As fewer people write by hand, some of us who do venture to squeak a thin call of alarm, like mice behind the frescoes during the last days of Pompeii. Philip Hensher (novelist and university teacher) voices dismay more manfully in this eloquent account of what has been and will be lost by the ending of this ancient habit, now that thoughts are transferred on to screens by squirming thumbs on dwarf keyboards. He has a ten-point plan for restoring pen and ink to daily life, and urges us all, literate or semi-literate, to try it out. This may seem like advising all who feel themselves drowning in the gruel of modern communications to trust themselves to a lone crouton bobbing on the surface, but the case for handwriting deserves to be heard, in terms other than those of nostalgic despondency.
In this justification the usual defences are abandoned. Into the ship’s furnace go graphic aestheticism, public utility, moral imperatives, respect for tradition, politeness, and all that. These are dismissed with some amusement and not much pity. Even legible italic seems to Hensher (who uses italic nibs) the hand for pretentious twits: exactly what I thought 60 years ago, but I was wrong, and 60 years of failed experiment with other sorts of writing have been punishment enough.
However, penmanship is not the point. The new objective is to get everyone to write anything and anyhow on any surface with any sort of pen on any occasion, but frequently and legibly, in the expectation of giving and taking pleasure, of beneficial therapy, and — if science is any guide — of improving the mental agility of children. It’s a bold claim, supported by a useful sketch of the main schools of handwriting in the past, French, German, and American as well as English; a note on Hitler’s handwriting and its imitators, some of whom were unaware that the Führer had given up writing by hand in the 1930s; essays on handwriting in Dickens and Proust, and more on the weird but lucrative science of graphology.
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