A Splendid Torch: Henry Mercer’s Historical Connections (Part 1)

Fonthill, the home of Henry Chapman Mercer, Doylestown, Pennsylvania (photo by Concord - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=40253187)

The following is the first of two posts devoted to a lengthy passage from Bill Kleinsasser’s 1981 edition of his self-published textbook, SYNTHESIS. His fascination with the work and interests of Henry Chapman Mercer is perhaps no more evident than in this reading. Like Mercer, Bill disdained the downsides of modernization and industrialization upon design and construction, particularly the primacy of standardization and the loss of rich diversity associated with many historical buildings. Like other followers of the Arts and Crafts movement, Mercer sought to extol the virtues of vernacular architecture, patterns inspired by nature, and the work of the craftsman-designer; however, what sets Mercer apart is the extent to which legend, literature, Americana, and archaeology influenced his approach to architecture.
 
Henry Mercer’s three major building designs—Fonthill Castle, the Mercer Museum, and the Moravian Pottery and Tile Works—are peculiar and idiosyncratic, but they are also distinctive, evocative, and highly personal. In this regard, it’s not surprising Bill would be fascinated by their appearance, the lessons to be learned from them, and their eccentric author.
 
Part 1:  Imagery of Many Times and Many Places
Henry Mercer believed in knowledge as a means of establishing historical connections. He often repeated the verse:
 
Happy the man who sees in things
Their causes gone before
All fear he spurns beneath his feet
Nor dreads inexorable fate
And Acheron’s hungry roar.
 
Mercer knew and respected what had existed before. Not only was he a great student of his place, but also an active archaeologist and ethnologist for many years before he built his buildings. His Museum extended and expanded an earlier one. Fonthill gave new life to the colonial farmhouse it joined. The Tileworks made possible the preservation and development of the art of the Pennsylvania German potters. The Museum contained thousands of artifacts that portray history from the standpoint of toil by human hands, and on its grounds Mercer reconstructed a pioneer log cabin so that its eloquent example would not be lost. Fonthill preserves and displays native trees and plants, and contains another colonial farmhouse, repaired and given to the local nature club to be used. His buildings look old and feel old. They contain many old things, and they evoke old forms and old places. Made on the strength of knowledge and respect, they continue the past rather than destroy it.
 
Mercer was devoted to the study of all manifestations of life, and he argued that:

“We are here to protect humanity from mistakes, and if we do nothing better, we thoroughly justify our existence:  research, discovery, investigation, and longing to open a new door and to find out something never known before. What a burning fire it is and how it seizes upon us. I do hope that some of you have this fire lit within you. If so, add fuel, get hold of the splendid torch of knowledge and wave it about.”
 

Moravian Pottery & Tile Works, Doylestown, Pennsylvania, by Henry Mercer (photo by Bestbudbrian, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons)

Mercer’s historical awareness was an inspiration and a great source of ideas. Consequently, his buildings have a kinship with many places and different lives. Drawings and notations in his notebooks, written descriptions from his stories and papers, and photographs and drawings from his library all confirm that much of the character of his buildings resulted from images, first recalled and then carefully developed, from his travels and studies. These images include dimensions of spaces and small details, special qualities and entire places, places known only by literary descriptions, places real, and places imaginary. In The Building of Fonthill, Mercer wrote that:  
 
“The plan of the whole house was an interweaving of my own fancies blending with memories of my travels and suggestions from several engravings, in particular The Dutch Houskeeper by Gerard Dow, The Great Barn by Wovermans, and a lithograph now in my morning room, also a woodcut illustrating a story called Haunted in a book published about 1865 by Tinsleys magazine named A Stable for Nightmares. This picture gives me the night lighting of the morning room. The first interior imagined and clearly seen was that of the west side of the saloon seen when standing near the large window about eight feet from the door to the library. The arrangement of the rooms at different levels seen over the gallery in the saloon is a memory of a Turkish house seen by me from a rear garden in Salonica in 1886.”
 
Mercer did not write directly again of the inspiration of images and memories, but their importance is strongly suggested by mention in his notebooks, writings, and travel photographs of many places, imaginary and real. Included among these are:

• The cave temples of Ellora and Elephants in India.
• The sunken city of Epidaurus near the Pelloponesus.
• The home of Carabas (in The Book of Fools by Thackery).
• The chapels of San Luis Rey, San Juan Capistrano, and San Miguel in California (which reappear in the elements and shape of the Tileworks.
• The imaginary cities of Avalon, Antiglia, Montezuma, Huitzilo-Pochtli, and Manoa (in the tiles of Fonthill).
• Several caves of France and the southern United States.

