Savannah’s Book – and Clint Eastwood…

In my post of 25-Sept “Experience Savannah with a Song” I showed a picture of the monument erected in honor of Count Casimir Pulaski. This monument is located in Monterey Square. We decided to walk there as I wished to take pictures of the Mercer Mansion which borders it. I could not stop taking more pictures as we passed many lovely old houses.

Like the mansions, the pavement is old and we had to keep watching where we stepped.

We arrived in Monterey Square. It was laid out in 1847 and was named for one of the battles in the Mexican War. From the start, this square was noted for its unsurpassed elegance and lovely mansions.

I was going to take a picture of what I believed was a church, but after closer inspection saw that it was a synagogue. In fact Temple Mickve Israel is the only Gothic synagogue in America. It is home to the third oldest Jewish congregation in the country and contains the oldest Torah in the nation. It was the first synagogue established in the South.

Savannah’s first Jewish community was mostly composed of settlers from Spain and Portugal. Forty-two of them arrived in 1733 and organized their congregation, five months after the arrival of General Oglethorpe, founder of Savannah.




The present synagogue was built in 1876, after the inauguration of the Cathedral of St John the Baptist. As the cathedral, it was built in the Victorian neo-Gothic style and has pointed windows, pinnacles and stained glass windows. It was too late in the day to visit the synagogue but I found a picture of its interior in one of my books. I’ll also show the interior of the Cathedral - their interiors are similar in style.



We walked then around Monterey Square and came in front of the Mercer House. It was built in 1860 for Confederate General Hugh Mercer and completed after the War Between the States. The house is of Italianate design, almost 7000 square ft. with beautiful archways, eight cast-iron balconies, cast-iron window pediments and a wrought iron fence at the sidewalk. It has a garden in the back with a pond, a fountain and a carriage house. It occupies an entire trust lot (a full city block.)

Click on collage to enlarge, then on each picture to enlarge once more

General Hugh Mercer was the great grandfather of the talented and famous Johnny Mercer (1909-1976.) Johnny Mercer was a lyricist, composer and singer. He was the co-founder of Capital Records. Some of the songs he wrote or composed became well known, such as Days of Wine and Roses, That Old Black Magic, Moon River and many more. You can read more about him here where it says that “Mercer was often asked to write new lyrics to already popular tunes…. He was also asked to compose English lyrics to foreign songs, the most famous example being "Autumn Leaves", based on the French song "Les Feuilles Mortes" (Dead Leaves.) Below are the original French lyrics and Johnny Mercer’s version in English.

[Refrain] :
C'est une chanson qui nous ressemble.
Toi, tu m'aimais et je t'aimais
Et nous vivions tous deux ensemble,
Toi qui m'aimais, moi qui t'aimais.
Mais la vie sépare ceux qui s'aiment,
Tout doucement, sans faire de bruit
Et la mer efface sur le sable
Les pas des amants désunis.

This is Johnny’s version:

The falling leaves drift by the window
The autumn leaves of red and gold....
I see your lips, the summer kisses
The sunburned hands, I used to hold
Since you went away, the days grow long
And soon I'll hear ol' winter's song.
But I miss you most of all my darling,
When autumn leaves start to fall.

Les Feuilles Mortes is a 1945 song composed by Joseph Kosma and lyrics by poet Jacques Prevert. Yves Montand added it to his repertoire in 1948. Johnny Mercer translated the lyrics in 1949. Below is Montand’s later rendition. First Yves recites the beginning of the song : “Oh I would like so much that you remember, the happy days when we were friends, in those days life was beautiful, and the sun more brilliant than today. Dead Leaves are gathered with a shovel, you see.. I have not forgotten the memories and the regrets too…” Then he starts to sing:”And the wind of the north takes them away in the cold night of oblivion. You see I have not forgotten the song that you sang to me…”

Yves Montand singing the French song “Les Feuilles Mortes” (Autumn Leaves)

The Mercers never lived in the house. It had a series of owners and finally became a Shriner temple. By the time Jim Williams (1930-1990), an art dealer and restorer, purchased it, it had been vacant for 10 years and fallen into disrepair. Jim Williams a socialite and self-made business man also restored Savannah mansions – some say up to sixty houses, some say seventy. Williams completely restored the Mercer mansion to its original period and made it his own home. He furnished it with priceless paintings and gorgeous antiques such as Queen Alexandra’s silverware, Faberge objects and silver sets from one of the Grand Dukes of Russia.

