The Antique Penman

Posts Tagged ‘Emily Austin’

Sunday, October 21st, 2018

Stephen F. Austin’s prison diary.

Last February I released Austin Pen, my 14th typeface simulating real historical handwriting—and my 33rd overall. Soon after, I decided it would be my last original type design. Making a modern font takes hundreds of hours over a span of several months. At least for me it does. Probably I’m slow, or overly painstaking, or merely perfectionistic (considering I’m never entirely satisfied with the end result).

But I’ve reached an age where I feel compelled to spend time creating other things I’d like to make while there’s still time. Which is no doubt why I haven’t polished off a new Antique Penman post since February. I apologize for that.

Thomas J. Rusk’s lament.

Just yesterday I got to looking back at Texas Hero, my very first old pen font, which I started working on pretty much exactly 25 years ago. Texas Hero was, I’m pretty sure, the first typeface designed to replicate the look of genuine old handwriting, warts and all. I was new at the font game back then, having made three eclectic faces earlier in 1993. Didn’t know what I was doing at first, and certainly had no idea what I was getting myself into.

I recall one day hunting around for a font that looked like 18th century handwriting—and finding none. For not the first time, I decided to fill a void. My indispensable partner in this enterprise was my late ma, Jeanne R. Willson, a historical librarian who then worked at what is now the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History at the University of Texas (my alma mater). I knew she had long studied historical letters and documents and would certainly be able to supply examples of old cursive script.

Emily Austin Perry’s hand.

And she did. I got photocopies of letters from several famous Texans (naturally) dating back to the time of the Republic. I got to see the handwriting of folks like Sam Houston, Mirabeau B. Lamar, Stephen F. Austin, Emily Austin Perry, David Burnet (I think), and Thomas J. Rusk. All their hands were distinctly different—fancy, flowery, bold, intricate, and/or a bit messy—but one had just the balance of legibility and period authenticity: Rusk’s.

When people think of Texas heroes, they don’t usually think of Thomas Jefferson Rusk. But he served as a general at the Battle of San Jacinto, as the fledgling Republic’s first Secretary of War, and in 1846 was elected one of the new state’s first U.S. Senators (the other being Houston). He died in 1857, at age 53, by self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Frederick Douglass’s penmanship.

I remember vividly having to look extremely closely at Rusk’s handwriting, getting intimately familiar with his loops and curves, reading and rereading several of his official letters—and one sad, oft-folded lament of the death of his two-year-old namesake son. It was the first of many times I found myself both deeply moved and somehow changed by the words and penmanship of a person who’d died more than a century ago.*

Over the next two and a half decades, I’d go on to replicate the hands of Stephen Austin, his sister Emily, Lamar, and Houston—along with such other famous pen-wielders as Abigail Adams, her son John Quincy, Frederick Douglass, Timothy Matlack (engrosser of the Declaration of Independence) and a few lesser-known writers of old. It all still seems implausible and crazy and sort of wonderful.

And still I think often of the closeness, familiarity, and nuance we stand to lose in this era of keyboards and texting and speech-to-text. We might even end up communicating like we did before the age of literacy: verbally or visually or via smoke signal.

I hold out hope, though, that writing by hand will remain a thing—even if only a sort of calligraphic art form.

*So moved, in fact, that I wrote this novel.

Miscellanea

» Handwriting the Constitution: Hand-copying produces “an intimate connection to the text and its meaning.”

» Royal Archives, Hamilton, and King George III: “Pieces of paper with old handwriting on [it].”

» Big Trouble in Canada: “‘I can’t read writing. We didn’t do it in school.’”

» The Magic of Handwriting: I’m truly sorry I missed this exhibition at The Morgan Library & Museum.

» A Tribute to the Fountain Pen: “No one writes like Abraham Lincoln anymore.”

» Apple Patents Handwriting Recognition System: This just seems so wrong.

» The Tragic Death of the Handwritten Message: Survey shows people age 25–34 prefer emojis to words.

Tags: 19th century, Abigail Adams, American Scribe font, antique penmanship, British soldiers, cursive, cursive script, Douglass Pen font, Emily Austin, Emily Austin font, Frederick Douglass, handwriting, historical letters, Houston Pen, John Quincy Adams, Lamar Pen font, letter-writing, Old Man Eloquent, Sam Houston, Texas Hero font, Thomas Jefferson Rusk, Timothy Matlack
Posted in 1700s, 18th Century, 19th Century, American History, Calligraphy, Communication, Cursive, Historical Figures, History, Old Letters, Penmanship, Ruminations, Specimens, Texas History | No Comments »

Designing Austin Pen

Tuesday, June 20th, 2017

A painting of Stephen F. Austin (courtesy Texas State Library and Archives Commission).

