Harkness – MacGillivray Stories

In SWALK, these squiggle drawings were found in different letters from both my parents, but mostly from my father. To read the full version of the letters, check out SWALK (Interactive version).

My father often embellished his letters with squiggle drawings drawn with an ink fountain pen. In the twenty-first century, we tend to forget that before the age of laptops, biros, and Pilot rollerball pens, people wrote letters with fountain pens filled from a bottle of ink or they used dip pens.

Poppy and Buster Squiggle Drawing

We do not have any photos of Buster the dog, or any certain photos of the first ‘Poppy’ cat, but my father has in his squiggle drawing here given Buster and Poppy to posterity!

Sweet Squiggle Drawing

This is quite a skilled doodle, considering he is using a scratchy pen. But after all, my father was a chief draughtsman, and probably had skills his sons knew little about! 

Horse and Cart Drawing

This ‘squiggle drawing’ is obviously some kind of reply to my father’s squiggle drawings. It doesn’t make a lot of sense. Perhaps the ‘horse and cart’ was one of Sandy’s toys. And perhaps she thought it was a long time since Alex had sent her a comical drawing.

My mother mentions that Sandy sleeps a lot during the daytime, which suggests he is still a baby of a few months. So, perhaps this letter was written in the autumn of 1942. 

Alex on a Walk Drawing

‘Scratchy pens’ can be good tools for making ‘squiggly’ pen drawings. I insert one such drawing here from the above incomplete letter of my mother.“Alex with his family going for a walk on a Sunday morning to the park to see the ducks.” Of course, it is impossible to read what my mother has written in her ‘squiggle drawing’. It would need an Enigma machine to decipher the meaning. On the other hand, it might seem that my father is smacking his baby son, thus, the comment, “howl, howl”.