Sydney -- Queen Lucinda

"He tracked her back down Sussex Street. They passed the alleyway above which the majority of his colleagues still worked over their ledgers.  Only six buildings down, but on the other side of the street, she went into a tall brick building with bright yellow sandstone ledges to its windows.  Prince Rupert's Glassworks (Office) 5th Floor.

Printing presses occupied the first three floors and the building thumped with their rhythms.  The staircase was filled with the harsh and volatile odours of inks.  Through an open door he saw men in aprons filling their formes from fonts of type. He was sweating as heavily as if he had sat in his normal place in Mr d'Abbs's establishment.

The firms on the fourth floor were, either through lack of custom or because of progressive management, closed for the Saturday afternoon.  The landing was quite deserted, apart from a charlady on her knees, clicking her tongue about this second vandal come marching across her work.  She was not mollified by tiptoeing.

Three firms had their names displayed on dark wooden doors on the fifth floor, all done in different scripts in careful gold leaf with jet-black gold shadows.  The first one he looked at was Prince Rupert's Glassworks.

He knocked, but only lightly, and entered after the very briefest pause.  It was no more than a single room, a desk, three chairs, all crushed beneath a sloping ceiling.  There was no rug on the floor, but the wall behind the desk held a framed etching of the Crystal Palace, and on the wall opposite the windows ( at which Lucinda now stood, her graceless hat held in her hand) there was a great bank of glass shelves displaying a dustless collection of bottles, (green, bright yellow, poison blue) and square book-sized sheets of glass in various finishes and colours. As the sun now played upon these shelves they glowed and bled and washed across each other like the contents of a casket in a children's story."

Oscar and Lucinda  Peter Carey

Billet doux

" 'I don't think you understand, ' Mrs Thripp smiled patiently.  'He hasn't spoken a word to me for three years.'
'Three  years ! Good god! How does he communicate?'  The instructing solicitor laid a number of little bits of paper on my desk.
'By means of notes.'

I then discovered that the man Thripp, who I was not in the least surprised to learn was a chartered accountant, used his matrimonial home as a sort of Post Office.  When he wished to communicate with his wife, he typed out brusque and business-like notes,  documents which threw a blinding light, in my opinion, on the man's character.

'To my so-called wife,' one note read, 'if you and your so-called son want to swim in hot water you can go to the Public Baths.  From your so-called husband.'  This was fixed, it seemed, to a padlocked geyser.  Another billet doux was found in the biscuit tin in the larder, 'To my so-called wife.  I have removed what you left of the assorted tea biscuits to the office for safe keeping.  Are you determined to eat me into bankruptcy? Your so-called husband, F. Thripp.'

I made two observations about this correspondence, one was that it revealed a depth of human misery which no reasonable woman would tolerate, and the other was that all the accountant Thripp's notes were written on an Italian portable, about ten years old.

'My husband's got an old Olivetti.  He can't really type,' Mrs Thripp told me.

Many years ago I scored a notable victory in the 'Great Brighton Benefit Club Forgery' case, and it was during those proceedings I acquired my vast knowledge of typewriters.  Having solved the question of the type, however, got me no nearer the heart of the mystery."

Rumpole and the Married Lady  John Mortimer

At the Rue Fossette

"The morrow would not restore him to the Rue Fossette, that day being devoted entirely to his college. ..….if there was a hope of comfort for any moment, the heart or head of no human being in this house could yield it; only under the lid of my desk could it harbour, nestling between the leaves of some book, gilding a pencil-point, the nib of a pen, or tinging the black fluid in that ink-glass.  With a heavy heart I opened my desk-lid; with a weary hand I turned up its contents.

One by one, well-accustomed books, volumes sewn in familiar covers, were taken out and put back hopeless; they had no charm; they could not comfort.  Is this something new, this pamphlet in lilac? I have not seen it before, and I re-arranged my desk this very day -- this very afternoon; the tract must have been introduced within the last hour, while we were at dinner.

I opened it. What was it? What would it say to me?"

