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It was rumored at the time the bells arrived that three had
been broken in dismounting them from the monastery tower (which,
in Russia, is normally a building separate from the church) and
that the Soviet government had replaced them with unsuitable
substitutes; but Mr. Whittemore
assured me that the set had reached Cambridge exactly as it had
been originally planned, and originally constituted. Russian
campanology, apparently, is rather a haphazard and traditional
affair. The tones of the bells are based not upon a western but
upon an eastern scale, a combination, perhaps, or Byzantine and
Tartar influences. A set of bells, moreover, is seldom cast all
together. In this case the three largest bells were cast first and
the rest collected to fit the basic tone set by these. In
consequence, they differ in date from the three big ones, about
1890, to the oldest, now in the Business School, about 1790. The
workmanship of the three largest is rather stiff and Victorian -
religious pictures and inscriptions in Church Slavonic around the
edges. Interesting, however, are the imperial medals cast in the
edge. The largest had to have its lip filed for the clapper, which
now swings at right angles to the original direction. When the
filed metal was still untarnished it had a very bright color,
evidence, according to the then bell-ringer, Andronoff, of the
high silver content of the bronze. Of the remaining bells, the
most handsome now hangs in the Business School, with winged
cherub's heads of delicate workmanship around the shoulder.
Not only bells, but bell-ringing, had no fixed science. The
art descended in families, often of peasants, who rang
traditionally rather than with any real musical skill. Naturally
each "zvon", differing as it did in number of bells and
tone, presented its own problem. The Soviets sent their most
expert bell-ringer with the bells to supervise their installation
and to play them. He
was said to be the son of a professor of campanology and of a
daughter of a bell-ringer. However
that may be, he had studied engineering in Germany and had
advanced ideas on the subject of bells. He wanted to reduce the
art to a science, and for that purpose hoped to install at Harvard
a set of thirty-four bells, which would give him the range he
desired. His scheme was set forth in a list (not included here)
which gave the bells actually present and those which this man,
Saradjeff, desired. The fourth bell present did not appear on this
list, of which more anon. He was also supposed to have 132
"symphonies" already composed in Moscow for bells, and
to be composing a special one for the inauguration of this "zvon".
Mr. Whittemore claimed that Saradjeff had so accurate an ear for
tone that he could identify by ear the sound of any one of the
4,000 bells in Moscow. Despite his technical qualifications, he
was an unfortunate choice for Harvard, because he had a shy, vague
character, he spoke Russian and a little German and French only,
and his face had been seriously mashed in during the war. This
injury, or heredity, left him with a tendency to epileptic
attacks. All in all, he was not a figure calculated to inspire
enthusiasm and confidence.
In November 1930, Mr. Whittemore told President Lowell that
the bells had arrived in New York, that he had inspected them, and
that they were all right. Some days later they arrived in Boston.
With some difficulty, and after the largest had proved too heavy
for the train- yard crane, they were put on a truck and flat tow,
and brought to Cambridge. The smaller ones were stored in a room
under the entry of Lowell House, and the larger in a shed
remaining from the construction, on the lot next Gore, at the
corner of Mill and Plympton Streets. I well remember how, while
they were unloading them about nine in the evening, one of the
medium ones, slipping gently, broke a workman's leg. Everyone took
the accident more excitedly than the victim, who, after a good
deal of scurrying about on the part of all present, went off in a
police ambulance to the hospital. Some days later there turned up
at the office of President Lowell's secretary a strange figure who
purported to be the bell-ringer. Miss Dwyer, with no foreign
languages at her command, hastily summoned Professor Blake from
the Library. They asked Saradjeff where his baggage was. He
replied, "Where are the bells?" He had apparently come
from Russia simply in the clothes he stood in. He had, moreover,
been warned by the Soviet Government to have nothing to do with
White Russians, and he had the feeling that his family were being
held more or less as hostages for his good behavior. He was not,
therefore, made any easier in his mind when President Lowell
lodged him with a Russian of White proclivities who was lecturing
at the Law School. Nor did it make things easier for his vague
mentality to have to cross Cambridge to Lowell House. It would
have been wiser to have lodged him in the building.
