Black and grey tattoo on a thigh showing a Regency couple, a standing figure, roses, leaves, a sunburst and scrolling quote banners in an engraved style.

Pride and Prejudice scene on a thigh

Botanical · Thigh · Black and grey · Photo

A black and grey tattoo covers the thigh with a Regency-era scene, including a couple in period dress facing each other and a standing figure at the left edge. Engraved-style linework and fine shading build up foliage, roses and a sunburst, while scrolling banners carry fragments of written text. The design wraps around the leg, with the couple at the centre and leaves filling the gaps between the banners.

Botanical Lettering Thigh Couple Rose Leaves Sunburst Banner Script Quote Monogram

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The plate came back from the printer with a smudge across the sunburst, and Mr Harrow held it to the window as though the light might argue on its behalf. Nell had cut that sun herself, eleven rays fanning out from a single point, each line thinner than the burin she was still learning to hold. Fine work, he said. Pity about the roses.

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The publisher in Paternoster Row wanted a frontispiece for a new edition of letters, all foliage and flourish, and the roses were meant to be the simplest part. Nell had drawn them from a sprig Mrs Tolley brought in from her garden in Lansdown, wrapped in a damp handkerchief as if it might faint on the journey. Every petal needed a shadow, and every shadow needed patience. She worked by a single candle after the shop had shut, cross-hatching until her wrist ached and the copper blurred under her eyes.

On the last night she cut a monogram into the hedge of leaves on the lower banner, two letters so small they read as a vein or a notch in the bark. It was a foolish thing to do. Harrow would see it at the proof stage, and she was ready to scrape it out herself.

He did see it. He stood over the proof for a long while, then took his pen and wrote a single line in the margin, which she could not read upside down. The plate went to the printer as it was. When the first bound copies came back, she found one on the bench with a slip of paper tucked inside the cover, and on it, in his cramped hand, the word: Kept.