Bellboys and Tailors

Sailors like to tell of unlucky ships, and mystics speak of Egyptian charms which wreak misfortune upon their owners. Local residents might claim that the Lowell House bells are an equal nemesis. If nothing else, they have been roundly cursed by two decades of Harvard undergraduates.

Since their installation in 1931, the bells have intermittently groaned and bonged their way to notoriety. Afternoon and evening concerts, which were frequent in the '30's, usually brought Lowell residents into the courtyard, armed with noisemakers and determined to drown out the uproar in the tower. Their efforts were unsuccessful. On a clear day, the bells could be heard for fifteen miles, and if conditions were exceptionally favorable, the radius of total destruction was reputed to be forty-two. House Master Julian Coolidge, who hardly shared President Lowell's enthusiasm for the bells, once complained that when rung they cracked his plaster.

Lowell, who was a fanatic for bells, nearly dropped his copy of De Tintinnabulis when Charles Crane offered to supply Harvard with one genuine set of Russian church bells. The two men measured Lowell House tower, and discovered that there would be just enough room for twenty-seven tone worth, cast in eighteen different sizes and shapes. On October 10, 1930 the bells arrived in Cambridge. The work of Mr. Crane, who had gone to some little trouble importing them from Leningrad, seemed near completion.

Long before his donation, Crane had developed a taste for the Asiatic. While studying at Stevens Institute in Hoboken, he caught malaria, and was sent to the East to recuperate. Upon returning, he declared "I will spend the rest of my life studying Asia." Spending the next few years as President of the Crane Plumbing Company in Chicago, he managed a few trips to Russia. Prior to the Revolution, Crane began a movement within the Orthodox Church to repeal all dogma and ritual added since the Romanoffs. Success was nearly at hand when the Bolsheviks stormed Leningrad. All Crane could salvage from his dream were the church bells which he gave to Harvard.

The difficulties involved in getting the bells into the tower proved so great, however, that many wondered whether Crane's effort had been worthwhile. A group of men spent four hours moving the largest one, a fourteen ton affair, from its truck, and it nearly crashed to the ground anyway. All the bells were stored in a shack near Gore Hall while scaffolding was built along the sides of the tower. One winter alone was consumed in hoisting the carillon to its final perch.

Once in place, the bells needed a rigging of wires, levers, and foot pedals for operation. A Russian expert, Saradjeff, was brought from the fatherland to devise the system. With typical Rissian ingenuity, he planned a complex scheme which no one has since been able to figure out. It was reported, at the time, that Saradjeff himself forgot how the mechanism worked, took to fits, and was found drinking ink in the Lowell House Common Room. He was sent back to Russia.

Despite the complexities, the bells have been played. But people who had expected sounds akin to a melodious carillon were soon disappointed. Russian bells are not strictly carillons. They were invented by monks several centuries ago, and only sixteen different pieces of music have been written for them. The sounds are strangely dissonant and have been described as both "Savagely primitive" and "godawful." Since few players know the original music, they must resort to improvising. This is especially difficult since, according to the terms of the gift, the bells must be played in the Russian manner. When the monks rang them, they kept the largest bell swinging continually, its deep bass forming a background for the rest of the weird chorus. Operators claim that once the big bell get going, they are unable to hear anything else.

After the first few concerts and much publicity, the bells became something of a joke to the students. One Lowell House prankster sent a letter to President Franklin Roosevelt informing him that the Russian bells would be christened "The Roosevelt Bells." Shortly after, Master Coolidge received a gracious thank-you note and was forced to rectify the error. The President, in a return letter, said: "I am not in the least perturbed about the name of the bells because, strictly between ourselves, I should much prefer to have a puppy-dog or a baby named after me than one of those carillon effects that is never quite in tune and which goes off at all hours of the day and night! At least one can give paragoric to a puppy or a baby."

A more musical critic however, Archibald T. Davison, has admired the Lowell bells for their uniqueness and regrets their little use. "If only," he once remarked, "someone could find an appropriate time to practice them. Perhaps the Fourth of July."