When he was first shown the bells, he said, "You have
one bell that does not belong in the set and you should have
seventeen others." That seemed strange to President Lowell,
who naturally looked for Mr. Whittemore. He, unfortunately, had
departed for Addis Ababa to see Haille Selassie crowned. A cable
sent to await arrival brought the reply that the bells were as
they should be. It then turned out that Saradjeff had understood
that his complete set was to be purchased for him - and Mr.
Whittemore later said than an option had actually been secured on
the remaining bells, but they were never purchased. The bell which
Saradjeff thought did not belong to the set was the fourth, which
had actually been hung with the others, but which he regarded as
too close in tone to the third ever to be rung with the rest of
the set. At any rate, he settled down happily in the basement to
tune his smaller bells so as to bring their approximate tones into
closer harmony. He made life miserable for the residents of J and
K entries by his constant tapping of the bells. He tuned them by
filing niches in the edges, which are still visible in some of the
smaller ones. Bells can be altered in tone by the removal of some
of the metal, but is it usually done by shaving them down on a
lathe.
One day President Lowell and Dr. Davidson found him at his
filing, and thought that he was spoiling the bells, so they
ordered him to stop, which upset him. Many stories circulated
about his behavior. One day he was playing the piano in the Common
Room, and a student, who had been waiting a long time for him to
stop, eventually indicated that he would like to play. Saradjeff
politely got up, but, as the student played, kept pacing up and
down behind him. Eventually he tapped the player on the shoulder,
reached over and struck one note, and went off with an
"Ah" of satisfaction at having found the note he had
apparently been seeking. He used, also, according to gossip, to
appear downstairs in his lodgings in his pajamas about midnight,
and, as they had no piano, would ask to be taken to the
neighbor's, where there was one. Finally, one day, a hectic
student summoned me over to the Common Room with the report that
the Russian was having a fit. I found him passed out in a chair
and slightly drooling at the mouth - the worst of the attack had
passed. I summoned Dr. Means from the Hygiene Department. After
several recurrences of these epileptic attacks he was taken to the
Stilman Infirmary. There, one morning, his sheets were found
covered with ink. When asked the reason, he replied that he had
been drinking it as an antidote for the poison which, he thought,
was being given him. That was too much for President Lowell. With
the assistance of Mr. Whittemore's representative, Mr. Seth Gano,
he persuaded Saradjeff that he had better go home to his family.
He went, and I heard afterwards that he died in a
sanitarium. There are two schools of thought about him - those,
like President Lowell and Mr. Gano, who regarded him as insane,
and those, like Mr. Whittemore, who thought him eccentric but
able. I was much impressed by the judgment of Mr. Myrick, who had
undertaken to hang the bells. He was a hard-headed builder, and
except when an interpreter was handy, could communicate with
Saradjeff only by signs. He said that, as far as he could see,
Saradjeff knew his business, had the practical engineering
training to arrange for the hanging, and was competent. The
interpreter also, a Russian graduate student who was attached to
Saradjeff, was quite fond of him.
Mr. G. L. Myrick had been superintendent of the
construction of Lowell House for the contractors, L. D. Williston
and Co., and as he was out of a job when the building was
completed, he independently took the contract for the hanging of
the bells. Had it not been for the largest, weighing 13 tons, the
task would have been simple, since they could have been hoisted on
a derrick stuck out from the Tower. But he feared that the weight
of the largest, so much off center, might warp the frame of the
Tower. He therefore had to erect a wooden shaft alongside the
Tower, in which the bells could be hoisted up. It took all fall to
erect the shaft, which greatly interfered with passing through the
arch. It was also necessary to remove the partition between the
two western arches of the north side, in order to get the bells
into the Tower. A winch with an elaborate system of blocks was put
at the top of the Tower, since the bells could be raised more
smoothly, if more slowly, by hand power than by engine. By
Christmas, Mr. Myrick had completed his preparations.
Experimentally, he raised the fourth bell first. It was moved on a
runway from the shaft into the Tower, which had been filled with
railway ties up to the level of the sills of the arches to provide
a resting place for the bells. He very kindly hung this bell
temporarily so that Margaret Coolidge and I could ring it to
welcome in the New Year of 1931 - the first occasion on which any
of the bells were officially rung.
