THE BREAKERS, PALM BEACH
EL PALACIO, HAVANA, CUBA
When we went to Cuba in February 2017, one of the places we visited in Havana was the Palacio de los Capitanes Generales. Palacio means palace in English. And this one was the former official residence of the governors of Havana. It captured the wealth that belonged to Cuba’s 1%, the decadence of an autocratic country where the other 99% lived in abject poverty.
Last fall, we met my nephew and his family at the Breakers Hotel in Palm Beach. We’ve visited the hotel before,but only for lunch, so we didn’t have access to the same areas as paying guests. And this visit was long before we went to Cuba. The similarities between the two place struck me.
The Breakers, like the Palacio. was intended for the uber wealthy and powerful. It opened to universal claim on February 1, 1904, a colonial style building with 425 rooms and suites, where rooms started at – get this!- four bucks a day and that included 3 meals a day. The guest register included Rockefellers, Vanderbilts, Astors. European nobility and U.S. presidents frequented the place. So did J.P. Morgan, William Randolph Hearst, J.C. Penney, Andrew Carnegie.
Today, it still stands on the shores of the Atlantic. To get onto the property, you have to pass through the guard gate where you’re asked for photo I.D. and are given a handout about Covid and mask requirements. If you’re vaxxed, no need to wear a mask. You’re on your honor. We know how well that works. In fact, during the hours we were there, I saw that all servers wore masks but I only spotted three guests wearing masks.
The Breakers isn’t just a hotel. It’s also a country club where an annual membership buys you a fabulous beach, a kid swimming pool, 10 different restaurants, delicious meals, all those other delightful amenities. I Googled membership fees for The Breakers for 2021, but couldn’t find anything direct. I got different kinds of membership fees- for the summer, just for golf, for Breakers West in various cities.
At any rate, we ate lunch on a back patio with a view of the ocean, the weather was good, not thickly humid as it has been for the last week. Afterward, we walked over to the beach.
The people we passed fit the archetype of the privileged, a broad yet inclusive category. The women often wear decorative hats that shade their faces well. They usually wear skimpy bathing suits that reveal the kind of skin that makes you an IG Influencer. They strut, they tease. On the beach, in the water, they languish. The men in this group are wearing shorts, tee-shirts, sandals. They are there, with particular women, to be seen. Those were my first impressions.
We had fun, it was a great place for a reunion, and a great place for kids, especially. Lots of activities for them. Impeccable service. Good food. And the grounds are beautiful, the beaches ideal, the water clear.
But still. This weird feeling lingered, just as it had when we toured the Palacio in Havana. In both places, you can feel the ghosts of a particular kind of royalty whose lineage is great wealth. The membership people who frequent The Breakers aren’t like most of us. They’re the ones about whom F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote, “Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft where we are hard, and cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand.”
Fitzgerald was talking about the Long Island wealthy in the 1920s. But it fits The Breakers. And it also fit the Palacio as it once was in Cuba’s past.
