I got a princely gift yesterday. A friend sent me one of Charles M. Schulz's actual pen nibs. It was made in the USA from the twenties through 1947 and is called an Esterbrook 914 RADIO pen, because RADIO was the new thing back then. All of the Peanuts strips were inked, for fifty years, with these gorgeous, hand ground Radio nibs. Each nib is itself a work of art.
When Mr. Schulz heard that the 914 Radio nib was being discontinued, he bought up all of the remaining stock that the manufacturer had. If you can find individual nibs (and it's not impossible to do so) the price is three times as high as that of any other pen nib, because of Mr. Schulz.
But this one actually was his. My friend said "I don't use them (I have five more) and Sparky (Mr. Schulz' nickname) doesn't need it any more." I gasped when I opened the package.
And I intend to use it. I bought a Koh I Noor penholder just like the one I had when I was a teenager (they, too, are a bit hard to find now) and the old nib fits beautifully. I also got some British lettering nibs and two more of the Koh I Noor holders, and some ink, and some smooth bristol board.
I and hundreds of other cartoonists have been asked to do a drawing for the Charles Schulz Museum to honor Sparky, who would have been 100 years old this year. After thinking about it, and talking it over with my friend, I have decided to draw myself at age 9 receiving a letter from Charles M. Schulz as my 6 year old sister reads HAPPINESS IS A WARM PUPPY.
I wrote to him twice when I was nine after LIFE magazine put his address in a 1967 issue (!), and he answered me both times with typewritten letters on wonderful Snoopy stationery. Sadly, the letters are lost. I was able to thank Mr. Schulz for these letters when I met him in 1984. I met him three times and wish I could have known him better. He was a good man.
When I heard, in 2000, that he was very sick, I drew a cartoon card of Mickey Mouse dancing like Snoopy since I was the only Disney animator who had animated both characters. I got all the good animators at Disney's to sign it, and sent it out Fedex overnight. It reached him a few days before he died. I did not know at the time that he loved Mickey Mouse as a child, and that he was influenced by the character (as this still from 1928’s PLANE CRAZY shows, Mickey and Snoopy had the same smile!)
So, I am happy to know that I might have given him something that made him happy. I paid him back for those letters.
Charles M. Schulz was a good man, but not a happy one. He worried that he might lose the ability to come up with material, that all of it would end.
It never did end, of course. Peanuts is timeless. I feel that it is one of the greatest comic strips ever drawn. It is a beautiful, moving, and very funny strip.
Of course, if Charles M. Schulz had been happy and secure, he could never have drawn PEANUTS.
Believe it or not, Charles M. Schulz used a Koh I Noor pen holder and I got the identical model (127N). They are also hard to find, now. And in THE ART AND LIFE OF THE PEANUTS CREATOR IN 100 OBJECTS, the new book published for his centenary by the Charles Schulz Museum, there's a picture of the holder with the nib, so I know exactly how far to stick the shaft into the holder.