Jim Williams was a bon vivant and every year he had a lavish black-tie Christmas party anxiously awaited by the cream of Savannah high society. He passed away at 59 years of age of pneumonia and heart failure after being tried four times for a 1989 murder committed in his home. The writer Jim Berendt spent seven years in Savannah and recounted the story of this murder in his 1994 bestseller “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.” This non-fiction book recounts, with great details, the events leading to this alleged killing. In 1997 Clint Eastwood directed a movie from this book. Below is my husband’s autographed first edition copy of the book:



The last time we were in Savannah, in November 2005, we did not go and see the Mercer House but my little pocket calendar shows that on Friday 16th of May 1997 we drove to Savannah early as my husband was attending a business meeting on the following Saturday. Being avid readers we usually visit local bookstores. As it happened, on that Friday we visited, for a long time, an antiquarian bookseller located on Monterey Square, close to the Mercer House. When we left the store we were surprised to see that the square was deserted but could see people on the far side. The first thing I noticed was a very nice looking vintage automobile. So I took its picture –

Then we came close to the Mercer House, heavily decorated for Christmas…in May. I told my husband to stand in front of the house so I could take his picture. My husband went by the gate but started to look funny and shake his head. I told him to stay put and he did. I took the picture then turned around and almost fell on top of Clint Eastwood who was patiently waiting behind me with his huge movie camera. I was so stunned that I just stood there until my husband took me away back to the sidewalk. When Clint Eastwood stopped filming and walked away I remembered my camera (film camera) and took a picture, but now Clint was at a distance. He is the little figure with a white tee-shirt in front of the Mercer House in the picture below.

The house, now named the Mercer-Williams House, is occupied by Dorothy Kingery, the sister of Jim Williams. She tried to sell the home for $8.95 million but there has been no buyer. She has opened the house for tours and the public can visit 4 or 5 rooms on the ground level. Many of Jim’s valuable furnishings are no longer there as they were sold by the Sotheby auction house for Ms Kingery. From an old book, I have several photos of the interior taken when Jim Williams lived in the house. (My scanner is defective and places a line on the pictures.)

Photographs by Van Jones Martin

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil was on the New York Times best seller list for over four years and has sold more than three million copies in 101 printings. It has been translated into twenty-three languages and in twenty-four foreign editions. This placed the Mercer House on the tourist circuit. Clint Eastwood’s movie made the house even more famous. “The Book” as it is called in Savannah has brought hundreds of thousands of tourists to visit this lovely city and Monterey Square. It is even on the Ghost Tour circuit as it is said that tourists from New York and some others too, claimed to have seen lights and festivities in the house on the nights Jim Williams used to have his famous party. (Jim Williams eerily collapsed and died on the exact spot on which he would have fallen if he had received the bullet intended for him that fateful night of the murder.) Below are two postcards I just found in my collection. The first one is of author Jim Berendt and Lady Chablis, a character in the book who appeared as herself in the movie.

Jim Berendt and Lady Chablis

A strange thing happened regarding the second postcard – the postcard below showing Jim Williams in his living room. I had already finished writing this post and was going to publish it the next day when I suddenly awoke at 4:00 am remembering that back in 1997 I had purchased a postcard of Jim Williams. The next morning I looked for quite a while and finally found the postcard, actually there were these 2 postcards. I then scanned them. Jim Williams ‘ postcard was slanted and I tried to straightened it. My computer would not work on it. I tried several times. Finally I decided to let it go and publish it crooked. But when I tried a last time it somehow straightened itself out…… I mean this is really what happened, it is not a joke.




We left the Mercer House and walked back toward Monterey Square. The light was fading. As we reached the live oaks covered with Spanish moss I turned around to take one last picture of the house…. and this is what I got…..

Savannah Lafayette Square and a wedding

In my last post we were starting our short stay in Savannah, our historical city in the south of Georgia. It is recognized internationally for its beauty – it is a classic city. We continued our stroll through its many elegant garden squares. We parked our car close to Lafayette Square.

Lafayette Square was laid out in 1837. It was named in honor of Gilbert du Motier, marquis de la Fayette (1757-1834), who had visited Savannah in 1825. The Congress of the United States had invited him to America. He came and toured twenty-four states between 1824 and 1825.

