Fine Portrait of a Man Growing Old Beautifully

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXI, Issue 18581, 15 December 1934, Page 9

Fine Portrait of a Man Growing Old Beautifully

jyp. Howard Spring’s selection for the London Evening Standard book of the rhonth, recently was “Good-bye, Mr. Chips,” by James Hilton. Mr. Spring, in a brilliant review, thus justifies his selection. He writes:—

“Good-bye, Mr. Chips is an exploration of the mind of one man; and there are few men in recent fiction whom I feel I know more intimately than Mr. Chips. “We watch him growing under our eyes till he is as ripe and mellow as a peach on a south wall in September, and as full of warmth and sunlight. “He . was a master at a school called Brookfield, not a first-rate school, but ‘the sort of school which, when mentioned, would sometimes make snobbish people confess that they thought they had' heard of it.’

“And as Brookfield was not firstrate, neither was Mr. Chipping’s degree. He was not very articulate. His discipline in class was not too good. Ho was just a commonplace fellow who became wise and lovely because when life offered a gift lie took it and allowed it to add something to his .stature. You might, indeed, call this book' a portrait of a man growing old beautifully. “It begins when Chip’s life is as good ns over. ‘ 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.’ That’s the opening; and all Mr. Chip’s life then slowly unrolls in a series of reminiscences.

“Mr. Chips’s marriage to a girl young enough to be his daughter; her death while tho first rapture was still upon them; his love growing out towards the boys, thousands of them, generation after generation, as he got old and grey; the passing of every colleague he had known till he was, by very ancientry, august and institutional; the war reaping down what ho had sown; his late rcenll to command the school; his final retirement . . , an old, old, man who couldn’t tear himself away from the soil where, all his roots had gone down . . . living in lodgings just outside the gates . . . strolling over to watch the cricket in the summer, having new boys in. to muffins by the fireside in the.winter . . . growing older and older . . . going, going, gone. That’s the story of Mr. Chips. “How easy it would have been to sink, with such a theme as this, into a sentimental quagmire! But not for a moment are we so much as near the edge. “The man is too vital; and, what is astonishing in so short a work, you are able to see his growth from a young man in danger of going to seed to a middle-aged man with a quickening belief in his country and Ins job, and an old man full of years and honor. “ ‘Just as marriage had added something, so did bereavement,’ and that is one factor in the enchantment that Mr. Chips lays upon us. From life or from death he could a reinforcement to the qualities which made him at the end 1 so complete and harmonious a being. “His humor became a tradition at Brookfield, Classics were his subject, and ho loved to wisecrack in a foreign tongue. So when a. mysterious kind of rissole began to appear during the war he called it ‘nbhorrondum ’— ‘meat, to be abhorred.’ There are many as gpod as that. “It is not fair to give away much from a short book. Thirty-throe lines, tell the whole story of .‘young Grayson,’ whose father had sailed on the * Titanic. When news came through that lie was among lhe saved, Chips told the boy how pleased li,e was. “‘A. quiot, nervous boy. And it was Grayson,. Senior, not Junior, with whom Chips was destined later to eondole. ’

“So Chips remained like a gracious tree under whose shade the generations passed, or like the shadow of a great rock in a weary land. And when it was all over, and he was just a queer old man, full of gentle eccentricities, living outside the gate, all the faces marched' by him. ‘Where arc you all? . . . Where have you gone to?’ “The last of his famous jokes came from his dying lips. He heard sonin-

one say: ‘Pity lie never had any children. ’ “ ‘Thousands of ’em,’ lie murmured. ‘Thousands of ’em . . . and all boys.’ “Here is triumphant proof that a little book can be a great book. Mr. Chips deserves a place in the gallery of English characters. Never before have I known more beautifully rendered a man at perfect, peace with life, a finer setting forth of what happy dreams may come when you are old and grey and full of sleep.’’ (Hodder and Stoughton.)