Goodbye, Mr. Chips

“Someone dropped a desk lid. Quickly, he must take everyone by surprise; he must show that there was no nonsense about him.”

In 1870, just starting at Brookfield, Chips knows the importance of first impressions and that students always “test” new teachers on their first day. He learned this through bitter experience at another school, Melbury, where he was “ragged” a great deal and had to quit after only one year. At Brookfield, he quickly establishes himself as a strict disciplinarian and has little trouble after that.

“But if it had not been this sort of school it would probably not have taken Chips. For Chips, in any social or academic sense, was just as respectable, but no more brilliant, than Brookfield itself.”

Brookfield, like Chips himself, is solidly second-rate—respectable rather than prestigious and dependable rather than spectacular. The intellectually unambitious Chips would probably not have been hired by Eton or Harrow. Chips, like the subjects he teaches (Latin, Greek, and ancient history), grounds himself in the unchanging past, and the staidness of Brookfield fits him a glove—or like the old and tattered, but comfortable gown he refuses to replace.

“Dear me, I remember Collingwood very well. I once thrashed him—umph—for climbing on to the gymnasium roof—to get a ball out of the gutter. Might have—umph—broken his neck, the young fool. […] He was killed —in Egypt, I think...”

Chips, though like most teachers of his time, a practitioner of corporal punishment, cares deeply about his students and retains vivid memories of them long after they have left school. As their teacher, he tries to prepare them for the world by teaching them discipline, moral rectitude, and caution. One of the tragedies of his final years has been grappling with the massive death toll of World War I, which included many of his former students.

“He liked those short leading articles in the Times that introduced a few tags that he recognized. To be among the dwindling number of people who understood such things was to him a kind of secret and valued freemasonry; it represented, he felt, one of the chief benefits to be derived from a classical education.”

Chips has few illusions about the long-term utility of Latin to his students; unlike the hard sciences, political science, or sociology, this “dead language” will not change the world. Rather, he modestly hopes to pass on, if only on the smallest of scales, some of the wisdom of the ancient past: a treasure for his students to carry forever within themselves as part of a secret brotherhood.

“Chips did not hold with all this modern newness and freedom. He had a vague notion, if he ever formulated it, that nice women were weak, timid, and delicate, and that nice men treated them with a polite but rather distant chivalry.”

Educated at all-boys schools and then teaching at an all-boys school for 26 years, Chips has had almost no interaction with women when he stumbles upon Katherine Bridges during a rare holiday in the Lake District. A traditionalist whose “vague” and “uneasy” attitude toward women has always been the chivalrous one of protector, Chips finds himself in the position of being rescued by a young woman who seems more agile and athletic than himself. Moreover, he is shocked by her audaciously “modern” willingness to visit him and care for his injured ankle without a chaperone.

“She had always thought that middle-aged men who read the Times and disapproved of modernity were terrible bores; yet here he was, claiming her interest and attention far more than youths of her own age.”

Getting to know Chips, Katherine is as surprised as he is to find the other so sympathetic and affable despite the significant gaps in their ages, politics, and cultural values. Chips later credits Katherine with broadening much of his thinking and dispelling his prejudices, but he did the same for her, starting with their first meeting.

“Obedience he had secured, and honor had been granted him; but only now came love, the sudden love of boys for a man who was kind without being soft, who understood them well enough, but not too much, and whose private happiness linked them with their own.”

Chips’s brief but idyllic marriage energizes him, putting within reach a longtime ambition—not a scholastic or professional one but merely to be loved by the boys. Under Katherine’s influence, he not only becomes kinder and happier but begins to cultivate the sense of humor that will make him famous at Brookfield for the rest of his days.

“Since last year—when old Gribble retired—he's —um—the School butler—there hasn't been anyone here who ever saw my wife. She died, you know, less than a year after your visit. In ninety-eight.”

During the war years, Chips breaks the news to a former student (and to the reader) that his beloved wife died soon after their marriage, only two years after they first met. The suddenness of Katherine’s death is mirrored by the sudden and almost offhanded nature of its disclosure. The student, who still remembers her, is killed in the war shortly after this conversation, erasing Katherine further.

“He had a sudden vision of thousands and thousands of boys, from the age of Elizabeth onward; dynasty upon dynasty of masters; long epochs of Brookfield history that had left not even a ghostly record. Who knew why the old fifth-form room was called ‘the Pit’? There was probably a reason, to begin with; but it had since been lost—lost like the lost books of Livy.”

Partly owing to the death of his wife, whose “gem-clear” memory is preserved by few besides himself, Chips becomes deeply cognizant of loss and its connection to memory. So much of the lore and mysteries of even a small place like Brookfield, he thinks, has already been lost forever, perishing along with generations of boys and teachers. With each human death, the world of their memories dies as well, and Chips is painfully aware that his own, uniquely rich storehouse of memories and knowledge will soon be lost to the ages.

