Bird Girl (1936), Telfair Academy Museum, Savannah
By all accounts, it was “the book” and Bird Girl that put the Bonaventure Cemetery and, indeed, Savannah on the tourist shortlist. The statue is now in a sort of protective custody in a museum because it had suffered from vandalism when still in the cemetery and the owners of the family plot wanted to reestablish some level of privacy for their burial plot.
The Mercer-Williams House. See also, our Savannah posting.
”The book” is, of course, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, the 1994 non-fiction novel dealing with the four murder trials of Jim Williams (highly successful art dealer and house restorer) and the colorful lives of the citizens of this good city. Bird Girl was on the cover and has become an icon of salacious creepiness.
Gracie died young and was sculpted from a photo taken just before her death, but she became a good luck charm for locals. Her celebrity has confined her behind a high wrought iron fence and cemetery workers remove tributes daily.Victorians were terrified of being buried alive and so installed pull cords in coffins linked to bells above ground. The writer, teacher, editor who established the reputation of Emily Dickinson, Poet Laureate, friend of Eliot and Pound, who split his time in later years between Brewster on Cape Cod and Savannah, left instructions that his tombstone should be a bench for people to sit and pass some time (some relate “and to have a martini”). On the bench: “Cosmos Mariner – Destination Unknown. Give my love to the world.” This site was, of course, also featured in “the book.”Another bench in Bonaventure marks the grave of Johnny Mercer, legendary composer of hit after hit and a cofounder of Capitol Records, along with Nat King Cole and Frank Sinatra.
