Pam Alison Knits

I don’t know whether being a debutante was a thing in 1978 when I might have been of an age to “be presented”. I was not of the requisite class and, anyway, would have considered any mind that came up with such a horrific endurance test to be warped or worse. I was never a fan of dressing up and partying, not to mention trying to find anything so mundane as a husband. However, “the season” was clearly popular enough back in 1946 for Parker to name their baby Vacumatic pen The Debutante. From the marketing I’ve seen, it was aimed at parents buying for their high-school children. I’m getting the vibe of June Allyson in her early movies – the dutiful daughter who hooks up with Jimmy Stewart’s clean-cut boy just as he’s about to head off for college.

I think it would be safe to say that the Parker Debutante was a pen which was never on my radar. Apart from my dad’s Parker 51, I’ve not exactly gelled with the vintage pens I’ve tried and my sorties into pre-owned have been most successful when they’ve been pens of the 1980s and onwards, particularly cartridge-converter fillers. I also don’t usually gravitate towards gold nibs, or black pens, so I have to give full credit to Kevin W Saunders at the London Pen Show for convincing me to try this little charmer and for talking me into buying it. It was bought on a whim, and I felt quite guilty as I had no intention of adding to my pen collection, but any buyer’s remorse vanished very quickly indeed. This pen is so cute that I can’t feel guilty about it.

So, a few facts about my Debutante. As you can see from the notes Kevin kindly wrote out, it is a Canadian pen dating back to 1946. It has a 14 carat gold nib which writes with a nice fine line, I love how my handwriting looks with this nib. The cap and body are made from Parker’s silver pearl material which looks much like a stacked celluloid or, as one of my sisters commented, like a barcode! Hold it up to the light, though, and you find the pearl areas act as an ink window so you can keep an eye on how much ink you have left in the pen. Pelikan adopted a similar method until recently, with vertical striped barrels providing a view into the ink chamber. This silver pearl effect elevates this from a simple black pen to something a little more intriguing.

Speaking of the ink chamber, this pen is part of Parker’s Vacumatic line, and you fill it using a button concealed behind a blind cap. Press it down to create the vacuum whilst the nib is immersed in ink, release it to draw the ink up into the chamber. There is no rubber sac to hold the ink, such as you see in my dad’s Parker 51, but there will be a diaphragm inside as part of the vacuum system. This was replaced last year so there should be little to worry about. The ink flows beautifully and I haven’t had a hard start. I did get one splodge, or burp, but the pen has been on a few journeys over the past couple of weeks – to and from the pen show, then up to York and back – so I can forgive it a slightly gassy tummy!

I think part of the attraction in this pen is the size: capped, it isn’t much longer than the Kaweco Sport and significantly smaller than the Parker 51 which is by no means an outsize pen. Indeed, I would put this fimly in the “pocket pens” category, though I wouldn’t put it in an actual pocket. I also feel it is happiest when used with the cap posted on the back, which feels firm and secure. Once you do this, the Debutante is actually the longest of the three. That said, there’s no getting away from how short and narrow the section is and that restricts the customer base even more now than it did when this was at the height of its popularity. The Kaweco’s section looks quite long and chunky in comparison, though anyone who owns one knows it is neither of those things. If I can channel Spock for a moment and suggest that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, this is definitely not a pen for the many. It might make it into a few collections as an interesting example, but I think I’m very much in the minority as someone who will happily use the Debutante to actually write pages of text. And, you know, that’s a shame because it is a lovely little writer.

Before I discovered the ink window effect, I had worked my way through the entire fill which Kevin provided at the show. The Debutante is now waiting for a little flush through so I can put a different colour ink in it. I’m just not fond enough of black ink to stick with the recommended original English Quink with Solv-X. Considering the age of the pen and its classic lines, I’m tempted to fill it with a very standard blue ink so I feel a bottle of something mild-mannered and vintage-friendly may be coming my way very soon.

I do hope that I will keep on enjoying this pen for many years. Whether it will be enough to turn my head towards other vintage offerings remains to be seen.