This “Beach” Club is a place of financial and moral wrecks. It is openly run in defiance of the Florida state law against gambling. There is not a law of man or God that it does not break, except the one that unless you wear a tuxedo or Prince Albert you cannot enter. Here hearts, heads and bank accounts are broken. Fabulous amounts exchange hands among the players. If you are just a looker-on you pay for the privilege—a dollar for a glass of water or ten dollars a plate for a light luncheon. Question: Why does the government pinch the little gamblers and permit this “White House” to be a black palace of ruin and despair?
There is some excuse for the routine of an insane asylum but none for the silly Palm Beach daily program. Here it is: Yawns, idleness, ennui and indigestion; dressing for beach and undressing for dinner; sun-tan of the “Browning Club” and tonic baths; whisking around in an invalid wheel chair in company of dudes and pug-dogs; driveling talk of clothes and looks; drinking pink tea or cocktails; reading the latest trash; spooning, dancing, flirting, golfing, yachting, sporting, and parading high-priced dogs, cats and monkeys whose mentality and morals are often higher than their owners’.
Even Mother Nature here is togged out in society form, laced and corseted. Trees and flowers are trimmed out of all picturesqueness; natural curves give way to geometrical squares; lawns are imprisoned in concrete curbs; the air is perfumed with the balmy fragrance of cigarettes and cigars; there in no rest found beneath palms, fruit trees or among plants and flowers on account of the stinging swarms of society gnats. Florid Florida folders describe Palm Beach as “paradise,” but the attractions to me were outside of the garden. Everything is over-estimated. It is very far from the luxuriance of Hawaii, the sport of Monte Carlo, the beauty and history of Mediterranean resorts. It takes more than a railroad and a big hotel to beat them.
Palm Beach pauperizes and provokes. Her short season sickens and shames. She is the painted, pampered prostitute of Florida. “Do as you damn please” is her motto. This was no place for a minister’s son, so I stood not upon the order of my going, but went by the first midnight train—before I lost all my money and morals.