Some months ago here at OGOTS Tow­ers, in a piece on Walt Whitman’s O Cap­tain! My Cap­tain (see here), we looked at that won­der­ful role por­trayed by Robin Williams in Dead Poets Soci­ety: the uber-inspi­ra­tional teacher, John Keat­ing. Well, this week we’re look­ing at anoth­er stal­wart of the fic­tion­al school­room, one Charles Edward Chip­ping AKA “Mr Chips”.

Good­bye, Mr. Chips is a 1939 roman­tic dra­ma based on the 1934 novel­la of the same name by James Hilton. The film is about Mr Chip­ping (Robert Donat), a much-loved elder­ly school teacher at Brook­field pub­lic school, who looks back at his career and per­son­al life over the decades. We learn about his rise through the teach­ing ranks, his friend­ship with Ger­man teacher Max Stae­fel (Paul Hein­reid) and his trag­i­cal­ly short mar­riage to Kathy (Greer Gar­son), who dies in child­birth along with their baby. From there­on in, Chips’ life is devot­ed exclu­sive­ly to the school and he devel­ops a rap­port with gen­er­a­tions of pupils, even­tu­al­ly teach­ing the sons and grand­sons of many of his ear­li­er pupils.

Although he osten­si­bly retires in 1914, Chips is soon enjoined to return as inter­im head­mas­ter due to the short­age of teach­ers because of the Great War. Dur­ing a bomb­ing attack by a Ger­man Zep­pelin, Chips insists that the boys keep on trans­lat­ing their Latin, and to the great amuse­ment of his pupils, choos­es the sto­ry of Julius Cae­sar’s bat­tles against the Ger­man­ic tribes. Now there’s stiff upper lip!

As the war drags on though, every Sun­day in chapel Chips reads aloud into the school’s Roll of Hon­our the names of the many for­mer boys and teach­ers who have died in the war. It’s a poignant scene (that you can see below). Upon dis­cov­er­ing that Max Stae­fel has died fight­ing on the Ger­man side, he reads out his name, too. “Fun­ny read­ing his name out with the oth­ers, after all, he was an ene­my”, says one school­boy to anoth­er after­wards. “One of Chips’ ideas I sup­pose” his mate says, “he’s got lots of fun­ny ideas like that”.

Chips retires per­ma­nent­ly in 1918, but con­tin­ues liv­ing near­by. He is on his deathbed in 1933 when he over­hears his col­leagues talk­ing about him. He responds, “I thought I heard you say it was a pity – a pity I nev­er had any chil­dren. But you’re wrong. I have! Thou­sands of them, thou­sands of them.. and all.. boys”.