“1837 – So named in grateful recognition of the aid given the colonists by Gilbert Motier, Marquis de LaFayette, the friend of Washington”

Lafayette Square is bordered by stately houses as are most of the squares in Savannah. We wished to visit the Andrew Low House as I had read that it had beautiful antique interiors. William Makepeace Thackeray (1781-1815), the English novelist, was a good friend of Andrew Low who invited him to Savannah several times. The desk where Thackeray worked is in one of the bedrooms. This house was built in 1849 by Andrew Low, a Scot by birth, who had come to Savannah in 1830 to join his uncle. Andrew Low became one of the wealthiest men in the British Empire. He remained a British subject; he also had a house in Liverpool. He died in 1886 several months before his only son, Willie, married Juliette Gordon. Juliette Gordon Low founded the Girls Scouts of the USA in March 1912 in the Reception Room of this house.

Andrew Low House facing Lafayette square

As we came closer to the house we could see a small sign on the door. The garden gate was opened so we went in. The sign said “closed during renovations.” Disappointment! I walked around the well maintained garden and took some pictures. The two sitting lions by the front stairs seemed to sympathize with me.

Click on pictures to enlarge them

In a book I had seen the front parlor of the Low’s house and other rooms. At least that gave me an idea of the furnishings – see below.

We went back into the park to sit under the giant oaks. We could see another mansion on our left.

This was the Hamilton-Turner house. It was built in 1873 for a former Savannah mayor at the exorbitant (at that time) price of $100,000. In 1883 the house had electricity, the first house in Savannah. It used to be open to the public for guided tours but it is now a luxury bed and breakfast. Both Andrew Low’s house and Hamilton-Turner B&B are reported to be haunted.

In the center of Lafayette Square is a lovely fountain which was erected to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the founding of the Georgia colony. It was donated to the city in 1984 by the Colonial Dames of Georgia. The last time I saw this fountain was in November 2005 during the marriage of younger daughter. I remember it fondly as many lovely pictures of the wedding party were taken there – all of them now in a nice album. I took some quick snapshots with my old film camera at the time and will show them below.




This time I took many pictures of the fountain, from many directions and close up. The weather was warm. In November, at the time of the wedding, it was quite cool, although dear daughter said she did not feel cold. Most of the photos were of family members, not the fountain alone.



As I mentioned in my last post – when I was listening to Ray Charles in Paris I did not know that I would live in Georgia and that one of my daughters would be married in the Savannah Cathedral. Daughter and her fiancé were attending the Medical College of Georgia in Augusta, which is about the same distance to Atlanta or to Savannah.

After I took all the fountain pictures we walked toward the cathedral but I still stopped looking down for flowers in the square then looking up toward the live oaks.

Just a few steps and we were close to the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist. It is very large. I have a vintage postcard of the cathedral – it looks about the same as now.

Vintage postcard of the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist, Savannah (circa 1902)

Shortly before the end of the 18th century French Catholic émigrés established the Congrégation de Saint Jean-Baptiste, Savannah’s first parish, in a small church on Liberty Square. The congregation grew and in 1876 the present cathedral was inaugurated near Lafayette Square.

The cathedral is of French Gothic style with imposing nave and transepts. Groined arches are supported by columns. The altar is crafted of Italian marble. Stained glass windows were installed in 1904. They were made by the Innsbruck Glassmakers in the Austrian Tyrol.

I enjoy visiting historical religious buildings, not to worship, but for their aesthetic and their architecture – they are good places for reflection, not in a religious sense, but in a meditative way. When in France I like to attend classical concerts given in churches as they have good acoustics and beautiful organs. But I usually am shy about going inside them unless I can see striking stained glass windows. Below is St John the Baptist Cathedral organ.

Here are pictures of the interior of the cathedral which I took on our last visit.

Below is the cathedral as I took it in November 2005 after the rehearsal for the wedding. The lighting is different because it was at night.

I was pleased that there was a rehearsal for daughter’s upcoming wedding because, since we are not Catholic, I hoped that we would not make any mistake during the ceremony. There were 200 guests, only about 20 from our side of the family and the rest from the groom’s side. Their guests came from various US states, Canada, Europe and even from the state of Kerala, India. It was lovely to view all the beautiful silk saris in the decorated cathedral. For the rehearsal dinner we went to the Lady and Sons, Paula Deen’s restaurant. I did not know much about her then (as I don’t watch much television.)

