A Splendid Torch: Henry Mercer’s Historical Connections (Part 2)

 

Moravian Pottery and Tile Works (photo by Concord, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons)

The following is the second of two posts devoted to a lengthy passage from Bill Kleinsasser’s 1981 edition of his self-published textbook, SYNTHESIS. (Read Part 1 here). 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 2:  Layering, Light, and Caves

Layering

The second kind of imagery appearing in Mercer’s stories concerns the layering of places and objects in space, the effect of this visual complexity, and how that effect is heightened under certain circumstances.

He wrote in Castle Valley:

“The boughs frame the picture. Look under them. They give distance to the meadow, the bridge, and the hill yonder. The scene has a curious effect on me. I hardly know how to describe it.

“When I awoke I found myself lying upon a pile of straw on the floor of a barn, through the open door of which I saw a red glow, with clouds of smoke, and moving figures of men.”

In The Blackbirds:

“He was standing by an open window, looking out across the city roofs and river at the magnificent up-rolled clouds that deepened the distant blue and cast their majestic shadows over the far-off suburb of Fairfield.

“There, on mounting to the top of a flat rock, the trees opened upon an enchanting view of distant meadow, cliffs, and a village, seen across an expanse of water. The eastern sky had changed to rose color. The water’s shimmer was broken by the breeze into deep-blue paths of ripples. Clouds, more gorgeous than ever, robed in white, gold, and lavender, floated overhead.”

Descriptions similar to these appear many times in the seven stories and all of Mercer’s buildings show his response to this interest: in the deliberate creation of vistas and spatial layering inside the buildings, by preserving and emphasizing the same phenomena outside, and by uniting inside and outside through the device of in-between elements and spaces.

Mercer Museum (photo by Bestbudbrian, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons)

Light

The third kind of imagery brought to mind by Mercer’s short stories is about light and the effects of light, particularly on things and spatial organizations whose meaning the mystery are magnified by it, such as forms and spaces within other spaces, forms juxtaposed against other forms (layering again), ruins, junk, metal, textures, colors, water, landscape, and distance.

In North Ferry Bridge:

“The place I got into showed a vast roof space, with overhanging floors and galleries, extending back into the darkness, and looked as if it might be one of the wings of a deserted foundry.

“By the light of a hanging lamp I saw piles of lumber, rusty machinery, and casters’ flasks. Another lamp, with a half-barrel and some bottles and dishes, stood on a workbench behind me. Across the floor, near a pile of boxes stuffed with straw and close to a cupboard, I saw a long wire cage, built against a wall.

“A platform leading backwards brought us to a rotting staircase choked with rubbish, and thence upward into a long, narrow yard between high walls. Passing piles of waste iron and then a labyrinth of ruinous sheds faintly lit by the moon, we reached a gate at the end of a paved alley and pulled back its rusty bolt.”

In The Blackbirds:

“As they hurried down Merchant Street to the ferry, a lurid glare had suddenly caught the eastern house fronts. Against the deep shadows in the cross streets, it gave the city a threatening, unfamiliar look, as if the lights were out of order.

“Near a rusty derrick and some blocks of stone they stopped before a black, rotting shed, with a partly collapsed roof, built close against the rock. The dismal ruin had lost its lower wall of boards, a pile of which lay along its open front in the high grass. Its dark interior, half concealed by weeds and poison ivy, revealed faint outlines of rusting machinery and contending with the glare of an opening in the rear, the flicker of a fire.”

In The Wolf Book:

“Moments passed as he looked outward upon the evening lights that streamed across the tree tops and inward beyond the borderland of dreams. The place seemed confused with things astonishing, contradictory, casual, human feet floating in the air, a cave lit by glowworm, an ash tree, the Castle of Golubacz.

“The professor pointed at the darkening sky. ‘I believe in that, no beginning, no end. What are miracles to that?”

Descriptions similar to these appear sixteen times in seven stories. Views of Mercer’s buildings, showing elements defined by light, organization in response to light, and the consequent sensorial complexity of the buildings show his embodiment of this imagery.

Caves

As pervasive and intriguing as the imagery of light, layering, and castles in Mercer’s work, and perhaps combining all of these, is the imager of caves. This imagery is obvious in the labyrinthian arrangement of Fonthill and reappears in all three buildings. Mercer visited many caves during his archaeological days, and he was alert to literary descriptions of them. His construction notebooks contain references to the “cave temples” of Ellora and Elphanta in India, and there are photographs of caves and cave-like places from his journey along the three rivers in France.

