Kenneth Lewis Roberts

“ It is my fixed belief that if old M’sieu Marguery, who invented Filet of Sole Marguery, could have been led into the dining-room of the Everglades Club and placed where he could look out through the palms to the placid waters of Lake Worth, and handed a platter of Pompano Meuniere—it is my fixed belief, I say, that old M’sieu Marguery would have put his head down in his hands and cried like a child to think that he could have doubled his fortune if he could have started serving Pompano that way thirty years ago. ”

“ Other real-estate firms constantly carry on selling campaigns that strongly resemble—in{145} noise, at least—the return of the Twenty-seventh Division from the War. They resort to brass bands, numbers of sight-seeing automobiles, silver-tongued orators to cajole the crowd, and advertisements that inflame the acquisitive spirit of every beholder. When newcomers see a monster parade of automobiles, headed by a blaring band, swinging through the streets of Miami, they usually think, in their innocence, that a three-ring circus has come to town. ”

“ Over everything there is an odor of money. Every breeze that blows is freighted with its rich, fragrant musky smell; and every person that one encounters on the street or in a hotel lobby seems to be about to spend a lot of it or to have just finished spending a lot of it. Some people seem to like the odor and some don’t seem to care so much for it. Some, in fact, seem from their expressions to think that this money-odor has a great deal in common with smoldering rubber or asafetida.{16}
The impression that Palm Beach is bound to make on any newcomer is one of general discomfort. ”

“ Not content with building self-sustaining sign-boards which protrude gauntly and repulsively from the flat landscape and convince the newcomer that he is approaching a slum-city, they have nailed countless numbers of huge yellow monstrosities to the palms and fruit-trees along the highways—signs that have no influence on any one except the lover of beauty, and which only serve to fill him with contempt for people who can permit the few natural beauties of their surroundings to be so befouled. ”

“ CHAPTER I OF THE ENTHUSIASM OF ALL GROWING THINGS IN FLORIDA—OF PAW-PAWS AND PROSPECTUSES AND PERFECT THIRTY-FOURS—OF FIENDS IN HUMAN SHAPE—AND OF THE WATCHFULNESS OF THE NATIVES FOR INSULTS
Everything grows in Florida. That is to say, everything grows in Florida that Florida people want to grow. That is Florida’s specialty: growing. Occasionally a few things get out of hand and indulge in some over-enthusiastic growing when Florida people wish that they wouldn’t; but for the most part Florida is proud of the remarkable growths that take place within her boundaries. ”

“ With five or six auctions being held each day, and with large numbers of unattractive lots being offered to stolid middle-westerners who have come more for the free lunch and the automobile ride than for the real-estate, it is inevitable that some lots will go for about one dollar and seventy-five cents if everything is left in the hands of the legitimate prospects. Common sense tells us that no real-estate dealer could stand such a blow without emitting raucous shrieks of pain, no matter how persuasively and convincingly he may chatter about absolute auctions. ”

“ On side-streets, one frequently sees the almost forgotten spectacle of a frail débutante learning to ride. On the dance floor she would float along as lightly as a tuft of thistledown. On a bicycle she wabbles heavily and helplessly from side to side, collapsing at intervals against her instructor with all the crushing weight of a California Redwood.
The wheel-chair is the favorite Palm Beach method of locomotion, and it is the only form of exercise ever taken by many Palm Beach visitors. ”

“ Each Florida city or resort is violently jealous of every other resort or city. The residents of Palm Beach speak sneeringly of Miami as being a bit plebeian. The residents of Miami speak compassionately of Palm Beach, as young and pretty girls speak of decaying beauty. St. Petersburg and Tampa and Miami have little of a favorable nature to say concerning one another. They only unite to resist attacks from resorts outside the state, or to say a few tart words about California. ”

“ At Palm Beach one has the feeling that he is breathing the very same air that the world’s greatest bankers and society people are breathing, whereas over in West Palm Beach one doesn’t know or care who has been breathing the air. ”

“ Palm Beach is not exactly what one would call a Prude’s Paradise, but a prude can feel more at ease on the beach at Palm Beach than at any other resort in Florida. This is due to the fact that women are not allowed to appear on the beach with any portion of the leg uncovered. A policeman is stationed on the beach to see that this rule is enforced, and there is a great rejoicing among all the local prudes, who—like all prudes throughout the world—see evil where there is none, and pass blindly by the evils that every one except themselves can see. ”

“ A striking effect is frequently obtained by the wearers of these two-fifths-piece bathing suits when they stroll out on the beach in short, hip-length capes which hang open negligently at the throat. One sees nothing below the cape but several square yards of flesh, and nothing above the cape but several square feet of flesh. It is a sight that gives one pause. When one sees it for the first time, he feels that he ought to hunt up a life-saver sometime later in the day and ask him to go and speak to the young woman and tell her that she has come out without her two-fifths-piece bathing suit. ”

“ He wasn’t particularly struck with Florida land, but he liked the Florida air. Looking at Florida land with the eye of an Ohio farmer, he felt that he wouldn’t particularly care to pay much more than a nickel an acre for most of it. He met up with a lot of Michigan and Ohio farmers along the road, and they felt the same way about it. Still, it was kind of restful and soothing to look at, and the sun and the air more than made up for the drawbacks of the land. The sun was nicer just to sit in than the Ohio sun, and there was more of it. ”

“ These salesmen are large, handsome men for the most part, strikingly dressed in white trousers, pearl gray sack coats, white shoes, white belts, white neckties and straw hats tilted knowingly toward the right ear. If one stops for a moment to admire a window display which shows automobiles, diamonds and tax-exempt bonds sprouting from the super-fertile soil of land that is on sale within at one thousand dollars an acre, one of the salesmen is very apt to come up behind him and tempt him with honeyed words. It is almost futile to struggle against these salesmen. ”

