~THE WITCH OF
FONTHILL~
On a summer afternoon, my friends and I were moping
about with nothing much to do, when someone decided
it was time to pay another visit to the Witch of
Fonthill.
Pulling out our wallets and purses, turning our
pockets inside out, we examined all the money we had
to see if there was enough. Then the group of us
cramming into somebody’s car, whoever was
fortunate to have a car that day, would trek the
twenty-five miles into the country. It was still
rural then, with plenty of farms and few houses. Our
destination was Doylestown, the County seat of this
rather large Bucks County.
Fonthill was located on the far edge of Doylestown,
standing at the center of a large expanse of lawn.
The approach was a narrow driveway lined with ancient
tall trees. This was the dream house of famed
renaissance man, and local eccentric, Henry Chapman
Mercer. To all appearances, a sandcastle. Between
1908 and 1912 Henry Mercer, without benefit of a
formal training in architecture, poured his castle
out of pails of concrete. The building rose
asymmetrical and irregular, forty-four rooms and
thirty-four staircases, perforated with tall
Romanesque windows. Roughly hewed, the walls, walks,
and balustrade gave the romantic appearance of
centuries of decay. He had been inspired by the
castles he saw during his youth, when floating down
the Danube on raft and houseboat.
The arched door would open a crack and half a face,
withered and full of suspicion, would peer up at us.
We announced that we wanted to take the tour of
Fonthill. The one eye scanned us up and down and the
door opened a little wider, wide enough so that we
could hand in our money. There, in the crack of the
door, the old woman counted the money, once, twice,
three times. Then she would count our number, once,
twice, three times. Then she would count the money
again. We had given her more than enough. And when we
asked for our change, she didn’t seem to hear
us. We’d ask again, once, twice, three times.
Reluctantly, she would hand back the change, using
the smallest possible coinage, stopping as if
finished when it was not yet enough. And before we
could spur her to continue returning to her count,
she would
demand to first see the money she had already given
us, and would count it to make sure she hadn’t
given us too much, and still she would forget to give
us the rest. Finally the door was opened wide and we
were permitted to enter Fonthill.
Inside the cave-like home, the vaulted rooms, stairs,
columns, bookcases, gave every appearance of having
been carved out of rock. In fact they had all been
poured into casts, and were part of the actual
building. Electrical wires and water pipes ran along
the walls and not inside them. The walls were devoid
of panelling or plaster, but they were embossed with
tiles
collected from around the world and from
Mercer’s own manufacture. These colourful tiles
were Mercer’s contribution to the Arts and
Crafts Movement. After Fonthill, he built on the
corner of his property the Moravian Pottery and Tile
Works, another poured concrete building that has the
appearance of a Spanish mission.
Up and down staircases the Witch of Fonthill would
lead us, with strict instructions not to touch
anything. The house was filled with treasure, with
books, with ancient artifacts that Henry Mercer had
collected and installed. An archaeologist,
anthropologist, artist, historian, and dog lover, his
house is chock-ful of wonders, but just to gesture in
the direction of an item was enough to bring the
wrath of the ever-watchful witch. “But I only
wanted to know what that was...” The Witch
of Fonthill did not know what anything was. She had
been Mercer’s housekeeper. She spoke of him as
if he was a god, and preserved the house as he had
left it, but with no apparent understanding of the
symbols she had been left to guard. Many of the books
were rotting away in place because she did not know
how to take proper care of them, except perhaps to
dust. She even became confused during the tour, and
rooms might get passed through twice, each time to
receive a different name. Large areas were
overlooked, and one part of the house, beyond the
kitchen, in which the old witch herself lived, was
always off limits. She became particularly hard of
hearing when asked why Mercer did not marry. [He
probably remained single because of a lifetime curse
of gonorrhea following a youthful indiscretion during
his European vacation.] It wasn’t long
before the tour was completed and we were shoved out
the front door. The tour was never the same twice.
We were not bad kids. Unfortunately, at times, we
were not particularly compassionate. And since we did
not understand old age, we rather cruelly
disrespected it, and, for a lark, used it for
amusement.
Miss Laura M. Long was twelve at the turn of the last
century. While working as Mercer’s housekeeper
she became wedded to Mercer’s assistant, Frank
K. Swain. Henry Chapman Mercer died in his dream
house in 1930 of Bright’s disease and
myocarditis. Fonthill was left in trust to the
community to become the museum it is today. But the
very generous Mercer made a special provision
allowing Frank and Laura Swain to live their lives
out at Fonthill. He had left the Moravian Pottery and
Tile Works to Frank Swain as well. Mr Swain died in
1954. Laura died in 1975. As young adults my friends
and I did not have the sense to befriend her, to
access this resource into the immediate past, which
already felt like a very distant past to us. We let
go an opportunity to learn of that remarkable man,
Henry Chapman Mercer. We were no different than the
local kids who invaded her privacy to peek through
the windows of that strange house, until they were
chased away by a screeching Laura brandishing a
broom. It was town’s kids who named her the
Witch of Fonthill.
At the very least, we should have let her keep the
change.
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