Villette   Charlotte Bronte

'Mercury'

"I was half-way through the belt of trees above the water-meadow when automatically my hand went to my pocket, encountering the sharp edge of the flap of the unsealed envelope.  With no further intention in my mind I pulled it out and looked at it.  There was no address (or direction, as Mrs Maudsley called it, why I could not imagine) on the envelope: there never was.  But the open flap disclosed some writing which, at the moment, was the wrong side up.
 Among the complexities of our school code was a very wholesome respect for the Eleventh Commandment.   But we also had a strong sense of justice, and if we were found out we did not expect to be let off.
…
The rules about reading other people's letters were fairly well defined.  If you left your letters lying about and somebody read them, then it was your fault, and you were not justified in retaliation,  If somebody rifled your desk or locker and read them then it was their fault, and you were justified in taking vengeance…
...I had often passed round notes at school.  If they were sealed I should not have dreamed of reading them; if they were open I often read them -- indeed, it was usually the intention of the sender that one should, for they were meant to raise a laugh.  Unsealed, one could read them, sealed one couldn't: it was as simple as that.  The same rule applied to post-cards: one read a post-card that was sent to someone else, but not a letter.
Marian's letter was unsealed and therefore I could read it.  So why hesitate?
….
But I would not take the letter out of the envelope: I would only read the words that were exposed, and three of them were the same, as I could see from upside down.

   'Darling, darling, darling,
        Same place, same time, this evening,
    But take care not to---'

The rest was hidden by the envelope."

The Go-Between  L.P.Hartley

In the Commander's room

"I raise my hand, knock, on the door of this forbidden room where I have never been, where women do not go.  Not even Serena Joy comes here, and the cleaning is done by Guardians. What secrets, what male totems are kept in here?

I'm told to enter.  I open the door, step in.

What is on the other side is normal life.  I should say: what is on the other side looks like normal life.  There is a desk, of course, with a Computalk on it, and a black leather chair behind it.  There's a potted plant on the desk, a pen-holder set, papers.  There's an oriental rug on the floor, and a fireplace without a fire in it.  There's a small sofa, covered in brown plush, a television set, an end table, a couple of chairs.
But all around the walls there are bookcases,  They're filled with books.  Books and books and books, right out in plain view,  no locks, no boxes.  No wonder we can't come in here.  It's an oasis of the forbidden.  I try not to stare."

The Handmaid's Tale  Margaret Attwood

A Tudor writing box

Writing-box from the court of Henry VIII, wood, covered with painted and gilded leather, c. 1525
Figures represented are Mars and Venus, head of Christ and St. George, and Paris and Helen of Troy in roundels (after designs by Hans Burgkmair).

©  Victoria & Albert Museum

An Uncommercial Traveller

"She could not go straight to the lounge where she had arranged to meet Carne.  She must seek other diversion.  Of course, she knew, she had a note to write.

On the first-floor landing a notice with an arrow pointed to  'Writing Room'.  She followed it, and found herself in an apartment not unlike a station waiting-room.  It lacked human occupants, but there was accommodation for them.  Round the walls stood desks, back to back, with dusty blotting-paper gummed to their surfaces.  Inkwells in which the moisture had long since dried, cross nibs, and half-torn envelopes.

If she had wanted to write, this equipment might have deterred her.  But she wanted nothing.  No words could describe, to no one could she communicate, this extraordinary rapture which had transformed the universe -- because she was going to eat a third-rate dinner in a second-rate hotel, with a ruined farmer who was father to one of her least satisfactory pupils.

She could not keep still.  The wide skirts of her dress swayed round her as she moved about the room, examining the dusty but elaborate stationery, and the papers on the circular table in the middle of the room.

Who, she wondered, reads The Textile Mercury? or Iron and Steel, the Autocar,  the Iron and Coal Trades Review, the Electrical Times?  Ah, the times are electrical, she thought, 'perhaps that's what wrong with them,' and trembled, quivering with laughter at her small feeble joke, pressing her palms on the cold, smeared mahogany, because she suddenly found her eyeballs pricking with hot, irrational tears.
....
I shall remember this room until I die, she told herself."

South Riding   Winifred Holtby

Mr. Yatman's writing cabinet

The Yatman Cabinet, writing desk designed by William Burgess, painted by Edward Poynter, 1858
©  Victoria and Albert Museum.

The decoration shows the story of Cadmus of Thebes, who is credited with introducing the alphabet to Greeks,  and three images below show the cutting of cuneiform letters, Dante writing and Caxton printing, on the drop-down writing flap.

