The Four Feathers

The Four Feathers

Author	A.E.W. Mason
Language	English
Publisher	Macmillan
Publication date	1902
Media type	Print
ISBN	NA
OCLC	848975

The Four Feathers is a 1902 adventure novel by British writer A.E.W. Mason that has inspired many films of the same title. In December 1901 Cornhill Magazine announced the title as one of two new serial stories to be published in the forthcoming year. Against the background of the Mahdist War, the "coward" young Feversham disgraces himself by quitting the army but redeems himself, feather by feather, with acts of physical courage and wins back the heart of the woman he loves.

Plot summary

The novel tells the story of a British officer, Harry Feversham, who resigns from his commission in the East Surrey Regiment just prior to Sir Garnet Wolseley's 1882 expedition to Egypt to suppress the rising of Arabi Pasha. He is faced with censure from three of his comrades, Captain Trench as well as Lieutenants Castleton and Willoughby for cowardice, which is signified by the delivery of three white feathers to him. He loses support of his Irish fiancée, Ethne Eustace, who too presents him with the fourth feather. His best friend in the regiment, Captain Durrance becomes his rival for Ethne.

Harry talks with Lieutenant Sutch, a friend of his father, who is an imposing retired general and questions his own true motives, moreover he talks of his resolution to redeem himself by acts that will force his critics to take back the feathers, this might in turn encourage Ethne to take back the feather, which she gave him. He travels on his own to Egypt and Sudan, where in 1882 Muhammad Ahmed proclaimed himself the Mahdi (Guided One) and raised a Holy War. On January 26, 1885, his forces which were called Dervishes, captured Khartoum and killed its British governor, General Charles George Gordon. It was mainly in the eastern Sudan, where the British and Egyptians held Suakin, where the action takes place over the next six years. Durrance is blinded by sunstroke and invalided. Castleton is reportedly killed at Tamai,where a British square is briefly broken. Harry's first success came when he recovers lost letters of Gordon. He is aided by a Sudanese Arab, Abou Fatma. Later, disguised as a mad Greek musician, Harry gets imprisoned in Omdurman, where he rescues the Colonel Trench, who had been captured on a reconnaissance mission and they escape.

Harry has his honour restored by Willoughby and then Trench giving to Ethne the feathers they've taken back. He returns to England, and sees Ethne for one last time as she has determined to devote herself to Col. Durrance, but Durrance explains that his travel to Germany to seek a cure for his blindness has been a pretense, to wait for Harry to redeem himself. Ethne and Harry wed, and Durrance travels to 'the East' as a civilian.

The story is rich in characters and sub-plots, which the filmed versions perforce trim, along with making major changes in the story line, with the best known 1939 version centered on the 1898 campaign and battle of Omdurman, only hinted at as a future event in the novel.

Film, TV, and theatrical adaptations

This novel's story has been filmed several times with all films retaining much of the same storyline. For example, the celebrated 1939 cinematic version, produced by Alexander Korda and Ralph Richardson its chief star, begins just after the death of Gordon in 1885 and most of its action takes place over a three-year period between 1895 and 1898, with its climax the Battle of Omdurman when British soldiers wore khaki uniforms.

The 2002 version with Heath Ledger takes place during the 1884-1885 campaign, when some British still wore red coats and when some of the novel's action occurs, and features the Battle of Abu Klea, January 17, 1885, fought by the Desert Column that included the Camel Corps dressed in grey jackets and khaki trousers, but not in red coats. While the square was briefly broken, unlike the film version, the British won the battle, but their advance was delayed. The battle is more accurately treated in the movie Khartoum (1966). In the 1929 silent version of The Four Feathers, a square of Highlanders is broken, but saved by Feversham and the Egyptian garrison of a besieged fort. Set in the 1880s, its great moment comes when wild hippos in a river attack the Dervishes pursuing Feversham. The many versions also differ in the racial ethnicity of the local Sudanese guide, Abou Fatma, who assists young Feversham in his desert adventure. For instance, this local guide is an Arab man in the 1977 version while he is a Black man in the 2002 version.

The enemy forces, Islamic rebels called Dervishes, of The Mahdi, are the same, as are the geographic settings, England, Egypt and the Sudan).

The films also feature a British square broken, only mentioned in the novel in a battle in which the square recovered. The various film versions differ in the precise historical context.

The various film versions are as follows:

Year	Title	Country	Director	Notes
1915	Four Feathers	USA	J. Searle Dawley	Black-and-white, silent
1921	The Four Feathers	UK	René Plaissetty	Roger Livesey appeared in a minor role. Black-and-white, silent.
1929	The Four Feathers	USA	Merian C. Cooper Lothar Mendes Ernest B. Schoedsack	Richard Arlen, Fay Wray, Clive Brook.
1939	The Four Feathers	UK	Zoltan Korda	Starring Ralph Richardson, John Clements, C. Aubrey Smith, June Duprez. Considered by many to have been the best of the film versions, this was lavishly filmed in colour on many of the real African locations.
1955	Storm Over the Nile	UK	Terence Young, Zoltan Korda	Starring Anthony Steel, James Robertson Justice, Ian Carmichael, Ronald Lewis, Michael Hordern. A low-budget color remake, using much of the location footage shot for the 1939 version of The Four Feathers, and exactly the same script - one of the few instances in which this was done.
1977	The Four Feathers	UK	Don Sharp	Starring Robert Powell, Simon Ward, Beau Bridges, and Jane Seymour. Completely remade for a new generation (though several scenes have been inserted from the 1939 version (e.g. the troops boarding the train in London, a panorama featuring dhows on the Nile, the British army on parade) with a great deal of skill so that the lifting of these excerpts is far from obvious to those who have not seen the 1939 version), the classic tale retains its imperial stiff upper lip and Boys Own style of adventure heroics.
2002	The Four Feathers	USA	Shekhar Kapur	Starring Heath Ledger, Wes Bentley, and Kate Hudson. Made by an Indian director, this version takes a revisionist stance on the original novel's themes of masculinity, empire and the clash of Western and Islamic civilisations. Unlike previous versions, this version centres its big battle scene on the 1885 Battle of Abu Klea (thirteen years before Omdurman), when British soldiers were still wearing red uniforms in the desert (although actually they already wore khaki) and the famous British square formation was supposedly broken for the first time. Oddly, in this film the British lose the battle of Abu Klea while in reality they won.

External links

• The Four Feathers at Project Gutenberg