Claude Bissell

8 TRIBUTE TO H. NORTHROP FRYE overcoatand old-fashioned rubber galoshes, slightly tipped tostarboard by the familiar heavy briefcase, as he turned right past the porter's lodge and into House One. It is a refuge broken only occasionally by the shy appearance of a new graduate student bringing news of his home town of Moncton, an equally diffident visiting scholar from Europe or Asia, or more frequently in recent years - radio and television crews trying hard not to be overawed by their illustrious subject. Here most often, the spoken word gives way to the electronic code, a small computer screen on his desk linking his office to the one up the angular staircase above him, where Jane Widdicombe transcribes his message once again for the waiting presses. His loyal secretary, ADC, travel agent, and sometime interceptor for twenty-three years, Jane is the one who most firmly establishes Norrie's presence at Massey. When Jane's bridegroom nervously asked Norrie to give her away at their wedding, he replied, 'No ... but I'll lend her to you.' ThroughJane, theJunior Fellowssent their invitations to Common Room events. Distinguished guests at High Table are known to blench visibly when seated beside Professor Frye. But on these less informal occasions with the Junior Fellows, invariably he makes for the quiet ones who sit outside of the centre, and soon they are eagerly spilling out thoughts on law in Newfoundland, religious studies in Asia, economics, engineering, theatre. Rarely does talk tum to critical theory, but often there is quiet laughter: to have made Northrop Frye shake with silentenjoyment at some verbal nonsense is an achievement ranking next to - perhaps above - a doctorate. And always there is a sympatheticear, cupped earnestly forward so as to miss nothing. Junior and senior scholars alike carry the memory of that warm interest with ihem; years later, greeting him in distant places across the world, the bond is Massey. From its early years, Norrie Frye, scholar, Senior Fellow, a quiet, dependable, encouraging presence, picked his way through the life of Massey College. In the quadrangle, the library, and quiet comers of the Common 'Room, as well as in our memories, he who dared to be wise remains with us still. CLAUDE BISSELL I first met Northrop Frye in 1947 at a dinner given by Ned Pratt, a senior professor ofEnglish at Victoria Collegeand a distinguished Canadian poet. The dinner was in honour of Pratt's youthful colleague, Northrop Frye, whose manuscript on William Blake had just been accepted for publication by the Princeton University Press. Never had an early prediction of great achievement been more triumphantly validated or a literary critic more grandly launched. It was, however, with the publication of Anatomy of TRlBlTfE TO H. NORTHROP FRYE 9 Criticism in 1957 that he became a literary theorist of international renown. From that time onward, almost every literary critic took note of Frye, often as a master to be extolled, occasionally as a heretic to be assessed. Frye's international fame never weakened his loyalties to his college and university. The farther from home he went, the more he was attached to it. I should like to say a few things about what I might call the do.mestic side of Frye. I never heard Frye as a teacher in the classroom. 1regret that when I was a young lecturer at University College, 1never walked across the campus to hear one of his famous undergraduate lectures on the Bible, about which generations ofstudents have spoken and written with delight and with awe at the dazzling fluency. Like many of you, I heard him many times on university ceremonial occasions when he was the public speaker rather than the formal lecturer. This gave him the chance to show the wit, often sardonic, with which his friends were acquainted. For instance, he began his installation speech as Principal of Victoria College in this way: 'I am a little startled to find myself being installed; I would have thought that an honour reserved for more massive piecesofequipment, like presidents and refrigerators: The attachment to college and university broadened naturally into attachment to his country and its literature. I remind you of...