On Nothing and Kindred Subjects | Page 5

is, and I promise
you I won't call it creation--but possibly a god is creating through you,
and at least you are making believe at creation. Anyhow, it is a sense of
mastery and of origin, and you know that when you have done,
something will be added to the world, and little destroyed. For what

will you have destroyed or wasted? A certain amount of white paper at
a farthing a square yard (and I am not certain it is not pleasanter all
diversified and variegated with black wriggles)--a certain amount of ink
meant to be spread and dried: made for no other purpose. A certain
infinitesimal amount of quill--torn from the silly goose for no purpose
whatsoever but to minister to the high needs of Man.
Here you cry "Affectation! Affectation! How do I know that the fellow
writes with a quill? A most unlikely habit!" To that I answer you are
right. Less assertion, please, and more humility. I will tell you frankly
with what I am writing. I am writing with a Waterman's Ideal Fountain
Pen. The nib is of pure gold, as was the throne of Charlemagne, in the
"Song of Roland." That throne (I need hardly tell you) was borne into
Spain across the cold and awful passes of the Pyrenees by no less than
a hundred and twenty mules, and all the Western world adored it, and
trembled before it when it was set up at every halt under pine trees, on
the upland grasses. For he sat upon it, dreadful and commanding: there
weighed upon him two centuries of age; his brows were level with
justice and experience, and his beard was so tangled and full, that he
was called "bramble-bearded Charlemagne." You have read how, when
he stretched out his hand at evening, the sun stood still till he had found
the body of Roland? No? You must read about these things.
Well then, the pen is of pure gold, a pen that runs straight away like a
willing horse, or a jolly little ship; indeed, it is a pen so excellent that it
reminds me of my subject: the pleasure of taking up one's pen.
God bless you, pen! When I was a boy, and they told me work was
honourable, useful, cleanly, sanitary, wholesome, and necessary to the
mind of man, I paid no more attention to them than if they had told me
that public men were usually honest, or that pigs could fly. It seemed to
me that they were merely saying silly things they had been told to say.
Nor do I doubt to this day that those who told me these things at school
were but preaching a dull and careless round. But now I know that the
things they told me were true. God bless you, pen of work, pen of
drudgery, pen of letters, pen of posings, pen rabid, pen ridiculous, pen
glorified. Pray, little pen, be worthy of the love I bear you, and consider
how noble I shall make you some day, when you shall live in a glass
case with a crowd of tourists round you every day from 10 to 4; pen of
justice, pen of the saeva indignatio, pen of majesty and of light. I will

write with you some day a considerable poem; it is a compact between
you and me. If I cannot make one of my own, then I will write out
some other man's; but you, pen, come what may, shall write out a good
poem before you die, if it is only the Allegro.
* * * * *
The pleasure of taking up one's pen has also this, peculiar among all
pleasures, that you have the freedom to lay it down when you will. Not
so with love. Not so with victory. Not so with glory.
Had I begun the other way round, I would have called this Work, "The
Pleasure of laying down one's Pen." But I began it where I began it, and
I am going on to end it just where it is going to end.
What other occupation, avocation, dissertation, or intellectual
recreation can you cease at will? Not bridge--you go on playing to win.
Not public speaking--they ring a bell. Not mere converse--you have to
answer everything the other insufficient person says. Not life, for it is
wrong to kill one's self; and as for the natural end of living, that does
not come by one's choice; on the contrary, it is the most capricious of
all accidents.
But the pen you lay down when you will. At any moment: without
remorse, without anxiety, without dishonour, you are free to do this
dignified and final thing (I am just going to do it).... You lay it down.

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