Winter Journeys in the South: Pen and Camera Impressions of Men, Manners, Women, and Things All the Way from the Blue Gulf and New Orleans Through Fashionable Florida Palms to the Pines of Virginia

John Martin Hammond January 1, 1916

J. B. Lippincott Company

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WINTER JOURNEYS IN  THE SOUTH

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PALMY PALM BEACH

 

THERE had been much talk in Ormond about " the train." You would be on the porch of the golf club and would see a balloon of smoke on the horizon. "What is that?" would say Big Sister from Chicago. "Why, that must be ' the train ' " would say the Mother of Big Sister from Chicago. And so it would go. Everybody seemed to know about this train and everybody seemed to be interested in it.

 

At last I was to see " the train." It came sneaking over the long bridge across the Halifax, rear end first, and settled with a sigh at the station of the hotel. Porters ran to the steps, tired-looking travellers came down those steps, a weary-looking conductor waved his arms languidly, energetic bell-boys grabbed hand baggage to run to the hotel with it. There was nothing remarkable about " the train" that I could see, nothing to justify so much talk about it, nothing remarkable whatever. However, one day at noon I boarded this train with the firm intention of  going to Palm Beach. And  thus  I commenced  another  phase  of  my journeyings.

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To get on the main line of rails from which it digresses to reach Ormond "the train" does some little jockeying, but at length we got started fairly south, and jogged comfortably along through an uninteresting country, accompanied always by an impressive cloud of white dust. Always this dust billowed and eddied outside of the windows and could be seen in swirls through the aisles of the cars. When the car stopped it settled in a discouraging fashion upon the habiliments of the passengers. There are few stops between Ormond and Palm Beach, at least " the train " made few. Occasionally we would halt at a siding or a water tank and then the passengers would get out, penetrate the envelope of white dust and stand beside the track. At one point where we alighted there was the longest stretch of straight track that I have seen anywhere. On, on, on into the horizon it proceeded, apparently without curve, and it maintained perfectly the laws of perspective. Then the train would start again. It had a peculiar way of starting,— this train; without warning whatever it would just quietly take up the burden of life once more and move. Other trains in other sections of the country make a dramatic moment of the start. There is a clatter, a clanging of bells, a waving of arms and the cry of "All aboard!" With this train there was nothing of the sort. It just went, and unless you were watching it you were very apt to be left behind. We reached Fort Pierce about half past seven in the evening, and immediately upon the hearing of this name there was a bright-ening upon the part of the passengers, for they knew that Palm Beach was not far away. "Palm Beach I" What a magic sound the name has! And what a wonderful scrubbing and dusting there was in the car with the porter as head priest of the movement. The porter dusted visibly. You could see each stroke of his brush on your clothing and a great cloud of white dust filled the air. However, he was through at last and we were all clean.

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One should not talk flippantly about sacred things. Indeed, the magic of Palm Beach began to assert itself as soon as the train crept slowly out upon the bridge which connects the island with the mainland. The num-erous lights of the great Poinciana Hotel were reflected in the water; balmy, soft, Southern airs came through the windows of the train; there was a languorous, velvety feeling about the atmosphere.

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Palm Beach, as almost everyone knows, is situated on the southern extreme of the Florida east coast, and is a narrow island about fifteen miles long and about two miles broad at its broadest point. It is separated from the mainland on which is situated the little village of West Palm Beach by a long, narrow sound, erroneously called "Lake Worth." On the eastern side it is bounded by the waters of the Atlantic ocean. The principal part of the island, speaking from the residential stand-point, is on the western side, or the lake front. Here stands the Royal Poinciana Hotel. Directly across the island on the ocean side is the Breakers, a hotel second in size only to the Poinciana. Adjacent to the Poinciana but farther north on the island are the Palm  Beach  Hotel and  the  Hibiscus,  good houses  both  of  them; the visitor may choose from any of these.

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It is no place for a tired business man, or a retired business man for that matter. Indeed, I do not associate anything masculine with Palm Beach at all. It is soft, feminine. It is a woman's idea of a paradise.