Paula Deen, Savannah restauranteur (courtesy of Food Network.)

The food was of the Southern “comfort” type. We had a reserved room and went to the buffet to help ourselves. I think there were the usual fried chicken, creamed potatoes, collard greens, yams, lima beans, macaroni and cheese, rice and some sweet dessert. Here is the picture I took of one of the buffet tables.

This time we went back to the Lady and Sons, not to eat (because you have to go there early in the morning to queue up to be assigned seating times for later in the day) but to have a look. The restaurant was the same but, adjacent to it, was now a gift store called Paula Deen Store. The store was stocked with many gourmet cooking items, pots and pans, a great variety of Paula’s cookbooks and magazines.

In 2005 after the wedding my husband had given me a cookbook from Paula Deen’s called “Paula Deen and Friends. Living it up. Southern Style.” I read her story, which is very compelling. Divorced, she moved from Albany, GA., to Savannah with her two sons and $200. She had a serious case of agoraphobia and the first two months there she stayed home all the time, only cooked. In 1989 with her sons’ help she started a small business. She cooked and they delivered the food to office workers. The business grew so she started “The Lady” - a restaurant in a local hotel. Her Southern Plantation cuisine caught on. In 1996 she was able to open her restaurant “The Lady and Sons” in the Savannah Historic District downtown. She continued to serve her home-cooked southern comfort food with her sons Jamie and Bobbie’s help. You can see some of her recipes here.

Looking at all these cookbooks and gourmets food in the store pantry made us hungry. We decided not to eat Southern food this time but to sample some traditional English pub food at Churchill’s Pub and Restaurant, which is British owned and operated. But we’ll talk about this meal in a future post.

“I stood agog in Lafayette Square in Savannah, amid brick paths, trickling fountains and dark trees hung with Spanish moss. Before me rose up a cathedral of linen-fresh whiteness with twin Gothic spires, and around it stood 200-year-old houses of weathered brick, with hurricane shutters that clearly were still used. I did not know that such perfection existed in America.” - Bill Bryson, American author born in 1951

Experience Savannah with a song of Georgia

More posts on Norway will be coming in the future but the roads have led us back to Georgia, to Savannah to be precise. We have been to Savannah several times and never tire of visiting this gracious city near the Atlantic Coast. On the picture below Savannah is near the seal of Georgia.



Savannah is a historic city of the Old South visited by numerous tourists. It was founded in 1733 by General James Edward Oglethorpe (1696-1785), a Member of Britain’s Parliament and head of the Prison Reform Committee. He wished to create a humanitarian colony and in November 1732 Oglethorpe and 114 settlers voyaged to Georgia. Landing at Yamacraw Bluff, above the Savannah River, on 12 February 1733 his party was greeted by Tomo-Chi-Chi, chief of the Yamacraw Indians. Savannah and the 13th colony, Georgia, were founded on that date.

Postcard showing the Landing of General Oglethorpe and meeting with Tomo-chi-chi, painted by William Verelst (from Georgia Info site)

Tomo-chi-chi became a friend of General Oglethorpe and helped him settle the area in peace. Thus the colony avoided much of the warfare that was common during the establishment of early American colonies. The following year when Tomo-chi-chi was 84, he went back to England with his wife Senauki, Oglethorpe and a small delegation of tribesmen.

Tomo-chi-chi meeting with the Trustees Common Council in 1734, painted by William Verelst (courtesy Winterthur Museum)

Tomo-chi-chi was handsome and very tall, close to 7 feet (almost 2 m.)

Painting of Tomo-chi-chi with his nephew Toonahowi, by Verelst

He was in his early nineties when he died in 1739 and requested that his body be buried in Savannah. He was buried with an elaborate funeral in Wright’s Square.

Click on picture to enlarge

We wandered around the squares which are all planted with large shady trees dripping with Spanish moss. Each square, about 1 acre (0.405 hectare), is different with its own character, landscaping and history. We were grateful that Oglethorpe planned these squares close to each other so we could rest under the cool shade of the tall live oaks.

There are six Historic Neighborhoods with 22 squares remaining out of the original 24. This downtown area is the largest National Historic Landmark District in the United States. These park-like squares are bordered by magnificent antebellum mansions, charming town homes, restored cottages, antiques churches and many fountains.

