Fine Wine
an instant bond with a Yankee tourist. ‘You
guys are terrific,’ he said (he might have
meant Savannahians in general). ‘If you
ever got over your shyness you’d be really
great!’ They all roared.
The historic centre is all brick sidewalks
and beautifully restored houses amid green-
ery, not to mention lots of mid-20th-century
buildings looking Hopperesque and iconic
at corners. I visited the Owens-Thomas
House and looked at 18th- and 19th- century
American paintings in the Telfair Academy.
On Bull Street there is a good indepen-
dent bookshop, E. Shaver, and Alex Raskin
Antiques, a huge old four-storey house liter-
ally filled to the rafters with furniture. Stu-
dents trip about the streets in sweatshirts
marked SCAD — the Savannah College
of Art and Design, which has a gallery and
shop. In the sweet shops of River Street, you
can sample the pecan pralines on repeat. It
is all walkable like a small European city.
But this is still America — still the Deep
South. On my last morning I was having
a pleasant wander in the Wright Square
Antiques Market, perusing Grateful Dead
merchandise and 1950s posters advertising
pineapple ice cream when I rounded the cor-
ner and arrived at a large cabinet proudly
housing copies of Mein Kampf, SS daggers
and Nazi insignia. Spooky stuff.S
avannah GA is supposed to have lots
of ghosts, but I’d forgotten that. It was
an April morning and sunlight filtered
through the Spanish moss. As I arrived at
Wright Square, someone fell into step with
me and we crossed the road together. At
the other side I glanced to see who it was.
No one. Huh.
This is the Ghost Coast and there is an
industry around it, including night-time
tours in a black trolley bus that end in a visit
to Savannah’s most haunted residence, the
gothic Sorrel-Weed House. At dusk you pass
groups of people being told unsettling sto-
ries — I caught a snippet about a cat that
vanishes into thin air. One evening a friend-
ly grey shadow wound itself about my shins.
Was it an apparition?
The city is also haunted by flamboyant
eccentrics, as chronicled in John Berendt’s
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil,
and by the wonderful Edgar Oliver. A chap
may be seen out walking a giant tortoise on
a lead. When I paused in one of the squares,
a Donald Sutherland type waved from the
next bench and, after a southern nicety,
moved to mine. The tales began. He was
descended from a Confederate general, he
said; had just moved back here after many
years in Britain running Formula 1. He had
gone to Oxford, where he was great friendswith a character called Bucky Mountbatten.
He had been ravished by a famous actress
in an English stately home. Another of his
close Oxford circle was ‘Saddam’s son, I
can’t remember his name’.
Savannah is one big neighbourhood
where everyone knows each other. It might
be exhausting to live here, but it’s friendly to
visit. Go into any bar in mid-afternoon and
you’ll find a party. Outside Leopolds, the ice
cream parlour, a chatty local couple formedIconic: One of the city’s beautifully restored housesNOTES ON ...
Savannah
By Victoria Lane
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