Ellora Caves, India (photo © Vyacheslav Argenberg / http://www.vascoplanet.com/, CC BY 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons)

But the cave image of greatest importance to Mercer was of a gigantic chamber in Yucatan, near the Mayan ruins of Uxmal and Chichen Itza. He saw it while on an archaeological search in 1885. The Mayans call it “Loltun,” which means “rock of flowers.” Because sunlight and water come in through ground-surface openings in its roof, the cave is alive with luxuriant plants, oversized butterflies, bats and bees, and schools of birds flying fish-like in the moist, hazy air. The main room is pierced with dozens of water-seeking tree roots which drop, column-like, through the entire hundred and eighty feet of the space. Mercer was astounded by this cave. He made drawings of it. He took many photographs of it. Over 14 years he wrote several descriptions of it, each richer than the last. There is no proof, but these descriptions suggest that he found the memory of this cave to be a perfect framework for the spatial arrangements of his Museum, whose many separate exhibit spaces presented a difficult organizational problem. Here is his final description of Loltun, written in 1914 just as the museum was under construction:

“. . . the third garden of my story remains in my memory rather than as a work of enchantment than a fact, a thing as far beyond the reach of our efforts at imitation as a coral grows in the depths of ocean. I saw it as an unexpected wonder in the underground world of Yucatan, when we were searching in a maze of tropical caverns for geological proof of the presence and antiquity of the ancient people who had built the ruins of Uxmal and Chichen Itza.

“No one had told us of the sight, which we saw after a dark walk underground. It came upon us a surprise, for here at first the unfathomed cave with its white stalactites revealed by candlelight, was not more remarkable than the Wyandotte or Mammoth Caves, or Luray, or any other of the underground labyrinths of North America. But suddenly as we proceeded through the eternal gloom of a long gallery, the resemblances ceased. A brilliant expanding spot of light appeared in the distance, which for some moments seemed like a round glass aquarium full of goldfish, hanging in a dark room, upon which a ray of bright sunlight had been focused. As we came nearer, the fish turned to trees and flowers, birds and plants. We saw before us, as if looking through blue water, a vast domed room, lit only from above by a window in its ceiling, down which came the light and air of the upper world.

“Here, incomprehensible sight! Underground, out of place, was a garden, where from the subterranean soil, externally moist in a parched land, sprang a floral paradise, watered by the dripping of stalactites which unlike those other caverns, because exposed light and air, had lost their pallor and taken on rainbow hues. But stranger still, the trees of the upper forest, whose roots clasped the edge of the skylight, swung loose in mid-air like cables, or shooting down many feet, took root gain in the floor of the cave. Sounds had lost their reality by the dark doorways of this underworld. We heard the murmur of approaching voices, as of spied who had dogged our footsteps. But no one came. It was the rustling of the palm trees that reverberated in unnatural echoes, when cooled gusts of the tropical air below down from above. More real was the sight of birds that flew in and out and of butterflies that fluttered from plant to plant, while behind the light and color was a blue blackness of cave walls in fantastic shadow, as of indistinct monstrous forms of animals and reptiles sculptured in the rock. Undecipherable hieroglyphics and the massive stone bowls which stood in damp spots full of dripping water, showed that the ancient people of Yucatan had been there, perhaps as worshipers. But their hands had not made the garden. That was hewn from living rock and planted by the vast forces which make the sea and sky and roll the Earth in space.

“For many days we worked in sight of it, while it wrought its spell upon us, until at last our task was done. Then looking upon it for the last time, a feeling like regret or longing seized us, as if we might have preferred to sit down in the unearthly light forever gazing. As we hesitated, the smoke of one of the perfumed woods, which the Indians burn in the evening floated down the skylight, while it seemed that the realities of the future were slipping from our grasp. Had we, like the fabled Lotus Eaters, tasted some enchanted fruit, which lured us to forget the way home? Had the refreshing water in the stone bowls enervated us, as still waiting, knowing not why we strove as it were against an occult force, to yield at last only to the necessity, which dragged us unwillingly away.”

Loltun Cave, Yucatan (lostpylon, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons)

Found attached to page four of Mercer’s construction notebook for Fonthill was this poem written in longhand by Mercer’s friend and fellow archaeologist, Dr. Charles C. Abbott, dated August 14, 1910:

“Reincarnation of the storied past,

Skyward in majesty thy walls arise;

In strength assuring us that they shall last,

Not crumble as the common structure dies.

They tower mantled with the morning light

Proudly acclaims the past still alive,

Where Prose, grim visaged (O, the sorry sight)

Would have the world in soulless fashion thrive.

All honor then to him who raised the pile

Where daydreams wander through each classic room,

Where honest speech is never brought to trial

Nor trustful candor hears its certain doom.

Defying critics, faithfully thou wrought,

Thou Master Builder of a fruitful thought.”

Proudly acclaims the past still alive, indeed. Mercer’s historical connections were many and clear. Written with the poem was the notation, “. . . for HCM . . .in recollections of a pleasant day.”

(WK/1981)