I am remiss for having ignored The Penman for the entirety of spring. Partly my absence had to do with—well, spring! But partly it had to do with my decision to juggle two type-design projects at once for the first time. Turns out, there’s a lot to keep track of.

Lucky for us both, one of those projects is perfect for a discussion here.

Designing Austin Pen has proved enjoyable, puzzling, challenging, satisfying. It’ll be my fourteenth historical penmanship font—and the fifth member of what I consider my Texas Heroes Collection. It’s modeled after the handwriting of famous empresario Stephen Fuller Austin (1793–1836), the “Father of Texas,” from whom the Lone Star State’s capital got its name.

Stephen F. Austin did not live long, so he didn’t leave reams of handwritten material. But he did keep a diary while imprisoned in Mexico for virtually all of 1834. Austin Pen is my interpretation of Austin’s secret scribblings in this miniature journal (now in the collection of the wonderful Dolph Briscoe Center for American History).

Cover of the Austin Prison Diary.

Unlike the source materials for the other fonts in this collection—Lamar Pen (based on the hand of Mirabeau B. Lamar), Emily Austin (modeled after the hand of Austin’s sister, Emily Austin Perry), Houston Pen (inspired by the letters of Sam Houston), and Texas Hero (which replicates the script of Thomas Jefferson Rusk)—the diary Austin smuggled into his prison cell is hardly cut-and-dried. For one thing, it had very small pages, which couldn’t have been easy to fill. For another, he had to keep the little book hidden, so he ended up writing much of it in a pencil he also managed to hide.

But perhaps most interestingly, nearly 30 years later, Austin’s nephew Moses Austin Bryan (Emily’s son by her first husband) traced over most of the fading pencil lines in ink. Bryan made this entry on a blank page in his own fine hand:

Note by Moses Austin Bryan in his uncle’s diary.

I, Moses Austin Bryan on this day the twenty fifth day of December Eighteen hundred and seventy one have finished tracing the pencil marks or writing of Genl. Stephen F Austin which were made by him in this book whilst he was a prisoner in the cell No 15 of the Ex. Inquisition in the City of Mexico from the 18th day of February the day he was put in the cell No 15 till he was taken out at the end of three moths [sic] by order of the President.

Given all this confusion, I thought at first I might go for a hybrid script between Bryan’s and his Uncle Austin’s. But I soon saw that Austin’s pencil scribblings were large and strange (no doubt because of the difficulty in using an early 1800s pencil on tiny pages), and Bryan’s ink tracings were similarly peculiar—nothing at all like his fine script in the note above. I decided to focus on the original author’s hand.

Pages showing Austin’s penmanship in ink.

And I’m happy to report that, on either side of its pencil entries, Austin filled out many of the diary’s pages in ink. And his penmanship on those pages, while fairly unkempt (understandably, considering the size of the book), had a strength and surety I admired. Those are the pages I used.

One last challenge sprung from the fact that Austin kept most of his diary in Spanish. Whereas this was fortunate in that it gave me samples of letterforms often missing in English (like Q and x), others (like K and w) are absent entirely from the Spanish alphabet. Further—not being fluent in Spanish—I occasionally had to puzzle over certain words and phrases to make sure exactly what characters I was looking at.

By now I’ve finished the entire lowercase alphabet, though, and I’m happy with the result. And from my desk in distant Maine, far from Mexico, I hope to finish Austin Pen by early August, when it’s time for the blueberry harvest.

We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate. —Henry David Thoreau

Note: Check this website occasionally for news on the second of the two fonts I’m working on.

Miscellanea

» Will thank-you notes—even signatures—soon be a thing of the past?

» Schools in Wisconsin, Illinois, and Florida want to keep on teaching penmanship.

» I really like this editorial call to keep putting pen to paper.

» Well, here’s a problem with poor penmanship I hadn’t thought of.

» And a special shout-out to the Campaign for Cursive—yes, cursive is cool!

