How did the Russian bells get to Lowell House? (part 1)
For almost three quarters of a century seventeen bells from the Danilov Monastery in Moscow have hung in the tower of Lowell House at Harvard. The story of the bells and how they made their way to Harvard is a tale that weaves through three continents, four national capitols, and numerous troves of documents. Following the trail is made needlessly difficult because snippets of information lacking a pedigree circulate as fact merely because of iteration. On stage are Charles Richard Crane, a man of affairs, Thomas Whittemore, archeologist and historian, and A. Lawrence Lowell, an educator, scion of an ancient Boston Brahmin family, who was blessed with determination turning at times to stubbornness, and the intellect, as well as the strength of character needed to dominate and lead Harvard University.
Only in a fable would the lives of three such different men intersect. That story would then go on to tell that they had made common cause to hang Russian monastery bells in the tower of Lowell House. In real life each was a busy professional, and the episode of the bells a mere staccato event and hardly remarked. But the bells are prominent in the history of Lowell House. They help form the image and even the character of the House, and accordingly a search into their origin seems justified. Till now, we have had only a casual chronicle which records that Charles Crane purchased the bells of the Danilov Monastery in Moscow, used Thomas Whittemore as his agent in that transaction, and then gave the bells to Harvard. That tale while true, fails in its simplicity to acknowledge a story considerably more complex and skirts the key question of how this all came to pass. A more complete story probably begins in 1916 in Boston where funds were being sought to help desperate refugees, victims of a Russian army retreating eastward across Galicia, and it ends fifteen years later on Holyoke Street in Cambridge where the masterpiece of architect Charles Allerton Coolidge is under construction. By reviewing the careers of Crane and of Whittemore we could hope to learn the reason these men sought the bells, and by searching archives we expect to find out why the bells came to Harvard.
Charles Crane, industrialist, humanitarian and diplomat, was, at the turn of the century, a respected political figure in the United States. By 1904, he had established himself as a widely traveled and knowledgeable specialist in Middle Eastern and Russian affairs. President Taft hoped to appoint him his minister to China (1909) but the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations disagreed. As early as 1900, Crane had become involved in urban and national politics. He was, in 1912, the largest single supporter of the Wilson campaign for the presidency. Early in his second term (April 2, 1917) Wilson had severed relations with Germany but not yet declared war, and hoped that the Russian Provisional Government under Kerensky, would maintain the Eastern front and give the United States time to arm. For that purpose he formed in May of that year the Special Diplomatic Mission to Russia headed by Elihu Root and asked Crane, who was already in Petrograd (St. Petersburg), to serve on the Committee. By August, it was clear that the mission was futile and accordingly the Committee was dissolved.
At Versailles Crane was at the side of President Wilson and following the Peace Conference, Crane served on the “Inter-Allied Commission on Mandates in Turkey,” a committee charged with deciding the fate of Palestine. Early in 1920, Wilson appointed Crane the US minister to China. With the election of Harding the following year, Crane resigned his post and in 1921 began his trek home from Peping (Beijing) across Asia to Paris. Traveling in two railroad cars he had purchased and furnished, he was accompanied by his son John and Donald M. Brodie, who later became his office manager in New York. Their route across Manchuria passed through Harbin where he chanced to meet up with his friend Thomas Whittemore who was assisting a population of Russian refugees. From Harbin, Crane headed toward Moscow. In his trip diary Crane commentated on the mysterious and compelling sounds of Russian bells that he heard as he entered the Russian city of Rostov. This memory stayed with him for the rest of his life. Crane visited Russia many times, the first when he was just 19 years of age, and he had a profound feeling for Russian culture, Russian bells, and the Russian Orthodox Church. He maintained friendships in Russia even after the fall of the Tsarist government and when possible, sent funds to friends surreptitiously, frequently through the agency of Thomas Whittemore.
