Not being a follower of the rich and famous, I had never heard of Henry Chapman Mercer before visiting his house. Mr. Mercer has long departed, but he was a tile-maker with a very rich auntie back at the turn of the penultimate century. Being from Doylestown, Pennsylvania, Mercer poured his money (literally) into a castle made of concrete. This sturdy, labyrinthine structure, called Fonthill, is a five-story museum that is an hommage to ceramics and the art of tile making. The friends who introduced us the museum enticed me with the information that Mercer had embedded Sumerian tablets in the wall of his concrete mansion. Indeed he had. Standing in the house that Charles Dickens once visited, I realized that the literary connections stretched beyond Sumer to the lifetime of Mercer himself. And right in the middle was the Bible.

Who might that giant be?

There is so much to see in every room of Fonthill that I could not hope to take it all in. No photographs are allowed inside, so I was desperately trying to remember every square centimeter that I was lucky enough to examine. The Bible, however, came in the form of clay. Mercer designed tiles. A tile factory still sits on the grounds of the house. Many of these tiles depict biblical scenes. Perhaps sharing a shudder with most of the wealthy, Mercer had concerns for the afterlife. The Bible is the balm in Gilead. Although I couldn’t take photos in the house, pieces made from the same molds adorned the nearby Mercer Museum that we visited later that day. Both buildings lack adequate heating but abound in human-made stone. I snapped a couple of biblically themed tiles before eagerly heading to the warmth of the car.

Elijah reaches for a handout

Meanwhile the news declares that unemployment benefits are being shortened by a bloated government. Those who’ve been forced out of work by a capitalism out of control will now have to make their own jobs, it seems. Bush-era tax breaks are being desperately defended by congressmen who look surprisingly well fed. The rich have never had it so bad. Henry Mercer did not have to work for his money, yet the Bible adorns his monument in stone. Fonthill is definitely worth the trip to Doylestown. While you’re there, look for the ubiquitous Bible. The Bible, although possibly the most misunderstood book in human history, lends its gravitas even to the vaunted towers of Babel.