“They had died on the same day, the mother and the child just born; on April 1, 1898.”

Chips received news of his wife’s death at what should have been the happiest moment of his life: the birth of their first child. That both died on April Fool’s Day seems an especially cruel cosmic joke. In an eerie footnote, he receives a big pile of prank mail that day containing nothing but blank sheets of paper, underscoring the erasure of his copious hopes for domestic happiness.

“Where had they all gone to, he often pondered; those threads he had once held together, how far had they scattered, some to break, others to weave into unknown patterns? The strange randomness of the world beguiled him, that randomness which never would, so long as the world lasted, give meaning to those choruses again.”

Chips still remembers the roll calls from past decades, just as some remember the nonsense verse of their youth: mellifluous combinations of sounds that, despite their randomness, still seem profound. To him, they evoke the transient harmonies of his students and their diverse personalities during those few formative years when they lived side by side before being scattered by the winds of war or the adult world. Behind his fascination with this “randomness” is a sadness in the face of this scattering: Chips has always thrived on a dogged rootedness, barely leaving Brookfield for 60 years. The irony is that, although Chips stays put, he must endure the continual loss of “his boys” as they grow, move on, or even die.

“For some time past, you haven't been pulling your weight here. Your methods of teaching are slack and old-fashioned; your personal habits are slovenly; and you ignore my instructions in a way which, in a younger man, I should regard as rank insubordination.”

The new headmaster Ralston, a product of the new century and its “modern” pedagogical trends, is the first real obstacle Chips has run up against in his long career at Brookfield. As the classics master, Chips sees his curriculum and teaching methods as rooted in history and long usage and can see no reason to change them. Unlike Ralston, he also knows that his habits and quirks are by now inseparable from his personality and his identity as a beloved fixture of the school.

“Umph—a lot of nonsense, in my opinion. Making boys say ‘Kickero’ at school when— umph—for the rest of their lives they'll say ‘Cicero’—if they ever—umph—say it at all. And instead of ‘vicissim’— God bless my soul—you'd make them say, ‘We kiss 'im!’”

Around the turn of the century, many schools began to “modernize” the teaching of Latin, phasing out the long-traditional “ecclesiastical” pronunciation in favor of the “restored” classical pronunciation, which holds that “c” is pronounced like the English “k” and “v” like “w.” Chips finds this new fussiness, however technically sound, to be absurd on the public school level and mocks it with the sort of pun that has endeared him to generations of schoolboys.

“Ralston was trying to run Brookfield like a factory—a factory for turning out a snob culture based on money and machines. The old gentlemanly traditions of family and broad acres were changing, as doubtless they were bound to; but instead of widening them to form a genuine inclusive democracy of duke and dustman, Ralston was narrowing them upon the single issue of a fat banking account.”

With the rise of democratization and new money, the hegemony of the English landed gentry is on its way out. Chips does not mourn this but feels that new headmasters like Ralston have replaced it with a new, and crasser, form of snobbery, one centered solely on money. Instead of broadening Brookfield’s admissions to include the underprivileged, Ralston has been “selling” the school to the country’s nouveau riche families as an industry-centered commercial investment to make their children even richer.

“‘A fine fellow, Rivers,’ Chips would say, telling the story to Mrs. Wickett for the dozenth time. ‘Not—umph—a very brilliant boy in class. I remember he could never—umph—master his verbs. And now —umph—I see in the papers—they've made him— umph—a baronet. It just shows you—umph—it just shows you.’”

Sir John Rivers, a baronet and a former pupil of Chips’s, has given him a pivotal show of support, snubbing the headmaster Ralston. However, to Chips, he is eternally the boy who could never quite master Latin. To some degree, this is Chips’s sense of humor at play; however, it also reveals that Chips views Brookfield as the first and most meaningful proving ground of his boys’ mettle. No amount of adult success can much change his image of them as they were then.

“I have thousands of faces in my mind—the faces of boys. If you come and see me again in years to come—as I hope you all will—I shall try to remember those older faces of yours, but it's just possible I shan't be able to—and then some day you'll see me somewhere and I shan't recognize you and you'll say to yourself, ‘The old boy doesn't remember me.’ [Laughter] But I DO remember you—as you are NOW. That's the point. In my mind you never grow up at all.”

Chips has vivid memories of the boys he has taught but sometimes has difficulty recognizing those young faces in the adults they have become. Though his lessons are intended, in theory, to prepare them for adulthood, he does not follow their adult careers with much attention. The five-year span during which he was responsible for them remains his frame of reference; uncomfortable with change in general, he preserves the memories of their youths in his mind.