Rituals of composition: the Chairman's desk

"He demanded from his underlings the strictest observance of infinitesimal minutiae.  For instance, every object on his desk had to be arranged each morning with meticulous exactitude.  The edges of the in-tray must be flush with those of the out-tray.  The silver calendar, turned for the day, two inches to the left of the clock.  Pencils, newly sharpened, and clean nibs in pen-holders.  The penwiper at right angles to the blotter, freshly filled.  Telephones and inter-communicator slightly staggered at an angle of, say, 22 degrees from the chair.  Envelope rack within easy reach without necessitating undue stretching, yet not so close that the elbow had to be unnaturally crooked.  If the softest of the three India rubbers was not found on the left-hand side of the row on the allotted tray and adjacent to the red (not blue) sealing wax, Sir Roderick's displeasure could be terrible."

Another Self   James Lees-Milne
(on the desk arrangement of Sir Roderick Jones, Chairman of Reuters)

Under the frangipani

"Domenica was fussy about the circumstances in which she wrote. In Scotland Street, she would sit at her desk with a clean block of ruled foolscap paper in front of her and write on that, with a Conway Stewart fountain pen, in green ink.  There were those who said that writing in green ink was a sign of mental instability, but she had never understood the basis for this.  Green ink was attractive, more restful on the eye than an intense black, and she persisted with it.
Such rituals of composition were impossible in that small village near Malacca.

There, she made do with a simple, rather rickety table, which provided a surface for her French moleskin notebook and for a rather less commodious writing paper.  But there was still the Conway Stewart pen, and supplies of green ink, and it was with this pen that she now wrote a letter to James Holloway in Edinburgh.
'Dear James,' she began, 'I know that you are familiar with the Far East and will be able to picture the scene here --  the scene of me upon my veranda, at my table,  with a frangipani tree directly in front of me.'  "

Love over Scotland Street  A. McCall Smith

It's a Battlefield

"Condor opened one of the sound-proof boxes on the top floor and closed the door.  Immediately all the typewriters in the room became silent, the keys dropped as softly as feathers.  The chief reporter sitting on his desk with his knees pressed under his chin was interrupted in mid-sentence :  'I was waiting at Winston's all the morning and when he came out with his head all bandaged up, he only said --'   On the floor below the leader-writers sat in little studies and smoked cigarettes and chewed toffee, held up for the right word, looking in dictionaries, leading public opinion.  On the floor below, the sub-editors sat at long tables and ran their blue pencils over the copy, scrawled headlines on scraps of paper, screwed the whole bunch into a metal shell, and sent it hurtling with a whine and a rattle to the composing-room.

On the floor below the swing door turned and turned and the porter sat in his box asking: 'Have you an appointment?';  the rolls of paper were wheeled like marble monuments towards the engines which turned and turned, spitting out the Evening Watch pressed and folded:  'Mr. Macdonald Flies Home to Lossiemouth.  Are you Insured?', packing them up in piles of a hundred, spinning them down a steel incline, through a patch of darkness, into the waiting van."

It's a Battlefield   Graham Greene

"Darwin took up his pen"

"In the gaps of time, morning and night, Darwin took up his pen.  He wrote indoors, balancing a cushion on the arm of his chair and resting his writing board on it; in the heat of summer he wrote in his summer-house, its windows opening over the river; on the way to see patients, he wrote in his carriage, the front of which 'was occupied by a receptacle for writing paper and pencils, likewise for a knife, fork and spoon; on one side was a pile of books reaching from the floor to nearly the front window ...  on the other, a hamper containing fruit and sweetmeats, cream and sugar'.  As well as countless letters, Darwin was writing on clouds and spa water and piling up material for his Zoonomia, his ever expanding work on diseases.   And all the time his poem lay on his desk, acquiring new touches and more notes."

The Lunar Men  Jenny Uglow
[quotation from The Life of Mary Anne Schimmel-Penninck, ed. C. Hankin]

April 8. Trouble with a Stylographic pen.

