We don’t like the fellow a great deal. Very clever and all that, but a bit too clever, if you ask me. Claims to have doubled the School’s endowment funds by some monkeying on the Stock Exchange. Dare say he has, but a chap like that wants watching. So if he starts chucking his weight about with you, tell him very politely he can go to the devil. The Governors don’t want you to resign. Brookfield wouldn’t be the same without you, and they know it. We all know it. You can stay here till you’re a hundred if you feel like it—indeed, it’s our hope that you will.”

And at that—both then and often when he recounted it afterward —Chips broke down.

CHAPTER 12

So he stayed on at Brookfield, having as little to do with Ralston as possible. And in 1911 Ralston left, “to better himself”; he was offered the headship of one of the greater public schools. His successor was a man named Chatteris, whom Chips liked; he was even younger than Ralston had been —thirty-four. He was supposed to be very brilliant; at any rate, he was modern (Natural Sciences Tripos), friendly, and sympathetic. Recognizing in Chips a Brookfield institution, he courteously and wisely accepted the situation.

In 1913 Chips had had bronchitis and was off duty for nearly the whole of the winter term. It was that which made him decide to resign that summer, when he was sixty-five. After all, it was a good, ripe age; and Ralston’s straight words had, in some ways, had an effect. He felt that it would not be fair to hang on if he could not decently do his job. Besides, he would not sever himself completely. He would take rooms across the road, with the excellent Mrs. Wickett who had once been linen-room maid; he could visit the School whenever he wanted, and could still, in a sense, remain a part of it.

At that final end-of-term dinner, in July 1913, Chips received his farewell presentations and made a speech. It was not a very long speech, but it had a good many jokes in it, and was made twice as long, perhaps, by the laughter that impeded its progress. There were several Latin quotations in it, as well as a reference to the Captain of the School, who, Chips said, had been guilty of exaggeration in speaking of his (Chips’s) services to Brookfield. “But then—umph—he comes of an—umph —exaggerating family. I—um—remember—once —having to thrash his father—for it. [Laughter] I gave him one mark—umph—for a Latin translation, and he—umph —exaggerated the one into a seven! Umph—umph!” Roars of laughter and tumultuous cheers! A typical Chips remark, everyone thought.

And then he mentioned that he had been at Brookfield for forty-two years, and that he had been very happy there. “It has been my life,” he said, simply. “O mihi praeteritos referat si Jupiter annos… Umph—I need not—of course—translate…” Much laughter. “I remember lots of changes at Brookfield. I remember the—um—the first bicycle. I remember when there was no gas or electric light and we used to have a member of the domestic staff called a lamp-boy—he did nothing else but clean and trim and light lamps throughout the School. I remember when there was a hard frost that lasted for seven weeks in the winter term —there were no games, and the whole School learned to skate on the fens. Eighteen-eighty-something, that was. I remember when two-thirds of the School went down with German measles and Big Hall was turned into a hospital ward.