The Fires of Fate (article 7 december 1909)
"The Fires of Fate" is an article written by Percy Hammond published in The Chicago Tribune on 7 december 1909.
Article
"The Fires of Fate."
A Modern Morality Play in Four Acts.
By
ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE.
Presented in America for the first time at the Illinois Theater, Chicago, under the direction of Charles Frohman, Dec 6, 1909, with the characters cast thus:
- Colonel Cyril Egerton, D.S.O. : Hamilton Revelle
- The Rev. Samuel Roden : William Hawtrey
- James Roden, M.D., F.R.C.S. : Edwin Brandt
- Thomas Belmont : Percy C. Waram
- Cecil Brown of London : Thomas Mills
- Mr. Headingly, an American student : Hale Norcross
- Mons. Octave Fardet of Paris : Ernest Perrin
- Abdulla a dragoman : Lionel Barrymore
- Capt. Jack Archer, Bimbashi, Egyptian camel corps : Courtenay Foote
- Sidi Mohamed, a Dervish spy : C. E. Harris
- Ali Wad Ibrahim, an Arab chief : F. E. Hill
- Abdurrahman, an Arab chief : Charn Chandra Sen
- Mrs. Belmont : Helen Freeman
- Miss Adams of Massachussets, U.S.A. : Ina Hammer
- Miss Sadie Adams of Massachussets, U.S.A. : Grace Carlyle
Lest any prospective playgoer flee before the austere caption "morality play" with which "The Fires of Fate" is lugubriously labeled, one hastens with the intormation that this latest product from the pen of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, dramatist, is no such thing. That is to say that whatever sermon the author has in mind will not be found by the average audience to be offensively in evidence. It is rather a very entertaining concoction of exciting adventure, solicitous sentiment, and unobtrusive fun with just the faintest suggestion of obscure pathology and commonplace ethics added to suit the taste of the difficult high brow. Now and then it is a bit prolix — the characters occasionally engage in conversation long after they have finished what they have to say — but it is acted so skillfully by Mr. Frohman's unusual company that this fault is noticeable only in retrospect.
On the face of it the prospect of a journey up the Nile with an invalid who is suffering from the progressive degeneration of the posterior column — we trust the surgical phraseology is accurate — with an invalid who has only a year to live, is not, perhaps, enticing. Col. Egerton of the Fifty-third Bengal Lancers, young, handsome, captain of the Umballa polo team, leader of cotillons and full of the joy of life, learns one afternoon from an eminent London surgeon that he is suffering from this infrequent affliction. We have the examination conducted before our very eyes. The colonel's leg does not respond when the surgeon strikes it with his hand. He cannot stand with his eyes closed. There are other symptoms of spinal disintegration and it is recalled that once upon a time the colonel experienced a saber cut upon the back of his neck during a skirmish in India. He thinks he will end it all, rather than drag out an invalid's hopeless existence.
So he telephones his attorney that he desires to make his will, sends a message to Lady Constant that will be unable to see her again, and informs some of his friends that he will sot have dinner with them that night at the Savoy. The surgeon is a materialist and believes in his heart that suicide is the proper solution of the colonel's dilemma, but he has a brother, a nonconformist minister, who assails him with argument after argument, the principal one of which is that in the remaining year of his life he may accomplish something to the great benefit of his fellowmen. Besides, the doctor recalls a case in which the patient, receiving a shock in a railroad accident, recovered, and the colonel, grasping the minister by the hand, resolves to stick it out and to accompany him and his brother on a holiday up the Nile.
The possibility that the colonel will encounter something in the nature of a successful shock during this journey makes the outlook to the audience, less desolate. In the entr'acte it may speculate pleasurably on the nature of the shock. No villain as yet having made his sinister appearance the speculation becomes doubly interesting. The shock arrives atop the Abousir rock whither the gay tourists have made their way, despite the apprehension of the colonel that there is danger from the dervishes. A despised beggar, who has not been treated kindly by the tourists, betrays them to an evil band — and in a struggle to save the women the colonel receives a blow which puts him out of commission, but not until he has wigwagged a signal of distress to Mr. Archer of her majesty's army, who is stationed with his men somewhere in the neighborhood. The dervishes hurry away with their prisoners, and the colonel is left for dead.
This scene possesses all the melodramatic properties of a similar scene — if the author will forgive the comparison — in "The Round-up," a husky American play which boasts not the subtitle of "morality." The excitement, the dismay, the desperation the confusion — all are there, and they are agitatingly by Mr. Frohman's stage management. It should be said that Miss Adams, a young woman of Massachusetts. U.S.A., is in the party — a Smith college girl who wears nice clothes, has pretty hair, and who thinks everything in the vicinity of the Nile is "just heavenly."
This young woman has excited the admiration of the dying colonel and his peculiar deportment has mystified her. So when the colonel recovers he sets out to follow the dervishes and their prey, the next point of whose itinerary is the oasis of Abouteb. In this oasis there is discussion between the colonel and one of the other tourists as to the proper method of making a camel arise. "You do it this way," says the other tourist, striking the colonel just above the knee. Amazement! The colonel's knee responds to the treatment. He is cured. The blow of the dervish was at the exact point needed for recuperation. Consequently all that is necessary is the sound of the bugles across the desert, indicating the approach of Mr. Archer and his soldiers, and the remark, "Saved!" The curtain falls with Miss Adams in the glad arms of Col. Egerton and the dervishes in rout. Thus we are taught that our wisdom is only finite and that if Col. Egerton had taken cyanide, as was his original intention, there would have been a massacre of tourists or Miss Adams would have been compelled to lead thereafter the incomplete life of a New England spinster.
Time and space permit only the observations that Lionel Barrymore in the extraneous role of an unctuous dragoman was efficacious to a degree that will excite further comment in this quarter; that William Hawtrey as the nonconformist clergyman was sincere and realistic; that Miss Ina Hammer as a type of the "I guess" American tourist was photographic; that Courtenay Foote as a young English army officer was according to our information about such vales; and that Hale Norcross as a Vermonter bent on educational scrutiny of the Nile was everything he should have been. The character of the doctor was impersonated by Edwin Brandt, whose similarity in feature and acting to William Gillette caused excitement in the audience, since it was known that Mr. Gillette was directly engaged in the production. There were insistent calls for the author, due to the announcement that the author would be present, which he was not; and the performance all through assumed the proportions of successful entertainment.
Percy Hammond.
