I did not wonder when I was told that this region was called the England of Pennsylvania.
— Oliver Wendell Holmes
We're both delighted those grounds are within the Brandywine Valley.
Our reply would be complex, but front and center is the wish to live our remaining days as country squires, lolling in pastoral torpor.
Gas is cheap, the hospitals are good, and there are also excellent eateries all around.
It's like a pleasant parcel of rural England was picked up by a tornado and dropped on the doorstep of Philadelphia.
And, believe it or not, the grass is also greener.
Holmes arrived at the battlefield four days later, only to be told his son was nowhere to be found.
"The grazing pastures were so green, the fields were under such perfect culture, the cattle looked so sleek, the houses were so comfortable, the barns so ample, the fences so well kept, that I did not wonder, when I was told that this region was called the 'England of Pennsylvania.'
I'm not the first to note that fact.
On September 18, 1862, the physician, poet and essayist Oliver Wendell Holmes received a telegram stating that his son, Captain Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., had been shot through the neck the day before at the Battle of Antietam in Maryland.
Holmes immediately left his Boston home by train, heading for Maryland in search of his son, one of Antietam's 23,000 "maimed pilgrims."
Absent evidence, Holmes guessed his son might be in Philadelphia, resting in the Walnut Street mansion of a friend named Charlie.
Reaching Philadelphia, Holmes indeed found the mansion packed with wounded soldiers, none of whom were his son.
He decided to go back to Maryland to search all the field hospitals, and asked Charlie to join him.
"I must have a companion in my search, partly to help me look about, and partly because I was getting nervous and felt lonely," Holmes said.
The two men promptly left Philadelphia on a train bound for Harrisburg. It took them through the Brandywine Valley, which Holmes described in detail:
"By and by the glorious valley which stretches along through Chester and Lancaster Counties opened upon us. Much as I had heard of the fertile regions of Pennsylvania, the vast scale and the uniform luxuriance of this region astonished me.
"The grazing pastures were so green, the fields were under such perfect culture, the cattle looked so sleek, the houses were so comfortable, the barns so ample, the fences so well kept, that I did not wonder, when I was told that this region was called the 'England of Pennsylvania.'
"The people whom we saw were, like the cattle, well nourished; the young women looked round and wholesome.
“'Grass makes girls,' I said to my companion.
“'Grass makes girls,' I said to my companion.
Two days later, Holmes found his wounded son, safely aboard a train parked in the Harrisburg railroad station. He took him home to recuperate in Boston.
