, so a huge fortune for a poor teenager. It puts prices for, say, current Montblancs into perspective.