My friend Susie and I were in our mid-twenties and fellow teachers out in San Diego back in the late seventies and early eighties. Because we could, we decided to go to Europe for a 3 week tour that started in England and included jaunts to France, Switzerland, Italy, Greece and a tour of a few of the Greek Isles. We flew into Gatwick Airport while the Tube and double decker buses were on strike and had no idea that public transportation played such an important part of life there. Here we are, two Alice in Wonderland's, wondering what in the world do we do next after falling through the rabbit hole? We knew to follow everyone else to get our luggage, then we followed them to the light at the end of the tunnel and bought train tickets, then stood there wondering about which train we should get on. A conductor, who had probably seen just about every kind of tourist there is, picked up our bags and shoved them into a private compartment where we tumbled in, the doors with a red cross on them were slammed shut and off we went.
In retrospect, Susie and I must have looked like two little children, giggling at what had just transpired and verbally wondering about where we were going to end up by day's end. The man across from us just rattled his paper louder as he held it up disguising his whole upper body. That's all I needed to muster up the courage to say, "Excuse me, sir, are you from here?" He peeked from behind his paper and said, "Why, yes, I am." It didn't take him long to realize he was our new and only source of what to do while we were in Europe. He folded up that paper and sat there in his tweeds and took great joy in telling us all the things we needed to see while we were in England. At one point, I asked him if he was a teacher because he knew so much about EVERYTHING! The twinkle in his eyes made us just warm all over, because he responded, "No, but my father was a teacher," and then he named other family members who were teachers. We kind of felt sorry for him because he hadn't followed in the family's academian path, since he sure looked the part. (In fact, we told him he reminded us of Mr. Chips and later referred to him as that when we talked about our time on the train.)
During the course of our conversation, he narrowed in on the theater. He pronounced it as the English do, "THE A TUH." He knew where we were staying and suggested that we walk to one of the local theatuhs the next day to see one of the many plays being offered at that time. "The Man of La Mancha," the story of Don Quixote, which he pronounced "KWIKSOT" was one that caught our attention, so we asked about that and he just relished answering each and every question. Our destination arrived too fast and by the time we knew it, the train was stopping and we had just enough time to gather our bags, look up and see that our precious Mr. Chips was gone after a quick adieu. At one point in our conversation, I looked at the window and asked if we were in a first aide car. He really twinkled at that and said that the red crosses signified that they were private cars. We hurriedly apologized and asked if he wanted us to leave. By then, we were all having such fun, who would entertain such a thought?
Well, our day went downhill from there. We had to wait in long lines for a taxi and everyone around us was irate to the point of meanness. Susie and I couldn't wait to get to our hotel, which did not have a reservation for us once we did. We were transported away from our tour group and didn't get settled in until bedtime. We were near tears, lying a foot from each other in our cramped room and even more cramped twin beds in the dark, bemoaning our welcome to England, and were reminded that we did have Mr. Chips as a first indicator, so not all was lost upon our arrival. We fantasized about being invited to his house with a straw roof and sitting in front of his fireplace with his family sharing schoolroom stories, while having tea and crumpets. It was a beautiful picture to hold on to at the end of a rough day.
As Scarlett O'Hara says, "tomorrow's another day," and it was. The sun was shining, we were rested, and we decided to take Mr. Chip's advice and walk the forever walk to the theatuh where "The Man of La Mancha" was playing. We allowed ourselves a lot of time so we could eat at a pub and explore en route. We got to the theatuh of choice about 30 minutes ahead of everyone else, so had time to read the playbills of present and future presentations. As I read about Don Quixote, I stared at the lead actor's picture, who was Paul Scofield, one of Britain's leading actors of his time. I called Susie over and said, "Does that look like Mr. Chips to you?" We both looked even harder and burst out laughing. The joke was on us! We could not wait to get into the theatuh to see if it really was our beloved Mr. Chips.
We waited with anticipation as the curtain rose, and who came out on that tall wooden rocking horse, but Mr. Chips himself, beautifully disguised as the windmill tilting Don Quixote. We didn't want the play to end because, up to that point, he was the only good thing about our trip. I told Susie, "Let's go see if we can go backstage and see him." She wasn't too keen on the idea, so I settled with sending him a note from a playbill:
"Dear Mr. Chips...that's what we call you now. We can't thank you enough for referring us to the 'the a tuh' and Don Quixote, pronounced KWISKOT." I wrote a bit more, but to this day, I wish we could have hugged his neck and thanked him personally. We have often wondered if we had been the topic of his dinner conversation with his family, as he had and has been with ours.
Here is a little more information that Susie and I can confirm firsthand, but we are thankful that he shed his private demeanor for two young and crazy school teachers from the USA. His memory is tucked into our hearts in a place that holds him near and dear. (Here are excerpts taken from the his obituary found online.)
Mr. Scofield was regarded by both critics and his peers as one of the greatest actors in the English-speaking world, one who brought freshness and power to Hamlet, King Lear and many other classic roles. But he might have been better known to the public if he had been less withdrawn. He seldom gave interviews and never appeared on television talk shows, explaining that he hated chatting about himself and found his craft difficult to discuss. A shy, reclusive man, he refused to accept the knighthood that was offered him in the 1960s.
His last stage performance, in Ibsen’s “John Gabriel Borkman” at the National Theater in 1996, was a critical triumph. He then slipped out of public view, going for long walks in the Sussex hills, baking bread at home and occasionally visiting the Scottish island of Mull, where his daughter, Sarah, lived. He said he had come to a point where he found little work that attracted him. And then there was his native caution. “As you get older,” he said, “the more you know, so the more nervous you become. The risks are much bigger.”
He became so used to being described in the press as a private person that he once joked, “I half-expect people to phone me and say, ‘Hello, is that Paul Scofield, the very private person?’ ”
Despite his prodigious gifts and international fame, when the curtain fell, Mr. Scofield simply hopped the commuter train back to his family. He did not often mix socially with his fellow actors. At home, only 10 miles or so from his birthplace, was his wife, the former Joy Parker, an actress he married in 1943; a daughter, Sarah, and a son, Martin. They all survive him.
Debbie! This is such a great read to end my week with! Thank you for sharing this! To imagine you had the opportunity to briefly meet that "private person" on the commuter train. What a blessing :-)
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Good to see you writing again.
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