Soon thereafter, Saradjeff left, and all that remained to
guide Mr. Myrick was a small plan giving the position of the bells
around the Tower, only on a horizontal plane. Saradjeff had
insisted that the bells be hung in the traditional Russian manner
- no electrical controls which could be played from a nice warm
room below. No, the ringer must stand in all weathers up among his
bells and communicate with them directly by chains, although it
was pointed out to him that chains tend to gallop when struck
frequently and that aeroplane wire would be much better.
A description of the method of playing the bells will make
Mr. Myrick's problem much clearer. The large bell is simple
enough; two men put a rope around the knob at the end of the
clapper, which weighs about 800 pounds, and swing it crossways
between them (not, naturally, from one to the other, as they have
to stand under the bell - a rather deafening position). This sets
the time for whole performance. The Ringer stands with his back to
the big bell on a small platform, his right foot controls a lever
to which are attached chains from the clappers of the next two
bells, so that he can ring them together in unison with the big
bell. This is not easy, as it requires a very accurate sense of
timing. The three bells, thus run together, give a single
fundamental note which continues between beats, and to which the
other bells must be attuned, a rather delicate matter as the note
is composed of a bass tone and a series of overtones. All of the
clappers, save that of the big bell, must be held by their chains
close to the lips of the bells so that a slight blow will make
them ring. They are hung on rawhide, so that their vibration will
not affect the note of the bells. The big clapper is on a wire
rope, although it originally had a metal gadget which is now in
the room under the bells. With his right hand the player holds a
small stick to one end of which is attached the smallest of the
four small bells, and to the others the three remaining, all by
string. By jiggling his hand he makes these tinkle continuously,
and cacophonously, throughout his whole performance. Finally, with
his left hand he strikes in such order and time as he may see fit
(or the rules, if any, proscribe) the chains of the remaining ten
bells. These are attached to a small pillar in front of him in
such a way that they stretch out fanwise, and about the same
vertical angle. Since the bells hang in arches on three sides of
the Tower, the chains have to be carried about, being tied to the
walls with wire reins. Saradjeff left space on the three sides and
all of the fourth side for his remaining 17 bells. The problem
which faced Mr. Myrick was to calculate at what points, and how,
to attach the various chains so that the clappers would all be
equally close to their lips, the angles at the player equal, and
the tensions such that the same pressure on the various chains
would produce similar results at the bells. This he succeeded in
doing with great success.
But before he could go ahead with the hanging of the bells,
various experts were called in. First an English expert, from the
great foundry of Loughborough - Taylor's - which had made the new
bell for Harvard Hall, now in the chapel. (The former Harvard
bell, replaced about 1928, is now in the Business School along
with the fourth Russian bell.) He insisted that only the larger
bells should be hung in the lower part of the tower, and that the
smaller bells should go above. Then a conference was held one cold
winter's night, under the light of a single electric bulb in the
canvas-shielded Tower, with a cavernous dark opening leading into
the shaft, at which appeared President Lowell, Mr. Parkhurst, the
College's superintendent of construction, Mr. Myrick, Mr. Gorokin,
singing teacher at Smith, and a Russian from New York named
Andronoff. It was most eerie to see them discussing the bells
right among the great and ill-lit masses themselves. Andronoff, a
singer from New York, claimed to have rung bells in Russia some
thirty years before. He was a tall, thin, cadaverous man with
horn-rimmed spectacles, almost as odd as Saradjeff, but speaking
broken English. It was finally agreed to hang the bells after
Saradjeff's plan, save that President Lowell insisted that the big
three be hung closer together, so they could be raised up into the
second story enough for the lip of the largest to be above the
sills of the arches, and thus the sound might escape. Andronoff
was engaged to play them once hung. Saradjeff received further
vindication when it was admitted by all the experts that the
fourth bell could not be rung with the others. The Business School
offered to pay for the cost of moving it, if they could have it;
and, at the cost of $4,000 it was hung in their tower, where it
now strikes electrically (peace to the shades of Saradjeff!) for
the change of classes. Mr. Myrick hung the remaining three bells
on heavy oak beams with iron straps. It is said that the largest
bell, when first rung, bent its straps seriously and that they had
to be reinforced. The bells were raised from the railway ties into
position with jacks. Mr. Myrick asserted that they are hung with
full safety for a century or more.
