Washington Crossing the Delaware. Emmanuel Leutze. 1863. Collection Metropolitan Museum of Art. (reproduced under Fair Use, etc.)
The Mercer Museum, Doylestown. Pennsylvania.
Perched on a hill, a village had formed around a tavern built in 1745, on a road connecting major ferry-crossings on the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers. Growing in Doylestown Pennsylvania, the Mercer museum was visible from our front porch. In the shadow of the castle, we climbed the copper beeches to their uppermost branches. Through hand-blown pane, penetrates the cool walls of the shadowy fortress. Arrayed within anchorite vitrines are hand-tools from every trade, from the broad-axe, saw and draw-knife, to the shingle-maker’s schitzelbank, cobblers’ hammers, the tinsmith’s anvil, printing-press, gallows and a butter-churn. Tashtego’s leviathan-piercers rest in the crotch of a whaleboat. A Conestoga wagon and stagecoach hovered in midair above the central atrium. The medieval folly realized an eccentric bachelor’s dream, to elevate the material culture of working-folk to the dignity of high art.
Inside the Mercer Museum, Doylestown. Pennsylvania.
Among the huts at Valley Forge, angry wasps nested in cannon-tubes. Between picnic games of tag or hide-and-seek, vexing these creatures provided dangerous sport. More than once, stings were treated with Schuylkill River mud-plasters. At the nearby chapel Washington kneels in prayer. In life, the low-church Tidewater Anglican never did. My father noted with pride certain cabinet-work that had been carved the German-born father of a childhood friend. The wood-paneled Gladwyne home office of my aunt’s father-in-law had been salvaged from the house used by General William Howe as headquarters during the British occupation of Philadelphia. Walter Kremer Durham was often just one step ahead of the wrecking-ball, when four blocks of the colonial city were razed to create a grassy park in front of Independence Hall. On his desk in Howe’s study, he kept a flintlock tinderbox for lighting cigarettes.
“Cabin and Sunrays at Valley Forge” by Garen Meguerian. National Park Service.(reproduced under Fair Use, etc.)
At Washington Crossing Historic Park, franks were blistered, burgers were charred and marshmallows toasted on twigs. All was devoured with savage zeal and maybe a dash of India relish. Frogs and salamanders were annoyed without mercy. We gave snakes a wide berth.
For anyone who has experienced a wintertime Nor’easter, it is not too difficult to imagine the freezing rain and driving sleet that opposed Washington and his men as they marched downriver from the foot of Bowman’s Hill to pile into the Durham boats waiting at McConkey’s Ferry. In hindsight, it seems we may have been drawn to the site. Maternal Connecticut ancestors had crossed with Washington that night to participate in the attack upon Trenton. Having some sense of belonging, we had nothing like knowledge to confirm it. My school-teacher mother’s grasp of it all was textbook folkloric. Having served in the Pacific, my Irish dad held a deeper interest in military history, but he had no dog in this fight. During his tour of the Pacific he carried a small leather Bible given to him by his mother, and a copy of Stephen Crane’s Red Badge of Courage. I treasure them both.
James McElhinney. 1918-1981. 1st Sergeant
U.S. Army Air Corps. Pacific Theater WW2.
Following our feasts and revels we would conclude our visit with a son-et-lumiere presentation in the auditorium of the new visitors’ center. Once everyone was seated, the lights were dimmed. Stirring music filled the darkened room. The red-velvet curtains parted. A sonorous baritone narrated the familiar tale of Washington’s punishing defeat in New York, his brilliant retreat across New Jersey, and the perilous state of American independence, as Washington’s solders neared the end of their enlistments. As the tale unfolds, spotlights focus one-by-one on Washington and his men, pushing their way through the pack-ice congesting the Delaware’s frigid waters. We learn that nearly three-quarters of Washington’s army had been lost, captured or missing during battles on Long Island, White Plains and Manhattan. New Year’s Day, his army would all but disappear, unless he could perform a miracle. Slowly the space behind the stage was filled with a monumental image. Contemptuous of peril, his cloak swirling in the wind, Washington step forward in a bulky ferry-boat. In the bows, his African-American manservant William Lee pushes away at chunks of ice with an oar. Behind the general, an officer and a frontiersman cradle the furled colors of the new republic.
