The Four Feathers

By A. E. W. Mason

 

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, young Faversham disgraces himself by quitting the army, which others perceive as cowardice, symbolized by the four white feathers they give him. He redeems himself with acts of great courage and wins back the heart of the woman he loves.

 

The novel tells the story of a British officer, Harry Faversham, who resigns from his commission in the Royal North Surrey Regiment just after Lord Garnet Wolseley's 1882 expedition to Egypt to suppress the rising of Colonel Ahmed Orabi. He is censured for cowardice by three of his comrades, Captain Trench as well as Lieutenants Castleton and Willoughby, which is signified by their delivery of three white feathers to him. His fiance Ethne Eustace, breaks off their engagement and also gives him a white feather. His best friend in the regiment, Captain Durrance, becomes a rival for Ethne.

 

Harry talks with Lieutenant Sutch, a friend of his father, who is an imposing retired general. He questions his own motives, but says he will redeem himself by acts that will convince his critics to take back the feathers. 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 26 January 1885, his Dervish forces captured Khartoum and killed its British governor, General Charles George Gordon. Most of the action over the next six years takes place in the eastern Sudan, where the British and Egyptians held Suakin. Durrance is blinded by sunstroke and invalided. Castleton is reportedly killed at Tamai, where a British square is briefly broken by a Mahdi attack.