The setting of The Jolliest School of All is just about as escapist as it gets - a school for high-class English and American girls in beautiful southern Italy called The Villa Camellia. The school building is a rambling old mansion with an enormous lawn full of ancient frescoes and orange trees. When her father is transferred to Naples, main character Irene is enrolled in this Mediterranean garden of maidens and escapes to a paradise from dull, gray London, just like the intended readers of the story.
The following twenty chapters are pure, episodic fun, as usual. All the proper boarding school frolics take place - holding clandestine tea parties in the dorms, playing harmless pranks on the staff, sneaking out and managing to not be caught through some unlikely cleverness. The girls take trips to various tourist spots in the area, including a tour of Pompeii and a hike to the top of Vesuvius. A recurring conflict is the rivalry between two of the school's "secret sororities" (making me think of Oniisama e, of course) - The Camellia Buds and the Starry Circle. The girls take their sororities very seriously, with occult ceremonies, ciphers, and a "buddy system" which they leave up to "Kismet". It's all faintly ridiculous and absolutely delightful to read about.
In the final two or three chapters, things take a darker turn. The reason for the mopiness of Irene's mopey "buddy" Lorna is revealed - her father was injustly accused of cooking the books. That's why he hides in Naples and refuses to speak to any English people. I guess I shouldn't reveal the ending, but rest assured that it's thoroughly predictable and lots of fun!
Intruding on the fun every now and then is a little old-fashioned imperialist self-satisfaction and white supremacy. Did you catch that the school is exclusively for English and American girls? Well, actually, it's exclusively for Anglo-Saxon girls. The girls are discouraged to even associate with other "races", and Désirée Legrand, whose family hails from the French-influenced island of Jersey, is the butt of a lot of teasing.
And then we get this gem of a passage when someone gives an inspirational speech after an "Anglo-Saxon League" pageant in which the girls dressed up as all of England's imperialist properties:
"Girls," she began, "I asked you to come here because I want to have a talk with you about our school life. You'll all agree with me that we love the Villa Camellia. It's a unique school. I don't suppose there's another exactly like it in the whole world. Why it's so peculiar is that we're a set of Anglo-Saxon girls in the midst of a foreign-speaking country. We ourselves are collected from different continents—some are Americans, some English, some from Australia, or New Zealand, or South Africa—but we all talk the same Anglo-Saxon tongue, and we're bound together by the same race traditions. Large schools in England or America take a great pride in their foundation, and they play other schools at games and record their victories. We can't do that here, because there are no foreign teams worth challenging, so we've always had to be our own rivals and have form matches. In a way, it hasn't been altogether good for us. We've got into the bad habit of thinking of the school in sections, instead of as one united whole. I've even heard squabbles among you as to whether California or Cape Colony or New South Wales are the most go-ahead places to live in. Now, instead of scrapping, we ought to be glad to join hands. If you think of it, it's a tremendous advantage to grow up among Anglo-Saxon girls from other countries and hear their views about things. It ought to keep you from being narrow, at any rate. You get fresh ideas and rub your corners off. What I want you particularly to think about, is this: it's the duty of all English-speaking people to cling together. If they've ever had any differences it's time they forgot them. The world seems to be in the melting-pot at present, and there are many strange prophecies about the future. Black and yellow races are increasing and growing so rapidly that they may be ready to brim over their boundaries some day and swamp the white civilizations. Anglo-Saxons ought to be prepared, and to stand hand in hand to help one another. I've been reading some queer things lately. One is that a new continent is slowly rising out of the Pacific Ocean—Lemuria they call it—and some day, hundreds of years hence, there may be land there instead of water, and people living on it. They say too that the center of gravity of both the British Empire and the United States is moving towards the Pacific. Sydney may grow more important than London, and San Francisco than New York when the trade routes make them fresh pivots of energy. Another funny thing I read is that as the world is changing a new race seems to be emerging. Travelers say that the modern children in Australia don't look in the least like English children or French children, or any European nation—they are a fresh type. America has been populated by people from practically all the older countries, but I read that children who are being born there now differ in their head measurements from babies of the older races. Perhaps some of you may be interested in this and some of you may only be bored, but what I want to rub in is that if a new, and perhaps superior, race is evolving it's surely part of our work to help it on. Here we all are, girls from England, America, and the British Colonies, of the same race and speaking the same language. Let us make an Anglo-Saxon League, and pledge ourselves that wherever we go over the face of the world we will carry with us the best traditions. We're out for Peace, not War, and Peace comes through sympathy. The women of those great eastern nations, the Chinese, the Japanese, and the Hindoos, who are only just awakening to a sense of freedom, will look to us Westerners for their example. Can't we hold out the hand of sisterhood to them, and teach them our highest ideals, so that in the centuries to come they may be our friends instead of our enemies? It's a case of 'Take up the White Man's burden.' We stand together, not as Scotch, or Canadians, or New Zealanders or Americans, but as good Anglo-Saxons, the apostles of peace, not 'frightfulness.'
That's right, girls; keep the race pure or witness the rise of an alien species of big-headed genius babies.
