Irish Hills

There is one good thing about having green eyes. Come St. Patrick’s Day no one can pinch you.

But younger siblings can still say they look like poison.

Jo

The Four Feathers
A review of A.E.W. Mason’s book by Gracie Friedrich

In long sessions and short little spurts I read The Four Feathers by A. E. W. Mason. I finished it just yesterday and set it down with a resounding “hmmm…” echoing through my mind.
Now, I could remove that ‘h’ and make it “mmm…” but, that would be something akin to lying; The Four Feathers wrought no such emotion in me.

Let me introduce you to the three main characters:
Please meet Harry Feversham, who as a child had night terrors about dying in a war. He will be prominent in the beginning of the book, until he receives four white feathers, and then he will disappear from existence and mostly from the story, except when we run into several of his “heroic” achievements in Egypt, usually involving one of the people who sent him a white feather.

If you like dramatic, deep loving Irish girls who remember lost loves, while becoming engaged to a blind man purely out of sympathy, then you will enjoy the character of Ethne Eustace. After she cruelly gives the final blow that ruins Harry Feversham’s life, she tries to live and forget him, but for six years afterward she cannot seem to put him from her mind. She has a strange relationship with her violin.

A chap who went through the most trials and still turned out all right, is Jack Durrance. This fellow deserves a medal. He is so unselfish that it almost makes you want to cry. He is so self-denying, that even after he he goes blind and becomes engaged to a girl who would have made him a perfect caretaker, for her sake he breaks off their engagement and releases her to Harry when he returns. Who really deserves Ethne: Jack or Harry?

Intense is not the right word for this book. When Ethne scrapes out the “Musoline Overture” on her violin, we are supposed to feel moved. When we hear of Harry’s bravado in Egypt, we are supposed to be excited. When we hear of the madness and filth of a prison called The House of Stone, we are supposed to shiver, but no shivers ran up and down my spine. I didn’t even get goosebumps. Mason made a good attempt at creating a thrilling adventure, but he fell a little short. Mason was trying to create a story that was too complex. It had too many undercurrents and messages in the plot. However, those messages that he tried to incorporate into the story weren’t bad messages, they were just weak in Mason’s book.

The plot outline is intriguing, though. Harry Feversham, a man who grew up with a fierce terror of being killed in battle, resigns secretly on the eve of going to war in Egypt with his comrades. They discover his sneaky deed and send him three white feathers, a sign of cowardice. Unfortunately, he opens the package in which the feathers come while his fiancee, Ethne Eustace, is present. She doesn’t understand why he would do such a cowardly thing and adds a fourth feather to the other three. However, this completely changes his resolve, and indeed his life, though she does not know it. He sees her for the last time that night and then, with the assistance of an old friend, goes undercover in Egypt, in order to redeem his honor and make his former comrades take back their feathers. He has many adventures there, most of which are not actually told but hinted at. The plot thickens when his best friend, Jack Durrance, who went blind in Egypt, returns to England and becomes engaged to Ethne. Ethne hasn’t forgotten Harry but she does have a kind heart. Will Harry return to Ethne before she marries Jack Durrance? Let’s hope so!

One of the great downfalls of the book, I thought, was the poorly developed character of our hero, Harry Feversham. He is a man who only goes on secret missions for the British Army in Egypt because he is redeeming his honor. Though he does seem to show some affection and purpose in risking his life for the sake of Ethne, all roads eventually lead back to him. He even tells Colonel Trench, one of the men who gave him a white feather, and whom he rescues from The House of Stone, “No need of thanks. I served myself from first to last.” Selfishness, all is selfishness for our hero. Though he did commit many great acts of bravery, I don’t think that Harry merits much praise for them.

A chilling scene of the book occurs when Harry Feversham is a sensitive boy of 14. He spent hours listening to horrific war stories told in cold blood by his father’s companions from the Crimean War, including a tale of a coward who committed suicide rather than go into battle. After being sent to bed, Harry is found standing in a corridor. A flickering candle is his only companion as he gazes up at the portraits of his ancestors, all of whom went to war and died or were maimed in the name of honor. His boyish imagination has taken hold of him, and he allows it to plant in him a deep rooted fear of going to war and dying, or worse yet, displaying cowardice in the midst of battle. The moral is, children that young should not be told horror stories of cowards, who, in despair, after being cast out of society for their cowardice, blow their brains out in the back rooms of apartments.

One of the better parts of the book was how it focused on the inward turmoil of Ethne. Because of this, it wasn’t just another war book with long detailed scenes of death and carnage, which, though sometimes interesting, can grow tedious. For six years, She was wracked by the belief that she had destroyed Harry Feversham’s life forever because of her final blow in adding the fourth feather. When she became engaged to Jack Durrance, she was determined that “two men’s lives shall not be ruined because of me.”

Maybe the contrast between the grieving woman living in comfort in Ireland, and the man who continually thinks of her, is supposed to keep us from becoming too emotionally wrought over the story. Actually, I liked the continual change: from sandy hells, where a man can go blind just by chasing after his helmet, to cooling rivers and the breezes that sweep through the trees in Ireland, it kept me refreshed.

This book was hard to read. Why? I just don’t know. Mason’s writing style was peculiar at first, filled with unusual words and descriptions, but after a while I warmed up to it, and I think that I will slip right into it, the next time I read it, rather like one does with Shakespeare.

There are many things in this book which might be made clearer with another reading. Not big things, just little ones. I don’t think any harm will come to me by reading Mason’s The Four Feathers again. But if I find that there was more to the story than meets the eye, such as, a questioning of the regime of the British Empire, or the idea that not all men who refuse to go to battle are cowards and should not be condemned, I’ll let you know…

3/5 stars.

Coram Deo!