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Prologue

There was always a taste for Gothic in the original colonies, particularly in that historic territory that lies west of Philadelphia, and east of Lancaster where Amish farmers still resist the 20th century.

Schoolchildren of the commonwealth of Pennsylvania are told that the springtime explosion of red, white and blue on the mournfully lovely countryside was caused by the sacrifice of Revolutionary dead. The tulip is blood-scarlet, the dogwood bone-white, the iris a visceral blue. Thus, the flora is a memorial to the patriots, or so the schoolmasters say.

The haunt of history is everywhere. “The Main Line” of the Philadelphia commuter train slashes east and west near the old battleground where soldiers wrote of corpse-eating wolves that could outhowl the wind. Local schoolchildren envision bloody footprints in the snow, and gaunt specters with ice-locked muskets, their feet wrapped in rags, led by General Washington who denied himself shelter so long as his starving soldiers had to sleep in the wilderness.

It’s a land of splendid trees. When William Penn arrived in 1682 he marveled at the trees: black walnut, cedar, ash, hickory, sassafras, beech. The oaks are formidable: red, white and black. Some trees, 250 years old, are local treasures. There are ancient buttonwoods, yellow pines, firs and red maples. And of course, there’s hemlock.

A great oak still stands that was used as a gibbet after the Battle of Brandywine where in 1777 Washington suffered a defeat.

Not surprisingly, it’s a land of antiques and collectors. Tables in Main Line mansions and manor houses are often made of split slab, with round legs set in auger holes. Ancient nails of all kinds are treasured collectibles, some shaped like tiny piano mallets.

This was a land of forges and furnaces. Iron was always cherished. “There is an abidingness about iron,” a settler wrote, “and most things made from it. ” It’s impossible not to feel this abidingness along The Main Line.

Youngsters from all over America come here to attend prestigious prep schools and academies. For higher learning there’s Swarthmore, Haverford, Villanova, Bryn Mawr and others, as well as several seminaries marked by split-rail or white-pine or iron gates, surrounded by native trees that turn bronze and fiery during Indian summer. The trees lie side by side with pretty autumn flowers whose names are sinister: red-hot poker, white snakeroot. It’s hard to miss the taste for Gothic.