Nowhere is the sand more like a deep warm dust of yellow gold; nowhere is there a margin of the earth so splashed with spots of brilliant color; nowhere is water less like water, more like a flowing waste of liquid emeralds and sapphires edged with a thousand gleaming flouncing strings of pearls
Over the beach lies a layer of people, formed in groups, some of them costumed for the water, some for the shore; some of them known to the great lady, many of them unknown to her. The groups are forever shifting as their members rise and run down to the sea, or come back shiny and dripping, to fling themselves again upon the warm sand, roll in it, or stretch out in lazy comfort while their friends shovel it over them with their hands. Now one group, or another, will rise and form a grinning row while a snap-shot is taken; now they recline again; now they scamper down to see the hydroplane come in; now they return, drop to the sand, and idly watch women bathers tripping past them toward the water. Here comes a girl in silken knickerbockers, with cuffs buttoning over her stockings like the cuffs of riding breeches. Heads turn simultaneously as she goes by. Here is a tomboy in a jockey cap; here two women wearing over their bathing suits brilliant colored satin wraps which flutter revealingly in the warm, fresh fragrant breeze. And now comes the slender, aristocratic, foreign-looking beauty who wears high-heeled slippers with her bathing costume, and steps gracefully to the water's edge under the shade of a bright colored Japanese parasol. It seems that every one must now be on the beach. But no! Here come the three most wonderful of all: the three most watched, most talked about, most spoiled, most coveted young women at Palm Beach. Their bathing suits are charming: very short, high waisted, and cut at the top like Empire evening gowns, showing lovely arms and shoulders. Hovering about them, like flies about a box of sweets, yet also with something of the jealous guardianship of watchdogs, is their usual escort of young men—for though they know none of the fashionable women, their beauty gives them a power of wide selection as to masculine society.
One is a show girl, famous in the way such girls become famous in a New York season, vastly prosperous (if one may judge by appearances), yet with a prosperity founded upon the capitalization of youth and amazing loveliness of person. The other two, less advertised, but hardly less striking in appearance, have been nicknamed, for the convenience of the gossips, "The Queen of Sheba," and "The Queen of the May." They too suggest, somehow, association with the trivial stage, but it is said that one of them—the slender wonderfully rounded one—has never had the footlights in her face, but has been (in some respects, at least), a model.
Like the climbers, like the bush league belle, these girls, we judge, brought definite ambitions with them to Palm Beach. Partly, no doubt, they came for pleasure, but also one hears stories of successful ventures made by men, on their behalf, at Beach Club tables, and of costly rings and brooches which they now possess, although they did not bring them with them. But after all, the sources from which come their jeweled trinkets may only be surmised, whereas, to the success of their desire for fun, the eyes and ears of the entire smiling beach bear witness. Watch them as they clasp hands and run down to the water's edge; see them prancing playfully where the waves die on the sand, while devoted swains launch the floating mattress upon which it is their custom to bask so picturesquely; see them now as they rush into the green waves and mount the softly rocking thing; observe the gleam of their white arms as, idly, they splash and paddle; note the languid grace of their recumbence: chins on hands, heels waving lazily in air; hear them squeal in inharmonious unison, as a young member of the "Browning Club," makes as though to splatter them, or mischievously threatens to overturn their unwieldy couchlike craft. Free from the restriction of ideas about "society," about the "tradition" of Palm Beach, about "convention," they seem to detect no difference between this resort and certain summer beaches, more familiar to them, and at the same time more used to boisterousness and cachinnation. They go everywhere, these girls. You will see them having big cocktails, in a little while, on the porch of the Breakers; you will see them having tea, and dancing under the dry rustling palm fronds of the cocoanut grove, when the colored electric lights begin to glow in the luminous semi-tropical twilight; and you will see them, resplendent, at the Beach Club, dining, or playing at the green-topped tables.
You will see them having tea, and dancing under the palm fronds of the cocoanut grove, when the electric lights begin to glow in the luminous semi-tropical twilight
The Beach Club has been for some time, I suppose, the last redoubt held in this country by the forces of open, or semi-open gambling. Every now and then one hears a rumor that it is to be stormed and taken by the hosts of legislative piety, yet on it goes, upon its gilded way—a place, it should be said, of orderly, spectacular distinction. The Beach Club occupies a plain white house, low-spreading and unpretentious, but fitted most agreeably within, and boasting a superb cuisine. Not every one is admitted. Members have cards, and must be vouched for, formally, by persons known to those who operate the place. Many of the quiet pleasant people who, leading their own lives regardless of the splurging going on about them, form the background of Palm Beach life—much as "walking ladies and gentlemen" form the crowd in a spectacular theatrical production—have never seen the inside of the Beach Club; and I have little doubt that many visitors who drop in at Palm Beach for a few days never so much as hear of it. It is not run for them, nor for the "piker," nor for the needy clerk, but for the furious spenders.
Let us therefore view the Beach Club only as an interesting adjunct to Palm Beach life, and let us admit that, as such, it is altogether in the picture. Let us, in short, seek, upon this brief excursion, not only to recover from our case of grippe, but to recover also that sense of the purely esthetic, without regard to moral issues, which we used to enjoy some years ago, before our legislatures legislated virtue into us. Let us soar, upon the wings of our checkbook, in one final flight to the realms of unalloyed beauty. Let us, in considering this most extravagantly passionate and passionately extravagant of American resorts, be great artists, who are above morals. Let us refuse pointblank to consider morals at all. For by so doing we may avoid giving ourselves away.