Wilson-Harris
The Englishman at the Burguete inn — a war veteran who fishes with Jake and Bill and can barely say what the five days meant to him.
To pay for the wine, and to be asked back. He will not let Jake Barnes or Bill Gorton buy a round, because doing it himself gives him pleasure, and what he takes from the evening is their promise that the three of them will fish together again some time.
The book
At a glance
- English veteran on a fishing holiday, met at the inn at Burguete
- The Burguete chapters only; he passes on the fiesta
- On foot, over the pass from Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port
- Three-handed bridge with Jake and Bill at the inn
- Spanish quite well — well enough that the innkeeper won't take the Americans' money
Who they are in the book
Spoiler-freeHarris — Wilson-Harris in full — is the stranger the fishing chapters make room for: an Englishman met at the Burguete inn, a veteran like the others, who falls in with Jake and Bill for five days of trout and evening cards. He stands his rounds, ties good flies, and attaches himself to the two Americans with a shy, increasing warmth the book lets bloom without comment.
His farewell is the point of him. Pressing a dozen hand-tied flies on each of them, he manages, with English difficulty, to say that the week has meant more to him than anything since the war — and the sentence, half-swallowed, names exactly what the Burguete idyll is: the one interval of uncomplicated friendship in the book, visible most clearly to the man about to be left out of the rest of it. He declines Pamplona; the fiesta, the reader comes to understand, would have wasted him.
How the book draws them
- The reticenceFeeling arrives sideways, in rounds bought and flies given — the book's most English emotional transaction.
- The giftHand-tied flies pressed on both men at parting — payment, keepsake, and confession in one envelope.
- The nameOnly at the last round does he mention that his name is not really Harris but Wilson-Harris. Bill's answer is that they call him Harris because they are fond of him, and that settles it.
- The monasteryAt Roncesvalles he admits he is not much on those sort of places, then insists he would not have missed it, then spots a pub across the way and proposes they utilize it — a word he has caught from Bill within the week.
- The cardAt the bus he hands over his card: London address, his club, and his business address. The one man in the novel who has all three and offers them without irony.
- The deprecationThe flies are not first-rate at all, he says, handing them over; he only thought that fishing them some time might remind the others what a good time they had. Then he stands in front of the post office and waves the bus away.