Thanks to the success of the 1994 best-seller “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil,” the Bird Girl statue at Savannah’s Bonaventure Cemetery gained national fame. And fame, as you know, can be both a blessing and a curse.
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The “Bird Girl” was created in 1936 by Sylvia Shaw Judson, a sculptor in Lake Forest, Illinois. A Massachusetts family had commissioned the piece for use as a garden sculpture.
Judson used an eight-year-old girl as the model. The four-foot bronze statue depicts a demure female figure in a simple dress, head tilted, elbows at her side. She holds two bowls that serve nicely as bird feeders.
Four statues were cast. One went to the Massachusetts family. Two others went to buyers in Washington, D.C. and Lake Forest.
The fourth was purchased by the Trosdal family of Savannah for use at the family plot at Bonaventure Cemetery. They called the statue “Little Wendy.”
In a cemetery filled with ornate Victorian statuary, Little Wendy was simple and modern, and she raised eyebrows among some traditionalists.
But she was undeniably striking, elegant, and appropriate for the serene setting at Bonaventure. She soon took her place as one of the many sculptures at the cemetery that residents admired and proudly showed off to visitors.
For five decades, the statue remained a familiar fixture at the cemetery. When I was growing up, the Bird Girl was a must-see when we went to Bonaventure. To me, she was no less a Savannah landmark than the beach, the downtown squares, and the seafood restaurants.
Then “The Book” was published.
In 1993, Savannah photographer Jack Leigh was hired to create the cover art for Berendt’s novel. Berendt suggested that Leigh look for a suitable subject at Bonaventure.
Late on his second day of searching, near dusk, Leigh came upon the Bird Girl at the Trosdal family plot. He took a photograph in the fading light.
Back at his studio, he set about editing the photo. He manipulated the contrast to suggest a moonlit night and accentuated the halo of light around the statue’s head. This is the result.
The inscription on the footstone, a verse often used at graveside, is from Second Corinthians: We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the lord.
Midnight-mania had an immediate impact on Bonaventure, Tourism surged. Visitors came in great numbers, individually and in tours, to see the Bird Girl.
At first, the Trosdal family was flattered by the attention. But excess soon reared its ugly head. As the crowds grew, heavy foot traffic began to damage the ground and the vegetation.
At the request of a worried Trosdal family, the cemetery management removed the location of the plot from the public registry. Tourists found it anyway.
Finally, after several lowlifes chipped off pieces of the Bird Girl’s base for souvenirs, the Trosdal family removed the statue from Bonaventure.
Today, the Bird Girl resides on the third floor landing at the Telfair Museum of Art in downtown Savannah. She is under the protection of a guard seated nearby whose job is to prevent anyone from touching the statue or taking pictures.
It’s a sad ending to those of us who remember the Bird Girl when she was still at Bonaventure, at home among the oaks and moss and azaleas and gravestones.
The view down Bonaventure Way toward the Wilmington River.
Bonaventure Cemetery is an enchanting place. It occupies the site of Bonaventure Plantation, a 600-acre estate founded in 1762. During the Revolutionary War, the plantation was confiscated from its owner, a British loyalist, and sold off in pieces.
In 1869, the plantation’s old family burial site was expanded under the name Evergreen Cemetery. The City of Savannah purchased it in 1907, made it public, and restored the name Bonaventure.
In 1867, naturalist John Muir camped at the cemetery for six nights while waiting on money from home. He proclaimed Bonaventure “one of the most impressive assemblages of animal and plant creatures” he’d ever seen.
“I gazed awe-struck as one new-arrived from another world,” he wrote. “The rippling of living waters, the song of birds, the joyous confidence of flowers, the calm, the undisturbable grandeur of the oaks, mark this place of graves as one of the Lord’s most favored abodes of life and light.”
My very thoughts.
The Bird Girl was whisked away from Bonaventure for her own protection, but plenty of exquisite statues are still there. Here are some of them.
The “broken angel” at the Taliaferro family plot.
The pensive angel contemplating a dove.
The weeping angel.
The “shell girl,” a beautiful marble angel at the Baldwin family plot. My personal favorite.
Gracie Watson died of pneumonia in 1889 at age six. The statue’s nose was chipped in the 1940s when a little boy hit it with a rock.
This is the grave of Corinne Lawton, who died in 1877 at age 31. According to legend, she was forbidden to marry her true love, who was beneath her station; then, on the eve of an arranged marriage, she threw herself into the Wilmington River. Not so. Documents proved that she died in bed at home after a long illness.
Sylvia Shaw Judson never saw her Bird Girl sculpture achieve fame. She died in 1978, and her daughter inherited the copyright to the statue.
The daughter spent years fighting copyright infringement, notably the marketing of cheap Bird Girl replicas. After the daughter’s death in 2006, the copyright passed to one of the granddaughters.
Some of the knockoffs are truly awful. More about that in my next post.
Springtime at Bonaventure.
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