I love the original 1939 movie with Robert Donat as Mr Chips
but you may have to make do with the 1984 Television dramatisation
When you are getting on in years (but not ill, of course), you get very sleepy at times, and the hours seem to pass like lazy cattle moving across a landscape." So begins a story from another time, James Hilton's book "Goodbye, Mr Chips", made into two films and two television shows.
The story was originally issued in 1933, as a supplement to the British Weekly, an evangelical newspaper; but came to prominence when it was reprinted as the lead piece of the April 1934 issue of The Atlantic. The success of the Atlantic Monthly publication prompted a book deal between the author and the US publisher Little, Brown and Company, who published the story in book form for the first time in June 1934.
The Great Depression had elevated business risks for most publishing houses, and Little, Brown were no exception. They cautiously released a small first print run. Public demand for more was immediate, and Little, Brown went into an almost immediate reprinting the same month. Public demand remained strong, and Little, Brown continued to reprint the book in cautious lots for many months, with at least two reprintings per month.
The first British edition went to press in October 1934. The publishers were Hodder & Stoughton, who had observed the success of the book in the United States, and they released a much larger first print run. But they quickly found themselves going into reprints as the reading public's demand for the book proved insatiable. With the huge success of this book, James Hilton became a best-selling author.
The novella tells the story of a beloved schoolteacher, Mr. Chipping, and his forty-three-year tenure at Brookfield Grammar School, a fictional second-rate British boys’ public boarding school located in the fictional village of Brookfield, in the Fenlands. Mr. Chips, as the boys call him, is conventional in his beliefs, and exercises firm discipline in the classroom.
His views broaden and his pedagogical manner loosens after he marries Katherine, a young woman whom he meets on holiday in the Lake District. Katherine charms the Brookfield faculty and headmaster and quickly wins the favour of Brookfield's students. Despite Chipping's mediocre credentials and his view that Greek and Latin (his academic subjects) are dead languages, he is an effective teacher who becomes highly regarded by students and by the school's governors. In his later years, he develops an arch sense of humor that pleases everyone.
To read the book online, click here, which includes the follow-up "To you, Mr Chips" (starting at page 113) which is a collection of short stories featuring the lovable schoolmaster and while not as good as the book itself, I really enjoyed them.
Although the book is unabashedly sentimental, it also depicts the sweeping social changes that Chips experiences throughout his life: he begins his tenure at Brookfield in September 1870, at the age of 22, as the Franco-Prussian War was breaking out; he lay on his deathbed at the age of 85 in November 1933, shortly after Adolf Hitler's rise to power.
It's the sort of story you want to read "when you are getting on in years (but not ill, of course), you get very sleepy at times, and the hours seem to pass like lazy cattle moving across a landscape". Like today!