(Detail: William Lee)
Along the port gunwale, a red-shirted figure some identify as a woman pulls an oar. An officer behind her steadies his hat against the gale, while others huddle in the stern. The image of course was famous. We had seen it displayed in our school-rooms, in books, posters and on postage-stamps. It was our link to a distant past that in some way gave us a sense of what our fathers had endured in Europe and in the Pacific. My father was lucky. At one point he was assigned to military intelligence. Deployed to the Philippines as an advisor to a battalion of Filipino troops in a top-secret mission to secure a heavily-defended island, he never received the security clearance that would let him know what he was doing. Perhaps his ambiguous ties to a neutral nation (Ireland) was the reason. With neither access to supply nor reinforcement the Japanese marooned there offered little resistance. Retreating into the jungle, they survived by whatever means they could find, dodging invaders who hunted them for sport. One of my dad’s friends was a highly decorated combat veteran whose medals hung in a frame over the bar in a downstairs den. He never spoke of the fighting, but would launch into Chautauquas about the fine art of making dry Martinis, by leavening the concoction with a creek-pebble covered in Vermouth. The brand was important, as was the size and geology of the pebble, not to mention the glass jar in which they marinated. Another of my father’s friend had flown transports Over the Hump from Indian into China. One of my mother’s uncles had been seriously injured during the First World War, and later campaigned in North Africa and Sicily. One of his uncles was a Civil War general, and two of his great-great grandfathers had served in Hugh Mercer’s Brigade at the capture of Trenton.
John Martin. The Last Judgment. The Apocalypse Triptych. 1853
In the fall of 2012, after Kathie delivered a paper at a conference in Reading England, we attended the exhibition John Martin: Apocalypse at Tate Britain in London. In aside gallery, reproductions of Martin’s three monumental canvases chronicling the end of days, Divine judgment and the world renewed. Stadium benches line the wall opposite the paintings. We take our seats. Others file in. When the seats are full, the lights dim. Music begins. A male voice with a BBC accent unfolds the Cliff Notes version of the Book of Revelations. One-by-one, bit-by-bit, the three paintings are illuminated. The blessed are carried up to heaven while the damned fall into the burning pit. Once cleansed of sin, the earth is renewed. A new age begins.Watching this spectacle my thoughts go back to the auditorium at Washington’s Crossing State Park. I wondered if the reproduction of Leutze’s canvas is still on view.
Replacing the Leutze with a copy in 1970
The following week we are back in Manhattan. Kathie spoke at an event at the Salmagundi Club. One of the other speakers was Kevin Avery, former curator of American Art at the Met. In the reception following the Q&A I described to him our experience at the Tate and how reminiscent it had been of childhood visits to Washington’s Crossing. Kevin looked at me and asked if I knew that the image I had seen as a kid was in fact the very same canvas that now hangs in a glorious new frame by Eli Wilner & Co., as the centerpiece of the museum’s new American Wing. I was stunned at first. Later it made sense. What should have been a national treasure was dismissed during the nineteen-fifties as sentimental flag-waving; loaned to a venue that would never have measured up to today’s standards for best practices regarding climate-control, pest control, light-levels or security.
The Leutze in situ, in the American Wing at the Met today. To the left is Landers Peak by Albert Bierstadt. To the right is Frederic Church’s Heart of the Andes. The installation reprises their placement in the 1864 US Sanitary Commission Metropolitan Fair held in New York in 1864 to raise funds for the health-care of soldiers serving in the national armed forces.
Due perhaps to growing concerns about vandalism by anti-war activists, or flooding on the Delaware, and a number of other concerns, the new leadership at the Met recalled the painting to be conserved, in preparation as an attraction during the 1976 bicentennial of the Revolutionary War. While I never served in uniform, many of friends and relations have. While Memorial Day is dedicated to the departed, I want to thank all those who served. Friends old and new and former colleagues like Sigmund Abeles, US Army. A. Robert Birmelin, US Army. Korean War combat veteran he late William H. Bailey. Howard Bartholf, Vietnam. Ron Bitticks, 75th Ranger Battalion, Vietnam. Robert Braun, Cold War Ordnance, US Army. Billy Curmano, wounded in action in Vietnam. Phil Garrett, US Navy. John M. Hull, USMC. CPO Robert James, USN. Knox Martin, US Coast Guard, D-Day. William Podszus, 9/11 First-Responder. Swift-boat forward gunner Tom Redman. Robert Skord, US Navy. Bob Skord, Jr. Navy Seals. Larry Spaid, 1st Cavalry. Chris Sullivan, Special Forces. Joe Sweeney, US Navy. George Turnbull, US Navy. My late father James McElhinney, 1st Sergeant US Army Air Corps. Pacific Theater. Late step-father John Wolcott, Captain, US Army Philippines. My late father-in law Col. Joseph P. Manthorne, and my brothers-in-law Jay Manthorne, Pilot.US Coast Guard Air-Sea Rescue; Iraq/Afghanistan combat veteran Sergeant Mark Manthorne, of the elite Black Lions of Cantigny, and many others. Your service and the sacrifice of so many others remind us that at a moment when our country is besieged by plague, and politically divided, the way forward will be revealed through the selfless actions of citizens like you, who put their lives of others before your own. Thank you all.
Dulce et Decorum Est Pro Patria Mori
Check out April 2020 Quaranteam Traveler Dispatches
(A preview of SKETCHBOOK TRAVELER by James L. McElhinney (c) 2020. Schiffer Publishing).
Copyright James Lancel McElhinney (c) 2020 Texts and images may be reproduced (with proper citation) by permission of the author. To enquire, send a request to
ed******@ne***********.com
