South we drive, the taxi and I, towards Cape May and the Delaware Bay.
KEY FACTS
Abbreviation:
DE
Nickname:
The First State
Capital:
Dover
Flower:
Peach blossom
Tree:
American holly
Bird:
Blue hen chicken
Macroinvertebrate:
Stonefly
Motto:
Liberty and Independence
Well-known residents and natives:
The du Pont family, Howard Pyle, R. Crumb, Elizabeth Shue, Judge Reinhold, Susan ‘The Producers’ Stroman, Sean Patrick Thomas, Ryan Phillippe.
DELAWARE
‘A policeman I met in Lewes where the ferry lands told me that “soft and slow” is the Delaware way.’
Poor old Delaware. I don’t know why I say this. She is a beautiful state. Only Rhode Island is smaller, but Delaware can make greater claims to history. Being the First State to ratify the US constitution is her proudest boast. Being home to the DuPont empire another. DuPont invented nylon, polymers and Teflon and is still the second-biggest chemical company in the world.
For most Americans the word Delaware conjures up the painting by Emanuel Leutze, ‘Washington Crossing the Delaware’. It commemorates an important moment in the colonial wars – or the Revolutionary Wars as Americans prefer to call them.
On Christmas Day 1776 Washington led his army, which had been twice defeated by the British, across the river and, making landfall in Pennsylvania, led them up to Trenton, New Jersey where they surprised the British and won a famous victory.
It is one of those fine historical moments of generalship on which reputations rest. General Wolfe scaling the Heights of Abraham to win Quebec, Horatius on the bridge, Hannibal passing through the Alps. Washington crossing the Delaware.
Unfortunately for Delaware none of this took place within the state itself. Washington crossed from New Jersey into Pennsylvania. Only the name of the river has any connection with the state of Delaware. He would today have taken the Delaware Memorial Bridge, the longest twin-span suspension bridge in the world.
A policeman I meet in Lewes where the ferry lands with considerably less hoopla and ice than Washington’s boats, tells me that ‘soft and slow’ is the Delaware way and now, as I rattle hard and fast up the main road towards the state capital Dover, I feel a bit of a heel for betraying the state philosophy quite so brutishly and insensitively.
I drive along, humming the words of the Perry Como song, ‘What did Della wear?’ I think about where exactly we are.
Delaware is in a kind of middle area. This is not yet the South, but nor am I any longer in New England, that much is clear. The countryside is beautiful and one or two trees still sport bright fall colours, but the architecture and the landscape have subtly changed. Less dramatic in terms of crags, valleys and hills, less clapboard and slate in terms of housing. Dutch barns, Dutch gabled houses, softly rounded hills.
Dover comes and goes, then I pass Wilmington, the biggest town in the state. I am already very nearly in Pennsylvania.
Well aware, Delaware, that I did not give you much attention. Another time.
KEY FACTS
Abbreviation:
PA
Nicknames:
The Keystone State, The Quaker State
Capital:
Harrisburg
Flower:
Mountain laurel
Tree:
Eastern hemlock
Bird:
Ruffed grouse
Toy:
Slinky (I’m not making this up)
Motto:
Virtue, Liberty and Independence
Well-known residents and natives:
Benjamin Franklin, Gertrude Stein, Wallace Stevens, John Updike, August Wilson, James A. Michener, Dean Koontz, John O’Hara, Thomas Eakins, Pearl S. Buck, Man Ray, Andy Warhol, Marilyn Horne, W.C. Fields, the Barrymores, David O. Selznick, Gene Kelly, Jayne Mansfield, Grace Kelly, Henry Mancini, Charles Bronson, Richard Gere, Kevin Bacon, Sharon Stone, Will Smith, M. Night Shyamalan, Perry Como, Bill Haley, Chubby Checker, Keith Jarrett, Hall and Oates, Christina Aguilera.
PENNSYLVANIA
‘There is something in the hope and idealism of this frustrating and contradictory nation that still makes my spirits soar.’
The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is the only state to be named after a person. Oh, apart from Washington of course. And New York, because that was named not after the city of York, but after James, Duke of York. Oh, and the Carolinas were named after King Charles I. And Virginia after Elizabeth, the Virgin Queen. And Maryland after Henrietta Maria, wife of Charles I … all right. All right. So actually lots of states have been named after people. Pennsylvania is just one. It gets its name from William Penn, the Quaker who was the founder and absolute controller of what was in its day the largest of the colonial states. Although in strict fact it was named after his father, Admiral Sir William Penn, who had lent Charles II a great deal of money and received in return the rights to the land west of the Delaware River on behalf of his son. The Admiral himself was not a Quaker (you cannot really have a Quaker with a military rank, it doesn’t compute) and did not like the fact that his son was, but William Jnr, a remarkable man who had braved much contempt, imprisonment and persecution for his pacifist, heterodox beliefs, used the family money, his father’s favour with the King and his own intelligence and natural leadership skills to carve out this great tract of land, which functioned independently under a democratic constitution long before