An enormous income enabled the sprightly Mrs. Villalonga to conduct her midsummer residence in the Canadian forests upon a scale that may only be compared to a hotel.  She usually asked about one hundred friends to visit her for an indefinite time, and of this number perhaps half availed themselves of the privilege, drifting in upon her at any time, remaining only while the spirit moved, and departing unceremoniously, perhaps, if the hostess chanced to be away at the moment, with no farewells at all, when any pleasanter prospect offered.

Mrs. Villalonga was a large, coarse-voiced woman, with a heart of gold, and the facial characteristics that in certain unfortunate persons suggest nothing so much as a horse.  She sent a troop of servants up to the woods every year, following them in a week or two with her first detachment of guests.  She paid her chef six thousand dollars a year, and would have paid more for a better chef, if there had been one.  She expected three formal meals every day, including in their scope every delicacy that could be procured at any city hotel, and also an indefinite number of lesser meals, to be served in tennis pavilion, or after cards at night, or whenever a guest arrived.

By the time she reached the camp everything must be complete for another summer, awnings flapping gently outside the striped canvas “tents” that were really roomy cabins provided with shower baths and wide piazzas.  The great cement-walled swimming pool must be cleaned, the courts rolled, the cars all in order, the boats and bath-houses in readiness.  A miniature grocery and drug store must be established in the building especially designed for this use; the little laundry concealed far up in the woods must be operating briskly.

Then, from the middle of June to the first of September, the camp was in full swing.  There were dances and campfires and theatricals and fancy-dress affairs innumerable.  Ice and champagne and California peaches and avocados from Hawaii poured from the housekeeping department in an unending stream; there were new toothbrushes and new pajamas for the unexpected guest, there were new bathing suits in boxes for the girls who had driven over from Taramac House and who wanted a swim, there were new packs of cards and new boxes of cigars, and there were maids—­maids—­maids to run for these things when they were wanted, and carry them away when their brief use was over.

Then it would be September, and everything would end as suddenly as it began.  The Villalongas would go to Europe, or to Newport, Vera loudly, joyously, insistently urging everyone to visit them there if it were the latter.  In November they would be in their town house with new paintings and new rugs to show their guests:  a portrait of Vera, a rug stolen from a Sultan’s palace.

Everybody said that Vera Villalonga did this sort of thing extremely well; indeed she had no rival in her own particular field.  The weekly society journals depended upon her to supply them with spectacular pictures of a Chinese ball every November and a Micareme dance every spring; they sent photographers all the way up to her camp that their readers might not miss a yearly glimpse of the way Mrs. Villalonga entertained.