"April 8.  No events of any importance, except that Gowing strongly recommended a new patent stylographic pen, which cost me nine and sixpence, and which was simply nine and sixpence thrown in the mud.  It has caused me constant annoyance and irritability of temper.  The ink oozes out of the top, making a mess on my hands, and once at the office when I was knocking the palm of my hand on the desk to jerk the ink down, Mr Perkupp, who had just entered, called out: 'Stop that knocking!  I suppose that is you, Mr Pitt?'  That young monkey, Pitt, took a malicious glee in responding quite loudly: 'No, sir; I beg pardon, it is Mr Pooter with his pen; it has been going on all morning.'  To make matters worse, I saw Lupin laughing behind his desk.  I thought it wiser to say nothing.  I took the pen back to the shop and asked them if they would take it back, as it did not act.  I did not expect the full price to be returned, but was willing to take half.  The man said he could not do that -- buying and selling were two different things."

The Diary of a Nobody  G. and W. Grossmith

An Ipswich reader

Philip Helwys, Merchant. 19 April 1610 and 9 James I (sic).

"In the Hall

Imprimis one ould shorte Table Joyned with a frame two
    Joyned formes, and two Joyned stoole                                              0   8   0
Item two turned chaiers, and two little old chaiers                                 0   3   0
Item fower old cushions                                                                         0   2   0
Item one litle bible and sixe small books                                                0   5   0
Item a firepan, a paier of tongs, a paier of bellowes and a
   paier of Cobirons and a paier of Sheres                                              0  3   4
Item a litle Simpsers desk                                                                       0  0   8
.... "

from The Ipswich Probate Inventories 1583-1631
ed. M. Reed

A Dorset squire at home

"The windows which were very large, served for places to lay his arrows, crossbows, stonebows, and other such like accoutrements; the corners of the room full of the best chose hunting and hawking poles; an oyster table at the lower end, which was of constant use twice a day all the year round, for he never failed to eat oysters before dinner and supper through all seasons: the neighbouring town of Poole supplied him with them.  The upper part of the room had two small tables and a desk, on the one side of which was a Church Bible, on the other the Book of Martyrs; on the table were hawks' hoods, bells, and such like, and two or three old green hats with their crowns thrust in so as to hold ten or a dozen eggs, which were of a pheasant kind of poultry he took much care of and fed himself; tables, dice, cards and boxes were not wanting.  In the hole of the desk were store of tobacco pipes that had been used.

....He lived to a hundred, never lost his eyesight, but always writ and read without spectacles,  and got to horse without help.  Until past fourscore he rode to the death of a stag as well as any."

Memoirs  Antony Ashley Cooper,  2nd Earl of Shaftesbury
PRO 30/24

The telephone call

"He had gathered his feet under him preparatory to getting up when his telephone rang.  In other places in the world, one understands, telephones are made to ring in outer offices, where a minion answers the thing and asks your business and says that  if you will be good enough to wait just a moment she will 'put you through', and you are then connected with the person you want to speak to.  But not in Milford.  Nothing like that would be tolerated in Milford.  In Milford if you call John Smith on the telephone you expect John Smith to answer in person.  So when the telephone rang on that spring evening in Blair, Hayward, and Bennet's it rang on Robert's brass-and-mahogany desk.

Always, afterwards, Robert was to wonder what would have happened if that telephone call had been one minute later.  In one minute, sixty worthless seconds, he would have taken his coat from the peg in the hall, popped his head into the opposite room to tell Mr Heseltine that he was departing for the day, stepped out into the pale sunlight, and been away down the street.  Mr Heseltine would have answered his telephone when it rang and told the woman that he had gone.  And she would have hung up and tried someone else.  And all that followed would have had only academic interest for him.

But the telephone rang in time; and Robert put out his hand and picked up the receiver."

The Franchise Affair  Josephine Tey

The Library at Kovecses

"The library was so crammed that most of the panelling was hidden, and the books, in German and French and English, had overflowed in neat piles on the floor.  The surviving area of wall was filled by antlers and roebuck horns, a couple of portraits and a Rembrandt etching.  There was an enormous desk covered with photographs, a box of cigars with  cutter made out of a deer's slot and, beside them, a number of silver cigarette cases laid in a neat row, each of them embossed with a different gold monogram.  (This, I noticed later on, was an invariable item in Central European country houses, particularly in Hungary.  They were presents exchanged on special occasions, and always between men: for standing godfather, for being best man at a wedding, second in a duel, and so on.)  There were shaded lamps and leather armchairs beside a huge open stove, a basket of logs and a spaniel asleep in front of it."

A Time of Gifts  Patrick Leigh Fermor