Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (58 page)

I, too, had become enchanted by Savannah. But after having lived there for eight years, off and on, I had come to understand something of its self-imposed estrangement from the outside world. Pride was part of it. Indifference was too, and so was arrogance. But underneath all that, Savannah had only one motive:
to preserve a way of life it believed to be under siege from all sides. It was for this reason that Savannah had discouraged Prudential from establishing its regional headquarters in the city in the 1950s (and why Prudential ended up in Jacksonville instead). It was why Savannah had given Gian Carlo Menotti’s Spoleto U.S.A. Festival the cold shoulder in the 1970s (and why the festival finally settled in Charleston). Savannah was not much interested in what went on outside Savannah. It had little enthusiasm for the popular culture, as headline entertainers like Eric Clapton, Sting, George Carlin, and Gladys Knight and the Pips discovered when they brought their acts to Savannah and found themselves playing to half-empty auditoriums.

Savannah spurned all suitors—urban developers with grandiose plans and individuals (the “Gucci carpetbaggers,” as Mary Harty called them) who moved to Savannah and immediately began suggesting ways of improving the place. Savannah resisted every one of them as if they had been General William Tecumseh Sherman all over again. Sometimes that meant throwing up bureaucratic roadblocks; at other times it meant telling tourists only what was good for them to know. Savannah was invariably gracious to strangers, but it was immune to their charms. It wanted nothing so much as to be left alone.

Time and again, I was reminded of what Mary Harty had told me on my first day in town: “We happen to like things just the way they are!” I had no idea how deeply that sentiment ran until a revealing incident occurred late in my stay. The Chamber of Commerce hired an outside team of urban consultants to study Savannah’s economic and social problems. When the consultants submitted their final report, they appended a note saying that in the course of their research they had asked twenty prominent Sa-vannahians where they thought the city should be in the next five, ten, and fifteen years. None of them had ever given the matter any thought.

For me, Savannah’s resistance to change was its saving grace. The city looked inward, sealed off from the noises and distractions of the world at large. It
grew
inward, too, and in such a
way that its people flourished like hothouse plants tended by an indulgent gardener. The ordinary became extraordinary. Eccentrics thrived. Every nuance and quirk of personality achieved greater brilliance in that lush enclosure than would have been possible anywhere else in the world.

All the characters in this book are real, but it bears mentioning that I have used pseudonyms for a number of them in order to protect their privacy. Though this is a work of nonfiction, I have taken certain storytelling liberties, particularly having to do with the timing of events. Where the narrative strays from strict nonfiction, my intention has been to remain faithful to the characters and to the essential drift of events as they really happened.

I owe a great debt of thanks to several dozen Savannahians who appear as characters in this book, some under their own names, some under pseudonyms.

In addition, a number of people in Savannah, who are not necessarily portrayed in these pages, were helpful to me in various ways: Mary B. Blun, John Aubrey Brown, Peter and Gail Crawford, Mrs. Garrard Haines, Walter and Connie Hartridge, Jack Kieffer, Mary Jane Pedrick, and Ronald J. Strahan.

Two people have won my everlasting affection and gratitude for their energy and enthusiasm in guiding this book into finished form: my agent, Suzanne Gluck, and my editor, Ann Godoff.

For critical readings of the manuscript and other forms of advice and counsel, I am also grateful to Stephen Brewer, Rachel Gallagher, Linda Hyman, Joan Kramer, Russell and Mildred Lynes, Carolyn Marsh, Alice K. Turner, and Hiram Williams.

Of all those who helped me, however, no one took a greater interest, nor followed the progress of this book more closely, than Bruce Kelly. A Georgian, a landscape architect of extraordinary genius, and a true friend, it was he who suggested I write this book in the first place and who, more than anyone else, remained supportive and encouraging throughout the long years I took to do it.