After Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil Read Online Free PDF Page A

12:30 PM. Jim’s solution to this alcohol access problem was to have his gay friends in for drinks and conversation.
     

Chapter 8: The High Life
     
    In the 1970s, Jim’s many years of hard work started to pay off. Mercer House, purchased in 1969, had been transformed into an aristocratic showplace. His antiques business was thriving, and—perhaps most importantly—his place in Savannah society continued to rise.
     
    Of the scores of homes Jim restored during his career, Mercer House at 429 Bull Street was his greatest triumph. Ironically, Mercer House was never the home of any members of the Mercer family, including songwriter Johnny Mercer. Construction of General Hugh W. Mercer’s house was started in 1860, but was not completed until almost 10 years later. The house had various owners over the years. At one time, it was the home of the Savannah Shriners Alee Temple. In 1967, the Historic Savannah Foundation bought the house to prevent it from being torn down. The property, which included the main house, a carriage house and gardens, took up the entire block from Bull Street on Monterey Square to Whitaker between West Gordon and West Wayne. Two years later, Jim bought the house, which was in unfortunate shape, but still structurally sound, and spent the next two years restoring it. In the upstairs ballroom, Jim installed the huge pipe organ that he had bought years earlier from the Masonic temple. The basement became the workshop for Jim’s antique restoration business. Under the management of gifted artist and shopkeeper Barry Thomas, Jim’s craftsmen restored the fruits of his frequent antiques-buying trips abroad.
     

     
    Mercer House
photo by Jeanne Papy
     
    According to his friend Joe, the antiques business was much more profitable to Jim than restoring historic homes. His largest clients were from out of town: DuPonts, Rockefellers, Kemper Insurance executives, and even Jacqueline Onassis. Over time, he had built up such an exclusive group of buyers for his antiques that the house and shop were only opened for rich clients, who would fly in on buying expeditions. For example, Jim would buy items like Napoleon’s carriage crest, Chinese porcelain, Flemish tapestries, a leather desk folio made for Czar Nicholas II, and elaborate treasures that the House of Fabergé had crafted for the Russian czars. Jacqueline Onassis offered Jim $90,000 for a tiny green jade Fabergé box with rubies and diamonds, but he refused. Once, on a trip to Caribbean island of Grenada, Jim was offered a magnificent antique hand-carved four-poster bed carved with a nutmeg design for a price of $200. At Jim’s request, the man came up with almost 20 similar carved beds priced between $200-$300, each for Jim to export and sell at a huge profit.
     
    The story of Mercer House and its treasures is inextricably wound up in the famous Christmas parties Jim gave. Usually, there were two parties: One for the doctors, lawyers, merchant chiefs and society friends, and one for Jim’s bachelor friends, including antiques dealers and other design professionals, salon owners and various gay and bisexual friends. They were elaborate affairs with excellent Low Country food and drinks, gorgeous flower arrangements, engaging entertainment and perfect southern hospitality. These parties were the big Savannah social events of the year.
     
    Joe went with Jim on one of his trips to London for a Fabergé auction and then to Geneva. They flew first class and stayed at the Ritz. Jim had a lot of friends in Europe. At night, they would be picked up in a Bentley and driven to the exclusive Crockfords Club, where they could gamble in a casino upstairs.
     

     
    Crockfords Club. London
photo by Debonairechap
     
    According to Joe, Jim was “Hitler crazy.” He had Nazi guns, knives, flags and paraphernalia everywhere. Once, when a film company producing a Civil War movie was creating a nuisance in Monterey Square, Jim hung a Nazi flag out of a Mercer House