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To return, more particularly, to that immaculate throng which we left in the Pullman car under the direction of the colored porter,—the train creaked in its slow, non-committal fashion into the station of the resort, and stopped with a sigh. There was a bustle and confusion, but none of the babel one usually associates with railroad stations. I alighted under the porte-cochere, or whatever one may call the railroad entrance of a hotel. One porter grabbed the suit case containing my faithful camera, another porter took the bag containing my clothing and both together pointed to the steps which led to the main floor of the hotel. I ascended these, crossed a small porch and found myself facing a long corridor, down which I commenced to walk.

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This was the longest corridor I had ever seen in my life, and I walked and walked. At last I began to get tired of this business; nothing but velvet footfalls, a sort of muffler padding as we tramped along. One quarter of a mile long is this corridor, the longest hotel corridor in existence.

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At last we passed some lighted shop windows, went by an inviting, open, dining-room door and came to the nerve center of the hotel.And there behind the desk were the young men who dispensed the nerve of the establishment. I registered, giving my full name and previous condition of servitude, and was shown to a small room on the fifth floor. It took exactly ten minutes by my faithful watch, counting in stops for the elevator, to take on baggage, and to obey the traffic block signals, to go from the desk to my room. The room was small, without a bath, and was rated at six dollars a day, but it was clean and comfortable. The only thing I had against the room was its shape. Never have I seen a room of so unusual shape. The wall away from the one window formed a right angle with the floor; the wall in which the window was pierced formed a very acute angle with the floor and the other two walls had an angle which I have not been able to calcu-late. I could stand up comfortably against the wall away from the window, or I could stand up comfortably in the dormer of the window.

 

In the other parts of the room I crept like a villain for my clothes, and when I washed I crouched as if I were doing a dark and hideous deed, like Lady Macbeth trying to get rid of the spots.

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Everything about the Poinciana must be calculated in terms of pure bulk. The house, when it is full to capacity, and it very frequently is filled, can accommodate fifteen hundred guests, and this figure does not include the number of the employees of the establishment.

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The dining-room is made in two parts with a connection in the middle like the letter " H " and is big enough to house a regiment of soldiers. The menu here is of the same high quality and wide variety as in the other houses of the Florida East Coast Railway group. But the service is slow, no matter how good the waiter, as might be expected from the physical difficulties he has to contend with in so huge an establishment. Actually a dish may get cold in being brought from the kitchen to the table.

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The popular dining hour at Palm Beach is 7.30 or 8 o'clock and the main aisle of either of the two dining-rooms is a resplendent vision at this time. The most gorgeous clothes and the most luxurious women in the country can be seen here, and the latest styles. This year the women seemed to run to bulk and the clothing to minuteness. Some other year the proportions may be reversed. There were big pearls, big diamonds and big jewelry of all kinds and assortments. One could not escape the sight of them.

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Let me draw a picture of one characteristic diner at Palm Beach: Large, imposing she was, built by Titan upon Minerva's order. When we first saw her coming down the aisle she seemed to be carrying a bone in her teeth, to use the nautical phrase. She was striped in black below the water-line and was very neatly turned out above. When she sat at a table near me I learned from her accent that she was from the Middle West and when she came down the aisle she looked like a great vessel with a fair wind behind her. She was a ship of the American desert. Somewhere or other in her atmosphere there was carried along a husband like a fly outside a railway train window.

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Time passes very quickly at Palm Beach, and it soon becomes the hour at which dinner is finished and the daily promenade begins in the long passageway outside of the dining-room and through the rotunda of the hotel. Imagine three or four hundred women gathered together and each one determined to slay the others with a pang of envy through the heart at the beauty of her attire! If one cares to sit by and watch this parade he may find many comfortable chairs scattered along the course.

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As the evening wears on it becomes time for the dancing. This is done in a room down stairs in the "cafe," as it is called, chiefly peopled by the young of the female of the species. A negro banjo quartet provides the music, and very excellent music it is, too, done with that sense of primitive rhythm which distinguishes the black race. Here the young girls of the hotel are seen, and how beautiful these young girls are! Truly there is nothing finer than the young American girl. Slim as a rapier and quick as a flame! Dancing continues from nine to twelve o'clock and then everything is rigorously closed down.