“I'm thirty-nine, you know, and unmarried, and lots of people seem to think they know what I ought to do. Also, I happen to be diabetic, and couldn't pass the blindest M.O., but I don't see why I should pin a medical certificate on my front door.”

At the height of World War I, Chatteris, the headmaster who replaced Ralston, has suffered public censure for not enlisting as many of Brookfield’s teachers have done. Too proud to offer his medical ineligibility as an excuse, he publicly keeps a stiff upper lip in the face of myriad pressures, including having to cover for inept substitutes. In response to his pleas, Chips, who has retired, happily returns to teaching.

“He was a grand success altogether. In some strange way he did, and they all knew and felt it, help things. For the first time in his life he felt NECESSARY—and necessary to something that was nearest his heart. There is no sublimer feeling in the world, and it was his at last.”

Forever conscious of his lack of “brilliance,” Chips has always been haunted by his sense of being merely adequate as a teacher. Now, during wartime, he fills the gaps left by younger teachers who have gone to the front and at last feels essential. His alleged weaknesses are now strengths: His staidness and old-fashioned habits, with their roots in Brookfield’s and England’s past, are deeply comforting to the school in these turbulent times.

“He sat in the headmaster's study every morning, handling problems, dealing with plaints and requests. Out of vast experience had emerged a kindly, gentle confidence in himself. To keep a sense of proportion, that was the main thing. So much of the world was losing it; as well keep it where it had, or ought to have, a congenial home.”

Less than a year after Chips returns to work, Chatteris dies, and Chips steps into the role of headmaster for the first time. His calmness and unshakeable confidence, borne of his many years in the unexciting but diligent praxis of his classical tutelage, anchor the school through the remainder of the war. Though not an innovator like Ralston, his steadiness makes Brookfield a “congenial home” for common sense—just as the school has long provided Chips with a haven from an outside world that has always seemed out of proportion to his ideals and simple needs.

“‘On the Western Front, Chips said. Does that mean he was fighting for the Germans?’ […] ‘I suppose it does.’ […] ‘Seems funny, then, to read his name out with all the others. After all, he was an ENEMY.’”

Reading out the names of old boys killed in the war, Chips shocks some of his listeners by including a tribute to the school’s German master, who was drafted into the German army during a visit to his homeland and subsequently killed in action. Patriotic but never jingoistic or nationalistic, Chips shows how he keeps a “sense of proportion” through his simple humanity, which recognizes the tragic losses on both sides of the battle lines.

“Just then there came a particularly loud explosion—quite near. ‘You cannot—umph —judge the importance of things—umph—by the noise they make. Oh dear me, no.’ A little chuckle. ‘And these things—umph —that have mattered—for thousands of years—are not going to be—snuffed out—because some stink merchant— in his laboratory—invents a new kind of mischief.’”

At the cacophonous height of a German air raid, Chips keeps his class from panicking through his avuncular calmness and wit, reminding them of the imperishability of civilization, of which they are but some of many torchbearers. Deftly, he makes an in-joke about their science master (“stink merchant”) and then directs them to a Latin quote from Julius Caesar about combative Germans, hinting that history often repeats itself but civilization marches on.

“The post-War decade swept through with a clatter of change and maladjustments; Chips, as he lived through it, was profoundly disappointed when he looked abroad. […] But he was satisfied with Brookfield. It was rooted in things that had stood the test of time and change and war. Curious, in this deeper sense, how little it HAD changed.”

The “Great War” does not bring the hoped-for peace to Europe, as aggressions by both the left and the right (in Germany, Italy, Greece, Turkey, and elsewhere) continue for years to unsettle the continent, spawning mass tragedies and lingering resentments. Chips, now in his seventies, settles in ever more firmly at Brookfield, his exemplar of civilization, stability, and grace. Its small changes, over the years, have mostly been for the better—though Chips takes umbrage at such things as a master who allows his students to address him by his first name.

“‘Good-bye, Mr. Chips...’ He remembered that on the eve of his wedding day Kathie had used that same phrase, mocking him gently for the seriousness he had had in those days. He thought: Nobody would call me serious today, that's very certain... […] Suddenly the tears began to roll down his cheeks—an old man's failing; silly, perhaps, but he couldn't help it.”

The parting words of a new student to whom Chips shows hospitality sparks a memory of his long-dead wife, who, as a joke, addressed him by his last (nick)name the night before their wedding. Part of her joke was that only marriage could dissolve the formality that he clung to in those years. Indeed, as a result of the two years they spent together, he blossomed as a teacher, becoming gentler, warmer, and more humorous. Though neither he nor the boy realizes it, this “goodbye” is his final one.