OF NUTS IN THE COCONUT GROVE—OF BRADLEY’S—OF THE RELAXATION AND AMUSEMENT OF THE BEACH CLUB-FELLOWS—AND OF GAMBLING IN GENERAL
AFTER one has spent a fatiguing afternoon pricing whisky flasks, or being pushed along avenues of palms and Australian pines in a wheel-chair, or indulging in a little steady bridge and drinking, or some other equally arduous pursuit, the smart thing to do is to go to the Coconut Grove and participate in a little tea and dancing.
The Coconut Grove consists of a large and beautiful grove of coconut trees surrounding a polished dance floor. All the coconuts have been removed from the trees, owing to their well-known habit of falling off unexpectedly and utterly ruining any one who may be lingering beneath them. Thus the only nuts in the grove are the ones who come there to dance.
The Coconut Grove starts doing business at half past five every afternoon in the bright sunlight; but in a few minutes the tropic night closes down just as advertised in all books on the South Seas. By a little after six o’clock the only illumination comes from strings of red electric light bulbs strung through the palms and from the occasional flare of a match as some distinguished social butterfly tries to find out how much whisky he has left in his cane.
Later in the evening, the smart thing to do is to go over to what is formally known as the Beach Club, but universally spoken of as Bradley’s. As trains from the north enter the Palm Beach station, the enormous bulk of the Royal Poinciana Hotel stretches out at the right of the train. On the left of the train, directly opposite the station and so close to the train that the traveler could toss even a lightweight biscuit on to its roof from the car window, is a long, low, white frame building with a large revolving ventilator in one end. This is Bradley’s, Palm Beach’s oldest, most celebrated and most popular charitable institution—charitable because it assists people who have more money than they know what to do with to get rid of part of it in a quiet and eminently respectable way.
The Coconut Grove at Palm Beach. The nuts have been removed from the trees; but plenty may be found at the tables on any winter afternoon.
Near the Flagler estate at Palm Beach.
The Australian Pine Walk between the Poinciana and The Breakers, Palm Beach.
Every large resort in the world that caters to wealthy people has its gambling houses. In Europe the municipalities run them, recognizing the fact that all people of means who are on a holiday are bound to gamble. At America’s resorts the gambling houses are usually concealed; but they exist none the less; and usually, because of the secrecy that surrounds them, they are lurking-places for troublesome aggregations of trimmers, bloodsuckers and crooks of various sorts.
Bradley’s is different. It is run exclusively for the wealthy northern patrons of Palm Beach; and the person whose legal residence or place of business is located in Florida is supposed to be barred. Almost everybody who goes there can afford to lose and lose heavily; and a list of the names of the people who play there every night would read like a list of America’s leading celebrities, social lights and millionaires. There may be some who can’t afford to play; but if there are any such, their folly in visiting Palm Beach marks them as persons who deserve to be ruined as expeditiously as possible.
A crook would be about as much at home in Bradley’s as an icicle would be in the crater of Mt. Vesuvius.
All things considered, it is probably the only gambling house in the United States whose closing would be a calamity to the community.
Bradley’s is a club. In order to be made a member, one must be introduced by a member. It is one of the few existing clubs which has no initiation fees and no dues; but for all that, the members usually spend all they have in their clothes every time they go in for an evening of good fellowship and club life; so it isn’t as inexpensive as it sounds.
Anybody in Palm Beach, from the wheel-chair boys to the policemen, can supply the inquirer with all the standard Beach Club stories, usually starting with the one about the man who lost six thousand dollars in one evening and left Palm Beach hurriedly the next morning. A few hours later, one of the Bradley brothers was visited by a young woman who was obviously in great distress. Her eyes were red and swollen and she was sobbing convulsively. She explained that her husband had lost six thousand dollars the night before, that the money didn’t belong to him and that unless she could get the money back for him, he would have to go to prison. So Bradley gave back the six thousand dollars after telling the young woman to tell her husband never again to set foot in the Beach Club. A few days afterward the same man turned up in the Beach Club and began to play. Bradley summoned him to his office and asked him how he dared to do such a thing after his losses had been returned to his wife. “What do you mean?” asked the man, “I’m not married.”
“Then you didn’t leave town because you were ruined?” asked Bradley.
“You bet I didn’t!” said the man. “I went down to Long Key fishing with my business partner, who came down here with me.”
A woman in an adjoining room had heard the two men talking before their departure, and had cashed in on the conversation.
Then there is the story about the wife who used to extract uncashed chips from her husband’s clothes whenever he played at Bradley’s, and who cashed them in for twenty-five thousand dollars without her husband knowing that he had lost anything. And the one about the gentleman who cleaned up seventy thousand dollars in one week.
It is not at all unusual to see one of the big steel men or oil men placing five hundred dollars in chips on the board at each turn of the wheel, and dropping fifteen or twenty thousand dollars in half an hour.