“ Of late years, the American people have been growing increasingly proficient at time-killing. Forty years ago, the average American, confronted with a little extra time, didn’t know what to do with it. Usually he took it into the front parlor and sat around on haircloth furniture with it, and became so sick of it that he never wanted to see its face again. If he felt within him the primitive urge to take it somewhere and kill it, he hesitated to do so because the roads were bad, automobiles hadn’t been invented, and the South was only regarded as the place where the Civil War started. ”

“ When the bathing hour has passed into history, the merry bathers and clothes-wearers sally forth in search of lunch. The ordinary run of Palm Beach visitors eat their lunch at their hotels. This act almost automatically stamps them as Buckwheats, or Three Day Suckers, or people who aren’t Smart. A Buckwheat is a coarse, rude, barbaric person who is addicted to the secret and loathsome vices of eating buckwheat cakes for breakfast and not spending money recklessly.
A Three Day Sucker is a person who only stays a few days at Palm Beach. As a time-killer he is not regarded with any respect. ”

“ Several hotels have been built, the largest of which—the Flamingo—looks exactly like a grain elevator and has the reputation of being the most expensive winter resort hotel in the world. As a matter of fact, it is no more expensive than the big Palm Beach hotels—although that is sufficiently expensive to send the cold shivers{179} up and down the spine of the person who hasn’t become thoroughly hardened to money-spending. Two people can have a nice room with bath and all the food they want—in reason—for forty dollars a day. ”

“ People dawdle along the palm-fringed avenues and stare at one another blankly and questioningly. People sit self-consciously in wheel-chairs and look searchingly at people in other wheel-chairs. Bicyclists wheel languidly along the white roads and gaze intently at every one. ”

“ Every little while the photographers find some one who is prominent and pretty without being too much overweight and overdressed; and when they do, they coax her out to an unoccupied section of beach and arrange her in a position of unstudied ease and graceful carelessness, and shoot half a dozen pictures of her admiring the distant horizon with a gay, unaffected, girlish laugh. ”

“ The business of being smart and appearing at the proper places at the proper hour is merely the accepted method of killing time with many Palm Beachers; but with many others it is as serious as the death of a near relative. Palm Beach is well sprinkled with people who are determined to break into New York society, and who have selected Palm Beach as the place to drive the entering wedge because results can be obtained there with greater speed, with less expense and with more noise than in any other section of the country. ”

“ CHAPTER VIII OF THE MARVELOUS SITTING ABILITY OF THE TIN-CANNERS—OF THE PARKS IN WHICH THEY SIT—OF THE HORSESHOE BUGS AND THE CHECKER AND DOMINO BEETLES—OF THE DELICATE MOVEMENTS OF A CELEBRATED HORSESHOE TOSSER—AND OF THE INTERNATIONAL HORSESHOE CLUB
And so we return to the great craving of the sun-hunters: to sit in the sun and take the air. Golf is a matter of which they know little; tennis is regarded as a game for muscleless smart Alecks; polo might be a sort of dog or a movie actor—they’re not quite sure about it; sea-bathing is a diversion in which they rarely indulge. ”

“ At half past eleven every morning, stimulated by the early morning talk of dress, all the feminine population of Palm Beach, accompanied by all obtainable male escorts, set out from their hotels and homes in wheel-chairs for their daily pilgrimage to the beach.
The beach is not prized by Palm Beach visitors because of its bathing facilities, but because of the perfect spirit of camaraderie and democracy which reigns there. A Philadelphia Biddle is just as apt as not to come along and accidentally rub damp sand on a South Bend Smith. Anything may happen. ”

“ There are many lonely men and women at Palm Beach who almost cry with gratitude when somebody speaks to them. They are like many Congressmen, who are big people at home, but of less account in Washington than a head porter. Out of all the people who flock to Palm Beach to spend large amounts of money and bask in the soothing rays that emanate from the socially prominent, ninety per cent. might be compared to very small potatoes in a two hundred-acre lot. Even the majority of the people whose names are names to conjure with in Palm Beach society can’t be found in the pages of Who’s Who. ”

“ In the big hotels in Palm Beach, Miami, Ormond, Daytona, St. Augustine and other Florida resorts are the time-killers, with their jewel-lariats and their acres of white trousers: with their flask-trimmed tea-dances and their hard-boiled social aspirations and their refined gambling houses, and their trick whisky-canes. The sun, to the time-killers, is not of the utmost importance. If they were unable to change their clothes several times a day they would feel ill-at-ease ”

“ He strives to pay for one that he eats and for one that nobody eats. If one is living at the Poinciana, one should make an effort to lunch or dine at the Breakers or at the Country Club or at the Beach Club or at the Everglades Club, or one of the cottages. It is a fascinating system, and is based on the familiar society theory that the more useless a thing is, the smarter it is.
One of the smartest—in a society sense—of all the persons that come to Palm Beach is a man who never eats at the hotel where he lives, and who keeps a flock of twelve wheel-chairs always in attendance on him. ”

“ At West Palm Beach, when I was there, a new pitch was being prepared for the big impending tournament with Lake Worth. An international polo match may get more publicity, but there’s more quiet bitterness over a horseshoe tournament—much more. Especially in Florida.
Those who weary of dominoes, checkers, chess and horseshoe pitching are at liberty to cut a bamboo pole and sit in the sun beside one of the countless rivers, streams and inlets that dent the Florida coast. ”