Ode to a Springfield Inkwell

Inspired by John Keats and his Ode to a Grecian Urn:

Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness,

Thou foster-child of silence and slow time

‘Look what has just been handed to me,’ said an excited Geoff Quinn, Deputy Headmaster one day last week. ‘The workers have just dug it out of the excavations.’ As everyone at Springfield knows, the Avenue has been thrown into disarray as a fire escape to give access to the upstairs Maths corridor is being built.

The find was an earthen-ware inkwell which initial research has indicated was used by Springfield pupils between 1880 and 1920. Those of my generation, and before, will well remember inkwells in desks. After being taught to write with pencils, we all had standard-issue metal-tipped dip pens which were a delight for young schoolboys who soon discovered how supple the wooden handles were. If bent back, they could spray ink over all the boys sitting in front of them and the walls and desks. Any males from my era of schooling who find themselves visiting the Education Museum in Aliwal Road in Wynberg, will no doubt understand why those old desks on display are so ink-spattered. This would never have happened at Springfield though, as girls (understandably) would never have found the same appeal in flicking ink all over their peers.

Come to think of it, neither did our mothers.

Looking at this perfectly preserved example of an inkwell, I had an indication of how Howard Carter must have felt in 1922 when he unearthed Tutankhamun’s tomb, or the exhilaration of Heinrich Schliemann in 1848 when he had dug out the death mask from what he thought was Agamemnon’s tomb near Mycenae in Greece and sent an excited telegram to the King of Greece: ‘I have just gazed on the face of your ancestor, Agamemnon.’

Looking at that inkwell, I understood the feeling as I, too, was ‘just gazing’ at nearly 150 years of Springfield history. I wondered how it ended up under the Avenue for over a hundred years. Was it put there deliberately? Was it dropped? Was it lost? Perhaps a girl leaving school put it there as a memento after her years of schooling? As Keats says, we will never know:

for evermore, thou will silent be; and not a soul to tell

Why thou art desolate

How many creative English essays had emerged from that inkwell over the years? How many Maths solutions had been wrangled over, scratched out, and triumphantly solved? If the dates are correct, then the girls would have been debating the historic events of their time in their classes or the various societies. In the History essays of the day, would those dancing nibs have foreseen the effects of the discovery of gold and diamonds on Southern African politics? Were these nibs full of patriotic Cape fervor during the Anglo-Boer war? How did they view the National Convention discussions of 1909/1910 which were to set up a new South Africa? In the euphoric celebrations of this new Union, were any essays written or debates prepared on the possible significance of a new political party formed in 1912 called the African National Congress?

How many letters of condolences would have emerged out of that inkwell to send to friends, and maybe even family, who lost their lives during the First World War? The graveyard behind the Magistrates Court in Church Street Wynberg is full of memorial stones to those who had made the supreme sacrifice during this time. Many of them must have been known to Springfield Sisters and the girls.

That a mere humble inkwell can evoke so many thoughts, is why finds like this are so significant. The unpresuming and modest inkwell itself is not that special. What is special is what that artefact represents. What it has produced. What wisdom has flowed from it. Hundreds of Sisters and Springfield girls must have used that inkwell as it brought the events of that time to life. It played its role in producing future academics, leaders, mothers. Maybe some of our girls gracing today’s classroom are here because of the achievements and commitment of the girls using that inkwell.

I can confidently state that the ubiquitous plastic ball-point pen of today, if found in a hundred year’s time, will never be able to claim similar royal ancestry.