the Pilgrim T-shirt

The Pilgrim T-shirt is the white garment that appears midway through Harold Fry's journey, when his solitary walk has already attracted a band of followers and the attention of the press. It is the material emblem of the moment Harold's private pilgrimage is transformed into a public, branded event. The T-shirt is introduced by Rich Lion, the self-appointed leader of the pilgrims, who announces that something is needed to distinguish the real pilgrims from their followers. Rich has been in touch with an old friend in PR, who owes him a favour; that friend has contacted the distributors of a health drink, and they are delighted to provide all official walkers with T-shirts bearing the word PILGRIM on the front and back. The T-shirts are available in white and come in three sizes. Kate, one of the pilgrims, immediately scoffs at the choice of colour: 'White?' she says. 'Where are we going to wash these things?' Rich defends the design, insisting that white stands out and that its image is pure. The exchange captures the absurdity of the enterprise: a pilgrimage of grief and atonement is being outfitted like a corporate promotional campaign, complete with a colour scheme chosen for visibility and a purity that nobody in the group can actually maintain on the road.

The T-shirt and the Branding of the Pilgrimage

The T-shirt is the culmination of a process of commodification that begins long before Rich's announcement. Harold's story is first reported in the Coventry Telegraph on a slack news day, then taken up by a radio phone-in programme, several local newspapers including the South Hams Gazette, where it is given the front three pages, and finally one or two of the nationals. The walk becomes the theme of Thought for the Day on Radio 4 and spawns leading articles about the nature of the modern pilgrimage, quintessential England, and the pluck of the Saga generation. People talk about it in shops, playgrounds, parks, pubs, parties and offices. The story catches the imagination, just as Mick, the young man who first photographs Harold, had promised his editor it would. As it spreads, its details begin to shift and grow: some people report that Harold is in his early seventies, others that he has learning difficulties; sightings are made of him in Cornwall and Inverness, as well as Kingston upon Thames and the Peak District. The T-shirt is the physical form this distortion takes. Where the media reshape Harold's story, the T-shirt reshapes Harold himself, turning a man walking to save a dying friend into a uniformed representative of a cause he never chose. The word PILGRIM printed on the fabric declares an identity that Harold has never claimed for himself; he has only ever insisted on putting one foot in front of the other.

Harold's Rejection of the T-shirt

Harold's relationship with the T-shirt is one of quiet, persistent refusal. After the splintering of the pilgrims, when the group has fractured and the followers have gone their separate ways, Harold removes the pilgrim T-shirt and retrieves his shirt and tie from his rucksack. They are screwed up and very worn now, but putting them on feels like being himself again. He wonders whether he should take the T-shirt to Queenie as a further souvenir, but it does not feel right to carry something that has caused such dispute. Instead he slips it in a bin when no one is looking. The gesture is small and unobserved, but it is decisive. The T-shirt, which Rich had designed to distinguish the real pilgrims from their followers, is discarded by the one man who actually is a pilgrim. Harold's worn shirt and tie, the clothes he set out in, are restored to him as the garments of his true self. The act of binning the T-shirt is a repudiation not only of Rich's branding but of the entire apparatus of publicity that has grown up around his walk. It is also a return to the principles Harold articulated early in his journey: that he must remain true to the feeling that inspired him in the first place, that it does not matter that other people would do it in a different way, and that he would stick to his yachting shoes because, despite the wear and tear, they are his. The T-shirt is the opposite of everything Harold has learned to value. It is not his; it is a uniform issued by a stranger, and wearing it would make him a follower of his own pilgrimage.

The T-shirt and the Fate of the Pilgrims

The T-shirt's story does not end with Harold's rejection of it. A week after the split, reports come of the pilgrims' arrival in Berwick-upon-Tweed. There are photographs in the newspapers of Rich Lion walking hand in hand with his two sons along the quay, and others of a man in a gorilla suit nuzzling the cheek of Miss South Devon. There is a brass band to welcome the party, with a performance by the local cheerleading troupe, and a dinner attended by local councillors and businessmen. Several Sunday papers claim to have sole access to Rich's diaries, and there is talk of a film. The T-shirt, in other words, has done its work. It has made the pilgrims into a spectacle, complete with costumes, entertainment and press coverage. But the spectacle is hollow. The pilgrims reach Berwick without Harold, and without the faith that gave his walk its meaning. They arrive as performers, not pilgrims, and the T-shirt is the costume that marks the difference. Harold, by contrast, reaches Berwick alone, wearing his own worn clothes, and his arrival at St Bernadine's Hospice is an event of an entirely different order. The contrast between the brass band and the quiet hospice, between the gorilla suit and the yachting shoes, is the novel's final judgment on the T-shirt and everything it represents.

The T-shirt as a Symbol of the Modern Pilgrimage

The T-shirt is the novel's sharpest image of what happens to faith when it becomes public. Harold's walk is, from the beginning, a private act of devotion. He sets out to post a letter to Queenie Hennessy, who is dying of cancer, and his promise to walk to Berwick-upon-Tweed is made in a phone box, in a voice stripped away, appealing to his wife Maureen with a childlike 'Please. I need to do this, Maureen.' The walk is sustained by a fragile faith, the belief that as long as he walks, Queenie must live. It is a faith that Harold himself acknowledges is fragile, and it is tested by the physical hardships of the road: the blisters he binds with duct tape, the nights spent in barns and woodsheds, the wind and weather he walks through beneath sun-bleached skies. The T-shirt is the antithesis of this private, bodily faith. It is a garment designed for visibility, for being seen, and its whiteness is a claim to purity that the road itself refutes. When Harold puts it on, he becomes part of a spectacle; when he takes it off, he becomes himself again. The T-shirt is also a reminder of the media machinery that Mick set in motion when he photographed Harold on his mobile phone, and that the Coventry Telegraph amplified until Harold's walk became the theme of Thought for the Day. The T-shirt is the point at which the story stops being Harold's and becomes the public's. It is the uniform of a pilgrimage that no longer belongs to the pilgrim.