Brandywine

December 2, 2019

Thanksgiving began for Sandy and me Wednesday with a nervous embark on I-95 to our son’s and daughter-in-law’s home in southeastern Pennsylvania. A little paranoid after hearing the frantic forecasts of holiday traffic nightmares, we left at 5:00 AM, braced for disaster—but cruised into PA about eight o’clock with no snarls or delays.

Thanksgiving Day offered the chance to be with two of our kids as they took a break from busy lives. That morning we caught Mass at the nearby parish. Afterward the pastor distributed loaves of bread to the entire congregation.  “I used to say that Thanksgiving should be a holyday of obligation,” he offered with a smile.

Caroline’s mom Mary and brother Ben and a bunch of friends joined us for the day. As usual, Caroline did nearly all the work. Dinner was spectacular.

This Thanksgiving was high time to remember the Lord’s gifts and the many who kept us in their prayers through months of medical drudgery—scans, chemo/rad, surgeries, Sandy’s week in the ICU—all that. Then too, like most Americans, we’re grateful that we see reasons to be hopeful for the country’s future beyond a political storm that no one predicted. Some days that’s hard, but we work at it.

Visiting Brandywine, which few know about, helps.

When we arrived on Wednesday we headed for Chadd’s Ford, site of the Brandywine Battlefield along Brandywine Creek, nine miles northwest of Wilmington, Del., and 30 miles southwest of Philadelphia. Here, on September 11, 1777 (that dark date again) 11,000 colonial soldiers—call them Americans—faced 18,000 better-trained, better-equipped British and Hessian troops. The Brits’ plan was to seize Philly, the colonial capital, by attacking from the south.

General George Washington staged his forces on high ground north of the creek along the fords he knew. British General Sir William Howe, with better intelligence, sent most of his army to cross the creek at a ford farther north, using only a small cadre in a feint at the American front line. Helped by an early morning fog, the main British force then turned and attacked the American northern flank, surprising Washington. The Americans fought through the day but were outmaneuvered and outgunned and forced to retreat. Howe led his army unopposed into Philadelphia, which they occupied until June 1778. The Continental Congress fled to Lancaster, then to York.

Historians believe British losses were 93 men killed and nearly 500 wounded. Rough estimates of American casualties run to 300 dead, about 600 wounded, 400 taken prisoner. The British captured 11 of the Americans’ 14 artillery pieces. Brandywine was the longest single-day battle of the war, as the two sides fought for 11 straight hours.

Yet the British failed to pursue, and the wounded American force escaped. Washington reported to the Continental Congress that “despite the day’s misfortune, I am pleased to report that most of my men are in good spirits and have the courage to fight the enemy another day.”

Good spirits. At Thanksgiving, or anytime, we’re heartened by the bravery at Brandywine. Our spirits are amplified further by those who see acutely the abundant beauty around us–the collective calling of the Wyeth family, who created their mystically realistic work mostly at their Chadd’s Ford home on the Brandywine.

Famed illustrator and painter Newell Convers (N.C.) Wyeth and his wife Carolyn had five children. Daughters Henriette and Carolyn and son Andrew, the youngest, shared N.C.’s creative touch. Andrew’s son Jamie inherited his father’s gifts. The Brandywine River Museum, near the Wyeth home where Andrew’s wife Betsy still lives, maintains a permanent collection of Wyeth family work.

Their paintings show the roughhewn grace of American life. The brilliant illustrations of N.C. highlighted popular books and journals until his death in 1945. The austere, lustrous landscapes of Andrew and the stark yet humane portraits of both Andrew and Jamie tell stories of men and women, their strengths and vulnerabilities.

Andrew’s Christina’s World catapulted the already well-known artist, then 31 years old, to world fame in 1941. It is now in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The painting shows the handicapped Christina Olson crawling toward her family’s homestead. Andrew  painted her portrait years later, revealing gently the cares and passions of the elderly woman. His landscapes, set near Chadd’s Ford and at his home on the Maine seacoast, full of delicacy and detail, speak of the hardships and the joys of rural life, in spare shades and subtle color.

Andrew, trained by his father, learned from him that the purpose of art is in the creation of beauty, not in the response to it. N.C Wyeth warned that the artist who paints for the critics “does not know what he is missing.”

Andrew also found a connection to two other American icons, Henry David Thoreau and Robert Frost. Both New Englanders—Thoreau, the essayist and rebel, and Frost, the poet—like Wyeth, communicate to readers a sensitivity to nature and the value of human closeness to nature.

Andrew’s sister Carolyn and son Jamie extended the family devotion to precise realism in oil, watercolor, and tempura. They, like N.C. and Andrew, convey a reverence for humanity, compassion, love, truth. Andrew, best-known of the Wyeths, spoke of his work: “I paint my life.” He died in his sleep in 2009.

The Wyeths’ art draws us to their perception of the dignity of work in the fields and homesteads of this wooded, rolling corner of Pennsylvania. For us, Brandywine is a place for appreciating the richness of our colonial history, the courage of good people facing suffering and joy, and the sublime beauty of everyday life. At this moment, we all need that. Good spirits.