Goodbye, Mr. Chips

The Book Report: Old Mr. Chipping, nearing ninety and still telling his hoary old jokes from sixty years ago to the newbies at Brookfields school, spends his last few days on earth wandering among the many well-furnished rooms in his head. We see the events of his entire career as a schoolmaster, his brief, brilliant career as a husband, and his long, glorious sunset as a School Institution. As he passes through the portal made for one (bet Chips'd know the source on that one), he feels...as I hope and pray all who read this will feel on their own long night...it was good, it was good.

My Review: I read this book tonight because, for far from the first time in my life to date, I learned that I lost an old, old friend: My mother's best show more friend, my heart-mother, finally let go of her life barely short of her 92nd birthday on January 4.

I know it was only her body wearing down, because dementia had long since taken her essence from the living world. But tonight, forty-two years after I met her and began to love her, I feel she is here. And I promised her I wouldn't cry, she told me it hurt her to see me cry once a lifetime ago, but I can't not. It's for myself, for my heart growing old and curling inwards from surprisingly fresh hurt. I don't miss her, or miss her more than I did yesterday; death is a release when someone is already no longer themselves; but the days ahead number fewer than the days behind, and I can see my own end like a hill far away, instead of the comforting illusion of horizons hiding it. It's not scary. It's just...real.

I am now the age she was when I met her. My memories are so real! The Pirate's Den, the junque shoppe on North Lamar, parking under the pecan tree and racing everyone to be the first to see what was new; cold, cold Bull Creek, flat hot rocks, the folds of the Balcones Escarpment and their fossil shells; laughing, crying, talking, always with a silver-bunned, trifocalled, green-eyed artist teaching the only things she knew to teach. I needed them then, I treasure them now, and there is no one else to whom these memories mean one single thing except an old guy reliving his past.

She was Mr. Chips, and I listened the way those schoolboys did; now it's my turn...sic semper tyrranis, oh wait that was the assassin but that's good too, sic transit Irenaea mundi...hail and farewell, dear, now you go on home to Mother and Daddy, walk safe! show less

"When you are getting on in years it is nice to sit by the fire and drink a cup of tea and listen to the school bell sounding dinner, call-over, prep. and lights out." (pg. 2)

A snug and endearing little novella about a beloved schoolteacher growing old gracefully. At just 16,000 words, it is very economical in Mr Chips' reminiscences and this actually works to the book's benefit. The effect is sentimental without being mawkish, and portrays an England that has long since passed into the mists of time. One of author James Hilton's strengths in the book is that he is aware of this passing of an age. When Chips is young, the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1 is ongoing and someone remarks to him that they will have to deal with the Prussians show more themselves one day; later, he comes out of retirement to hold the school together whilst its alumni are being killed at the Somme and Passchendaele. He dies in his sleep only a few months after Hitler comes to power in 1933, an event which will come to make demands of Old England yet again.

Writing in 1934, Hilton would not have been aware of the full importance of this latter date (except perhaps an acute awareness of the zeitgeist), but to a modern reader it frames the piece beautifully. Whilst Goodbye, Mr Chips is quite different from Hilton's other famous fiction, the unimpeachable adventure Lost Horizon, both share this same sense of wistfulness, of a desire for peace and contentment, set against a cloud of impending cataclysm. The sky is about to rain, and Hilton's two books help you feel warm and dry. show less

Easy to speculate Hilton distills his own outlook on education into Chips, fitting insofar as it is inherently conservative, in the sense of upholding established ideals under threat of changing norms. No mere propaganda vehicle, however: Chips undergoes a transformation of character, becoming a jester within stolid Brookfield, a second-tier public school, in his effort to preserve tradition even while honouring the ideals of excellence and personal compassion (made manifest with his love for Kathie). Chips himself refers to "a sense of proportion".

So, a self-conscious nostalgia trip, impressive as English history in miniature panorama. Brings to mind Forrest Gump: does the film adaptation hew closer or further from that peculiar sense show more of History-with-an-H? Similarly, an elegy to the influence an individual can wield. Sentimental, but at sufficient remove to allow a genuine glimpse into its time & place. An open question as to whether I would have thought the same when reading it on publication. An authenticity accrued over time, incidental to authorial intent.

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Chips almost despite himself a contrarian: talking with a striker in broad view of the boys, bringing political talk down to a human level; his friendship with Max Staefel even through the Great War, exchanging letters; reciting Latin during an air raid.

Like 84, Charing Cross Road, Good-bye, Mr Chips lends itself to reading aloud, with brief chapters and vignettes easily parceled out over several evenings before bed. show less

4.5 — Lovely lovely perfect book about the life of a schoolmaster in the late 19th and early 20th century. Very smartly written and thick with the social strains occurring within England at the time. Feels like a cross between the humor of Wodehouse, the commentary of Dickens, and the soul of Alan Holinhurst. So warm and so human. This is a classic for a reason ❤️

Mr. Chipping, the classics master at Brookfield School since 1870, takes readers on a beguiling journey through the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Sometimes Chips, as he is affectionately known, is an old man who dreams by the fire; then he's a difficult young taskmaster schooling his students, or a middle-aged man encountering the lovely Katherine, whose "new woman" opinions work far-reaching changes in him. As succeeding generations of boys march onward through Chips' mind, Hilton's narrative remains masterful. He seamlessly interweaves a poignant love story with the jokes and eccentricities of English public school life, while also chronicling a new, uncertain world full of conflict and upheaval that extends far beyond the show more turrets of Brookfield. show less

Goodbye, Mr. Chips is a quaint story from a distant time. Written over four days, the novella relates the life of Mr. Chipping, a master at an English boarding school. From his first days in the late 1800s through his first retirement in 1913 and his second and final one at the end of the Great War, Mr. Chips becomes a beloved master.

A quick read, an enjoyable read. A book with none of the modern requirements—tension, plot, sex—that harkens back to simpler times when readers were less demanding of their literature.

The more we age, the more of our experience is behind us rather than ahead. And as we look back, the soothing temptation is to let ourselves be lulled into a comfortable, maybe mushy, sense of worthiness. Veteran school-master Mr Chips is an un-layered, rather flat, recognisably English character, rather like the butler in “Remains of the Day” but without the creeping self-doubt. For over time, his steadiness is seen to prevail. Strivers and innovators are distrusted or at least gently teased. The great upheavals of the age, undermining the Victorian-Edwardian order, are endured without major divergence from the settled methods. Chips’ ponderous manner is matched by Hilton’s sparing prose. And Chips wins us over, as the author show more dignifies those little foibles and familiar tics we adopt or succumb to as we age. Perhaps too, our own sense of receded ambitions and modest attainment is soothed. The overall effect is uplifting, memorable, even moving. show less