Goodbye, Mr. Chips

“For Chips, like some old sea captain, still measured time by the signals of the past; and well he might, for he lived at Mrs. Wickett's, just across the road from the School. He had been there more than a decade, ever since he finally gave up his mastership; and it was Brookfield far more than Greenwich time that both he and his landlady kept.”

The elderly Mr. Chips resides largely in his memories, which he navigates from his chair by the fire, like an old sea captain steering by a set of immovable stars. Most of his memories are connected to Brookfield, the boys’ school that has been his haven for over 60 years and whose unchanging school bells (dinner, call-over, prep, and lights-out) have embedded themselves far deeper in his circadian rhythms than Greenwich time, the standard time for England at large. Though he has held no official role in the school for 15 years, “Brookfield time” continues to be his guide.

“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.