He placed the small ones, as Saradjeff had indicated, in
the arches. By spring he had completed his task, repaired the
broken partition, removed his scaffolding, and sent in his bill
for $17,000. Mr. Parkhurst
forwarded this with some trepidation to Mr. Crane, who had agreed
to pay for the installation, but it was paid without a murmur. It
has never been known what it cost to buy the bells (though I think
I heard that they were bought simply for their value as bronze)
and ship them to Cambridge, but it must have been a tidy sum.
Mr. Andronoff then came to practice up for the opening
concert on Easter Sunday. At once the horrid truth became apparent
- this "zvon" was no carillon or set of chimes, on which
each note could be played independently with some semblance of a
tune. All the bells were rung together, and in particular the big
bell made an uproar so loud that no one could do anything but
listen, while the vibration was distinctly unpleasant in those
parts of the building near to the Tower. Students raged, neighbors
protested, and finally it is said that Andronoff left the Tower
one day just before a policeman appeared to stop him. But after
two weeks practice, he gave his Easter concert. It proved, as
concerts have ever since proved, very disappointing. The big bell,
supposed to be audible for twenty miles as it called the pious to
prayer across the Russian steppes, was not really audible across
Cambridge. From close by, the smaller ones were completely drowned
out by the three bass ones, save for occasional rather meaningless
tinkles. For the remainder of that year and all the next, there
was no official bell- ringer. Perry White and others tried their
hands at them from time to time, and I used to show them off
frequently as well as amuse myself on them, especially after High
Table. But invariably the undergraduates reacted with cat-calls,
alarm-clocks, saxophones, tin-pans, etc., noises to which anyone
in the Tower remained wholly oblivious, but which made the Master
and others worried about the reputation of the House. Eventually
he forbade me from playing the bells. His conscience, however,
afflicted him with the thought that Mr. Crane's gift was going
unappreciated. He therefore got the bells put in charge of the
Department of Music, to whom he could shift the burden of proof
for any complaint; and
he arranged through President Lowell that Mr. Andronoff should
come up two Sundays a month, at Mr. Crane's expense, to play the
bells and to teach two members of the Department of Music to carry
on. This arrangement lasted throughout the winter of 1932-1933
and, I two years, Merritt, of the Department of Music, has been
the only person to play the bells.
The tragedy of the bells was certainly the lack of sympathy
shown to Saradjeff and his eventual dismissal. Had he remained to
hang and play the bells, one would have felt that they had been
properly installed and that the playing, whether one liked it or
not, was correct. Andronoff never inspired much confidence in me.
Mr. Whittemore feels that the bells should have had a separate
campanile across the river. That westerners would ever care for
this type of bell-ringing seems dubious; but in the opera Boris
Goudonov, the hero's crossing from the Palace to the Cathedral for
his coronation is accompanied by music much resembling the ringing
of the Lowell House bells. And in Mexico, I have heard peals rung
all at once, without much rhyme or reason, simply for the effect
of the sound.
But the arrival and installation of the bells, with all the
people and incidents involved, did provide a deal of comic relief,
as well as of interesting speculation, during the first winter
that the House was open, at a time when events had perhaps a more
problematical tone. And the bells have conferred a certain
distinction on Lowell House, even if only to inspire a nickname
for its members - the Bellboys.
Moreover, actually to be in the Tower when the bells are
rung is something of an experience. The ringer looks as though he
were trying, metaphorically, to pat his head and rub his stomach,
as he tries to keep time with both hands and one foot. The big
bell reverberates in one's ears so that one can hardly think.
And the lesser bells have more value than when heard
from afar. |
WHEN, in the fall of 1930, Charles R. Crane offered
to Harvard a set of bells which he had purchased from the Soviet
Government, President Lowell was enthusiastic at the opportunity of
recapturing a little more English atmosphere by having a set of
chimes on which tunes, or at least changes, could be rung. The Tower
of Lowell House, originally designed to have four solid faces with
clocks, was altered to receive the bells by inserting the arches now
there and by strengthening the steel-work to carry the additional
weight. Architecturally, the change somewhat spoiled the solidity of
the tower by making the white cube seem too light to carry the spire
above it. Structurally, the Tower could carry at least 120 tons, as
against the 26 tons the bells weigh, so that those living beneath
need have no fears.