We had wonderful weather while in Savannah, warm but not humid or as warm as in Atlanta. It was difficult to take photographs because of the harsh light and heavy shadows, plus wires and cars. I would be looking up to watch the sun rays playing through the old huge branches and see the breeze stirring the moss hanging from the live oak trees.

Looking down was good too as I did not want to slip on uneven cobblestones moved up from the large roots of the old trees.

Fortunately each landscaped square had benches around the central monument or fountain. They invited us to rest our tired feet. We took advantage of them.

Being September and during the week there were few people walking. Most of the tourists were in tour buses or trolleys. We would hear the “clippity-clop” of horse-drawn carriages. Soon we would see them stop close by and the tour guide give information on the homes and squares.

Later on in the evening we saw many joggers, people walking their dogs or just strolling by. We went up and down Bull Street which is the dividing line between east and west in the Historical District. I found a couple of vintage postcards in my collection showing Bull Street in day time and night time. They are not dated but by the look of the cars, it could be the 30s or early 40s.




The little bird below flew to a bush across from my bench and stood there looking at me, so I took its picture.

We strolled to another square, Monterey Square, with a tall monument in its center honoring Count Pulaski. A bas relief at the base shows Casimir Pulaski mortally wounded in 1779 at the Battle of Savannah against the British. A Polish nobleman he immigrated to the colonies as a soldier of fortune. He saved the life of George Washington during the revolutionary war and became a general. Count Pulaski is one of seven people to be awarded honorary US citizenship.

Click to enlarge and click again on each picture to bigify.

We passed by a young man, playing the guitar, and kept strolling, looking at lovely historical structures.

Some of the houses had markers indicating who had inhabited them, like the one where novelist Mary Flannery O’Connor grew up – see below.

Maybe because I was born in Paris and old historical buildings were surrounding me I miss them now so enjoy walking around old edifices, statues and squares – and seating on benches just looking at people go by. This is something not easily done in modern USA with all its freeways and tall buildings. As a teenager I grew up, close to Paris, in a house where we had a cellar which had been part of a leper colony in the Middle Ages (that’s old!) It was a great place to keep wine at the right temperature.

Do not forget to click on collage then click again on each pictures to bigify

In the few days we were in Savannah I took over 700 pictures. I’ll have several posts with collages to give a feeling for this lovely city and its hundred year old magnolia trees, majestic live oaks dripping with Spanish moss and tall Palmetto palms.

Please do click on the collage and each picture for better clarity. It is difficult to see with all the big trees.

The streets and the avenues were bordered by large trees, too, not just in the squares.

It must be very romantic having a walk with your sweetie as moonlight seeps through the live oaks. Wasn’t that what Ray Charles sang? No, it was moonlight through the pines I think. I worked with a man whose last name was Robinson, like Ray Charles (Robinson) and was a distant cousin. He told me Ray Charles was born in Albany, Georgia. Last Thursday, 23 September, would have been Ray’s 80th birthday. He was born on 23 September 1930 and unfortunately passed away on 10 June 2004. I was a fan of his for decades. When I was a teenager I bought all the 45 vinyl records I could afford. I still have them, all five of them. I bought them in 1959 and 1960. I turned one around so you could see that he won a record prize in 1958 in France. Here they are below:

It was hard for me to understand some of the lyrics but I played the records again and again until I knew all the words. Little did I know, as I was listening to him in Paris, that many years ahead I would end up living in Georgia, the state where he was born. In 1979 the Georgia State General Assembly adopted one of his hits “Georgia on my mind” as the state song. From 1997 through 2009 the Georgia license plates used the title of the song. The Georgia’s Welcome signs say “Welcome. We’re glad Georgia’s on your mind.” It is truly one of the greatest songs of all time.

Ray Charles (1930-2004)

In 1996, for the Summer Olympics Games in Atlanta, my daughter and I went early in the afternoon to Centennial Olympic Park and stood there waiting for Ray Charles who was going to sing. We were in front and I took many pictures of his great performance, but with my old film camera.

(pictures  Public Domain)

“Georgia, Georgia,
The whole day through
Just an old sweet song
Keeps Georgia on my mind

I said Georgia
Oh Georgia
A song of you
Comes as sweet and clear
As moonlight through the pines

Other arms reach out to me
Other eyes smile tenderly
Still in peaceful dreams I see
The road leads back to you….”