Sometimes you come across an unexpected treasure of a book, timely in its subject matter and timeless in its feel. That’s how I took this 1934 novel by James Hilton, Good-bye, Mr. Chips. It’s a refreshingly light read by the author of Lost Horizon about old Professor Chippings, the pillar and icon of Brookfield Boy’s College.
I found and devoured a first-edition of this novel one afternoon this week, and while I’m not especially prone to enjoy British humor or history, I found Mr. Chip’s story delightful and thought-provoking. Nearing the end of his sixty-third year as professor at Brookfield, Mr. Chips reminisces over the years about names and faces, love lost, jokes told, headmasters endured, and lives touched. It’s a feel-good romp that takes the reader through the long, private life of someone whom most students assume is just a silly, frumpy old bachelor but who turns out to be a widower, a friend, and an institution unto himself.
The story takes readers through late 19th- and early 20th-century British history, including through wars and sad scenes of headmasters reading the names of alumni killed. To most, these names are just words, but to Mr. Chips who remembers every face that’s passed through the Brookfield halls and through his own tea-room across the street, these names represent lives and sons.
One vivid scene during WWI (Chapter 15) will always stick with me, as I sit in Latin class with Mr. Chips while German air raid bombs explode outside the school gates. And there he stands at the front of the class in his disheveled robe, continuing in that dead language a poignant description of Germanic tribes fighting the Romans: “Genus hoc erat pugnae—this was the kind of fight—quo se Germani exercuerant—in which the Germans busied themselves.” (100-101).
I called this book timely in its subject matter, because I recently began researching my family’s genealogy. I had always thought that, if some distant cousin had already researched this information for us, there’d be no reason for us to try it ourselves. How wrong that is! What fascinating tales have already emerged after just a week of research!
No one had provided me with a list of names, past great-grandparents, but already I have taken each branch of my family back at least four further generations (except in one particular line, where I’ve hit a brick wall)—and in my name-sake line, I’ve it extended it back to 16th century England! I’ve uncovered our English, German, Scottish, Belgian, and even Irish roots. I’ve found ship manifests telling me the day some fourth-great-grandfather and his young family arrived in New York harbor.
I’ve become completely enamored in this research, but like Mr. Chips, I don’t want to see just names and dates. I want to know their stories and watch their lives. I don’t want to see them merely as ancestors, but as fathers and mothers, as sons and daughters. A book like this describing English life in the late 1800s gives me a sense of how my family might have lived and what they might have felt and experienced when, say, Archduke Ferdinand met his untimely end.
This is a book I’ll likely read again. It’s one, in fact, that I wish I had read earlier, as it would have better prepared me to understand, for example, C.S. Lewis’ That Hideous Strength. But that’s a bit beside the point. This is a great little book and worth the read, especially if you’re involved in higher education or presently enjoying your golden years.
©2020 E.T.