Two years before his death in 1930, Henry Mercer wrote seven strange short stories described as “tales of wonder, in which the inexplicable is made to seem the probable, beyond heaven and earth, whose imaginative settings seemed to have appealed to his fancy as much as the threads upon which they are strung.” These seven stories reveal much about Mercer: his interest in coincidence and coincidental experience, his interest in crime, misfortune, pestilence; his interest in legends and the supernatural.

Burg Vichtenstein, a 12th century castle in Austria (photo by C.Stadler/Bwag, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons)

Castles
They (Mercer's stories) also contain repeated references to important memories and images, especially castles. In the story Castle Valley, Mercer recalls the often-told Bucks County legend of James Meredith, who tried to build a castle overlooking Castle Valley, failed in the attempt, and went mad. It is said that some of the castle stones are still in the foundation of a nearby bridge, which itself has long been a ruin. Henry Mercer was in fact a relative of the legendary James Meredith, and as Joseph Sandford writes in Mercer as Seen in His Fiction, “. . . we may wonder how much the family tradition may have contributed to the building of Fonthill and the Museum, or whether its architect has ever toyed with the idea of placing it on that hilltop overlooking the Neshaminy. It needs such a setting, but the hard practicality which had permitted its builder to dare without destruction must have forbidden it. Yet we cannot help but feel that in his successful accomplishment he has built a memorial to the vision of his thwarted kinsman.”
 
Here are Mercer’s words from Castle Valley (the first speaker is the character, Charles Meredith, representing Mercer himself):

“Very delightful,” I said, “but I don’t quite understand. You have idealized things, not too much perhaps, but why the castle on the hill? Isn’t that going a little too far?

“I expected you to say that” he returned, laughing.

“The legend,” I continued, “is somewhat vague and hardly justifies you in deliberately putting it on canvas.”

“What legend?” he asked. “I know of no legend.”

“Do you mean to say,” I returned, “that you have painted a castle on that hill, without knowing that there was a castle there at one time, or the beginning of one, at least?”

“Never heard a word of it,” said he in astonishment.

“Why, the place is called Castle Valley,” I exclaimed, “from that fact, and I ought to know something of it, as the builder is supposed to be one of my ancestors. But it’s all gone long ago, the stones were used to build the bridge yonder.”

Pryor listened in surprise as I went on to explain that my ancestor in question, according to family tradition, had been in some way thwarted in the singular project of building a castle on the hill before us. Whether because of the hostility of his father and friends, or his own mental derangement, his architectural dream had never been realized. The walls had hardly risen above their foundations when the poor fellow died.

“I always felt very sorry for this,” I added. “But it is one of hose unfortunate memories that lose their tragedy and blend into folklore as time goes on. What strikes me as very remarkable though is the fact that you should be ignorant of the castle story and yet paint the castle one hundred and fifty years later. The castle became an ideal that we hold on to, in spite of the Devil and all his angels.”

“Just as I thought it was from the first, without knowing why.“ said Pryor.

“Now that the stone is gone, it is fortunate that I have seen your castle, thunderstorm included,” I continued, “or I should never have known what you were talking about. So much for hypnotism. But how wonderful, how astonishing it is, merely as a picture! Don’t you think so? Those unearthly pinnacles that pierce the clouds! If I were a painter, as you are, and saw a thing like that, I would feel that I had got hold of my ladder of fortune and only need to climb up, up, up.”

“But the ladder is yours as well as mine.”

“Why” I am not the painter, and never could be.”

“What are you?”

I got up, seized his hand, and looked deep into his glowing eyes. “I didn’t know, till just now,” said I. “I thought I was a politician. But I have decided that I am an architect!”
 
Though without the same ecstasy, castle imagery appears again and again in Mercer’s notes and records of travels. He photographed many real castles in France, Germany, and Austria; he drew them floating in the air and emerging half-hidden from forests. He collected etchings and engravings of them, and he wrote of them in several other short stories. He was also most interested in hose buildings bearing the greatest resemblance to castles: factories, coal breakers, grain elevators, blast furnaces, and, at least in form, skyscrapers. (WK/1981)

To be continued . . .

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Next:  Part 2: Layering, Light, Caves