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It may be said here parenthetically that the percentage of real drinking at Palm Beach is very, very small. To begin with, on account of the laws of the state of Florida it is impossible to get anything spirituous to drink after six o'clock in the evening unless one has laid in a special private stock of his or her own. And the laws of the state, according to my observation, are very strictly enforced by the hotel. More than that, the air is too soft, too warm, to invite much indulgence in alcohol. It would be like drinking a cup of hot tea while sitting in a tub of hot water.

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Bed time comes at the Poinciana neither earlier nor later than at other places. Very often the management of the hotel provides an entertainment in the main ball room or assembly room and this fills in the hour between nine and ten o'clock in the evening.

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One of the amusing sights to be seen at almost any minute during the evening is that of the many reporters for New York newspapers and the fashion publications buzzing about the lobby or the corridors of the hotel interviewing guests, gathering names, and it is marvellous to observe the perturbation of some mother of a young miss as a representative of the mighty press bears down upon her.

 

"This is Mrs. Blank of Milwaukee?" "Yes, this is Mrs. Blank." "And Miss Blank is with you?" "Yes, Miss Blank is with me." "How long do you expect to stay?" "Oh, we'll be here the entire season,—" while the probab-ilities are no doubt that they will move on at the end of the week. And so it goes. No doubt there is much legitimate news to be gathered at Palm Beach. There must be. I should estimate the proportion of corres-pondents to guests as one correspondent to every twenty-five guests of the hotel.

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The nights are cool at this great American watering place, and, if your room is properly screened, untroub-led by mosquitoes. If your windows are not so screened you will dream all night that Zeppelins are attacking your township.

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Morning brings bright outdoors to Palm Beach almost every day, for rainy weather is not often known here. One ventures to sally forth, and is guided in his wanderings by a very useful publication put out by the hotel management, known as the Palm Beach Daily Program. What are some of the things that one may do during the day? Boating, bathing, fishing, walking, golfing, shopping, riding in the chairs. Riding in the bicycle chairs! Ah, there is something to do! Who does not remember the bicycle chairs at Palm Beach? One sits in a sort of a magnified baby carriage with a bicycle seat behind. A burly darkey occupies this seat and pedals vigorously. We rush violently through space, we round corners on two wheels. The small bicycle bells tinkle intermittently like fireflies of noise. It is an exciting thing to do.

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Out of doors one gains a new idea of the bulk of the Royal Poinciana Hotel. It is conceived generally in the Georgian style of architecture and is a perfect barracks of a place, constructed of frame and clapboards. Not at all an unattractive building from the architect's standpoint, it is truly a monument to the bigness of grasp and enterprise of the founder of the whole chain of hotels on the east coast of Florida. Adjoining the Poinciana are the famous Palm Beach gardens, which contain many varieties of rare shrubs which can not be grown in Northern latitudes.

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Connecting the Poinciana Hotel and the Breakers is a long straight avenue about one mile in length, down which run a track for wheel chairs. 

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The walk to the north along Lake Worth is the older and more popular walk at Palm Beach. Here are the shops and the tea-houses, and here is Bradley's, which may be given a more extended mention. The exterior of Bradley's, and the interior, for that matter, are as quiet as a country church. The atmosphere of the place is more that of a well-appointed, well-conducted home than anything else. Large sums of money are, no doubt, won and lost in this establishment, but I doubt if it altogether deserves quite the hectic reputation that has been ascribed it. Annually, stories come out of huge sums of money lost or won at this place; but spread over the whole period of its existence these sums would not be so very large. Anyhow, the question is not economically an important one. The money is lost usually by those whom it has cost nothing to obtain, and is merely removed from one idle channel of humanity to another. Let us continue to stroll farther on up the coast.

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It was my good fortune to take this walk late one evening. Night was coming on, bringing that soft, slum-brous, tropic twilight. The vivid colors of a gorgeous golden sunset were reflected in the still waters of Lake Worth. To my right was the heavy green foliage of the palm trees, and in their shadows glimmered the white fronts of houses. Wheel chairs rustled swiftly by, tinkling as they went. The path seemed not to be solid, but seemed some airy walk shimmering in the half light, and leading on into a region of enchantment. Truly it was fairyland! One may well understand the continued charm of Palm Beach.

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