Tags: 1800s, 19th century, Austin Pen, cursive, diaries, Emily Austin, Emily Austin Perry, handwritten font, handwritten font. historical font, Houston Pen, journals, Lamar Pen, Mirabeau B Lamar, Moses Austin Bryan, old handwriting font, penmanship, prison diary, quill pen, Sam Houston, Stephen F Austin, Texas Hero, Thomas Jefferson Rusk, vintage font
Posted in 19th Century, Cursive, Historical Figures, History, Longhand, Old Letters, Penmanship, Specimens, Type Design | No Comments »

That warm feeling

Saturday, January 23rd, 2016

John Hancock

Today, here in the U. S. of A., some celebrate National Handwriting Day.

The first National Handwriting Day happened in 1977, thanks to some folks with a stake in the practice—the Writing Instrument Manufacturers Association—who decided to celebrate penmanship on the 240th birthday of John Hancock, famed signatory of the Declaration of Independence. Not a bad idea.

In the four decades since, of course, a plethora of keyboards and smartphones and tablets has rendered penmanship more of a hobbyist’s pursuit. Not unlike taking pictures with now-old-fashioned film cameras. People don’t practice it, schools don’t teach it, and kids wouldn’t know how to decipher cursive script if their lives depended on it. Never mind that it’s actually good for you.

Even yours truly, who has black ballpoints scattered handily around the house on nearly every desk and table, rarely writes more than to-do lists these days. Some Antique Penman I am.

John Hancock’s penmanship

And guess what? It turns out laments over the lost art of handwriting are nothing new. As a TIME article yesterday by Lily Rothman points out, teachers of penmanship deplored the death of fine pen strokes way back in 1935, more than forty years before the first National Handwriting Day. The trend toward bad handwriting also made the news in 1947, again in the early ’50s, and throughout the ’60s and ’70s. But most of that 20th century hue and cry came over the death of good handwriting—not the extinction of any kind of handwriting at all.

As I’ve opined here before, it’s not the beauty of the script that most counts—it’s its far less critical, less tangible qualities. Its heaviness or airiness, its intricacy or loopiness or slant. What it says about the writer. Its familiarity to someone.

Emanuella Grinberg, writing today for CNN, outlines studies that show how learning—and practicing—handwriting benefits the mind and body, not only for children but for grown-ups like you and me. It seems printing and longhand even exercise different areas of the brain. Grinberg also observes:

While we’re not aware of scientific evidence supporting the warm feeling of receiving a handwritten thank you card or love letter, anecdotal evidence suggests there’s something there.

Letter from my father during basic training

My dad writes home from basic training

Now, see, this is what I’m talking about.

Think of the subtle, complex, even visceral effect you get when first viewing a note card or sheet of stationery that someone far away has held, and has written on, has strung together words that communicate sentiments meant only and particularly for you. Think also of the secret knowledge on the part of the note- or letter-writer of how what they write will affect their distant pen pal. Think, too—maybe especially, in this word of instant communication—of the span of time between the writing and the reading.

In a piece today for International Business Times, William Watkinson lists a few examples of what handwriting says about a person: heavy vs. light pressure, the shapes and sizes of letters, their wide or narrow spacing. In the process of developing my historical pen fonts, I’ve read so many letters of well-known historical figures that I’ve seen a lot of these graphological clues—e.g., the large, airy penmanship of Sam Houston, the fancy script of Mirabeau B. Lamar, the scrawl of Emily Austin Perry. I’ve studied ink blots and cross-outs and what I’m convinced are the marks of tear drops.

Sam Houston writes to Chief John Linney

But what I cannot do is divine how it felt for the recipients of these missives to read their authors’ handwritten words. Recipients like Shawnee Chief John Linney. Or the husband of Emily Perry.

There’s a distinct difference between reading a novel on a tablet screen and reading a perfect-bound book. I’d argue there’s even a greater difference between reading a handwritten note left hours or days before and an email message sent thirty seconds ago. A difference—a warm feeling—that’s akin to magic.

Miscellanea

» Um, contrariwise, here’s a robotic handwriting service—which is not exactly what I’m talking about.
[30 Oct 2019 update: The original link went dead, so I’ve inserted a link to another such service.]

» Ever hear of “penmanship porn”? (It’s actually kind of cool.)

» Australian parents emphasize handwriting.

» A century-old box in the cornerstone of a Kansas City school reveals penmanship of bygone days.

Tags: benefits of handwriting, cursive script, Emily Austin, Emily Austin Perry, handwriting analysis, handwritten communication, handwritten letters, historical letters, Houston Pen, Lamar Pen, Mirabeau B Lamar, National Handwriting Day, penmanship and the brain, Sam Houston
Posted in Cursive, Education, Graphology, Historical Figures, History, News, Old Letters, Penmanship, Ruminations, Science, Uncategorized | No Comments »