Thomas Whittemore, Tufts College ’94 and Harvard Graduate School,’98 was a peripatetic archeologist, and a student of Byzantine art. A friend of his had written: “Whittemore is never in a place; he was, he will be, he comes from and is going to but never will be here.” A professor of history at Tufts University, he also taught at Columbia University and at New York University. By some reports he was a man of independent though modest means and was certainly a member of that brotherhood of adventurous archeologists that peopled the first quarter of the 20th century. He seemed to acquire access wherever he moved and attracted the friendship of the wealthy as well as of statesmen, artists and writers. On the other hand his reputation as a scholar was indifferent, an assessment believed by his admirers to be in large measure a reflection of his reclusive tendency, and to those less friendly he had an air of worldliness and even superficiality in his work. During the first weeks of World War I he found himself in France apparently near the front lines and was able to bring succor to French families stranded by the war. It is reported that in the French port cities of Calais and Boulogne he came upon wounded soldiers waiting for transport across the Channel. They were cold and hungry and Whittemore managed to bring them “tea and biscuits.” In 1915 he was in Galicia, a section of Eastern Europe with indeterminate boundaries, covering parts of Poland as well as the Ukraine, Hungary and Austria. Battles had seared the countryside and a retreating Russian army commanded by Archduke Nicholas practiced a scorched earth campaign, leaving little food or shelter for the indigenous population. Whittemore was there with the hope of alleviating suffering. He cabled to America to raise money and in 1916 returned to America and solicited funds on the lecture circuit where he spoke to the desperate plight of the refugees in Galicia.
Having been successful in gaining resources, he headed back to Europe through Russia.Although the allies had placed an embargo on all goods destined for Russia, Whittemore was able to enter via Japan and then Siberia. With him he had “60 cases of provisions and thousands of dollars.” He arrived in Petrograd two days before the Russian revolution broke out on March 14, 1917, and witnessed the carnage of these first days. On March 17 he wrote to Crane with details of what he had seen.
In the fall of 1921, he was in Harbin, and then an exit city for terrified White Russian refugees, who, fearing for their lives, fled Soviet Russia. Bereft of clothing, money and food, they congregated in Harbin hoping to reach a safe harbor. As recorded in Crane’s memoirs, Whittemore was there and had found a way to help. He commandeered a railroad car, filled it with milk and chocolate, which he then proceeded to distribute to hungry children. In 1921, with support from Crane, Whittemore had founded “The Committee for the Education of Russian Youth in Exile in Europe,” a program to assist White Russian йmigrйs. The Committee survived until 1930. In that year (1930), he founded the Byzantine Institute with offices in Boston, Istanbul and Paris with funds from Crane, as well as from a carefully chosen group of wealthy Americans. Among this group was Seth Gano, (Harvard ’08) a Boston based businessman, who managed Whittemore’s affairs during his many trips abroad. In 1930, Gano assumed the role of intermediary between Whittemore and Harvard during the process of securing the bells and he was to be, along with Boris Ermoloff, a Russian expatriate, an executor of Whittemore’s estate. Ermolov in later years became the librarian of the Byzantine Institute in Paris.
In between his many acts of mercy, Whittemore participated in archeological digs in Egypt, the Balkans and the Near East. The year 1931 witnessed his crowning achievement. He gained permission from Mustafa Kemal Attaturk, the Turkish dictator, to close the Great Church, (Hagia Sophia) and the Chora Monastery in Constantinople and let him work in them. There he uncovered and consolidated mosaics dating from the 6th century when Justinian built the great church. They were obscured and covered with plaster and lime. A friend to Harvard, he donated his priceless assembly of Byzantine coins and medals to the Fogg Museum, a gift Harvard acknowledged by making him a non-salaried curator of the collection. Whittemore’s professional commitment was to the art of Byzantium but his emotional allegiance was to Russian culture, the Orthodox Church and Russian intellectuals trapped in the Soviet state. From their first meeting till the death of Crane in 1939, Whittemore apparently enjoyed the romantic nature of the clandestine help these two men gave to Russian nationals. Crane had the cash and Whittemore the daring do.
It is unclear from the available documents when Crane and Whittemore met for the first time. Certainly it was before March 1917, when Whittemore in Petrograd wrote a rather formal letter to Crane describing events he had witnessed at the beginning of the Russian revolution. He addressed Crane as “Mr. Crane” whereas in later letters his salutation is more informal and he uses terms of affection. It is most likely that they met in Boston at some time during 1916, when Whittemore had returned to America to raise money for refugees in Galicia.
What Crane, Whittemore and Lowell had in common were bells. Crane and Whittemore, steeped in Russian culture and religion, were anxious to preserve both, and Russian bells, religious and cultural icons, were surely appropriate candidates. Though hardly interested in preserving Tsarist artifacts, President Lowell, as reported in Time magazine in 1931, had a deep interest in bells and bell casting and was familiar with the literature on campanology, a knowledge that did not, however, include Russian bells. He is said to have had among his books the primer “De Tintinnabulis” by the 16th century Bell-Master, Hieronymus Magius.
