How did the Russian bells get to Lowell House? (part 1)

A note on Russian bells. By the decree of June 30, 1918 ringing of bells was prohibited and considered counterrevolutionary probably because of their religious symbolism, and “revolutionary tribunals” tried guilty parties. Four years later removal of bells from isolated churches and monasteries had begun and some were melted for “industrial purposes.” In 1929 the Soviet encouraged selling church bells to foreigners to raise cash. At that time it was estimated that the weight of all the bells in the USSR was 2 million tons. Only in 1929 did bell melting begin on a large scale, and in the year 1934 a total of 190,000 tons was melted. One can assume that the bells of the Danilov Monastery were at risk, but there is no reason to believe that they were immediately threatened. What Whittemore learned in 1927 was in all probability the knowledge that Russian bells from churches and monasteries could be bought. Being a man of taste and discretion, he chose to acquire an important zvon, bells belonging to a monastery with tremendous cultural importance and religious significance. It has been asserted, incorrectly, that Crane was in Russia in 1928, saw the Danilov bells on the ground and took steps to rescue them. That legend has no basis in fact.

Another note, this one on the mosaics of Hagia Sophia. How did Whittemore know where in the church to look for the lost mosaics? It appears that he learned of the work of the Fossati brothers, architects and engineers, from Bellinzona in the Swiss Ticine. Hired in 1847 by Sultan Abdul Medjid to clean and restore Hagia Sophia, they came upon the first mosaic by chance while cleaning plaster from a wall. The Sultan, dazzled by the golden cubes in the mosaic, ordered removal of plaster from all the ancient mosaics. When cleaning was complete, the Sultan realized that the human figures in all the mosaics conflicted with Muslim customs, and ordered that the mosaics again be covered with plaster. Before complying, Fossati made drawings and watercolors of the mosaics. Some of these paintings were published as lithographs in London in 1852 and the originals remained in the Fossati archives in the Bellinzona archives. Whittemore probably visited the Ballinzana archives and obtained enough information to formulate a successful work plan. What he found in Istanbul was mosaics covered with plaster and lime, and what he left was the Justinian mosaics largely in their original splendor.

Why did Crane give the bells to Harvard? He was not a Harvard graduate. (Crane did get an honorary degree from Harvard in 1921). Among the Lowell letters, there is no correspondence with Crane until after the bells were in Cambridge. Four months before Whittemore writes, “I have bought the bells” and on April 30, 1930, while Lowell House was being built, Crane, in the company of President Lowell, looked approvingly at the site where the bells would be hung. In the Crane archives there is no correspondence relating to the bells of the Danilov Monastery until April 1930.

On January 15, 1929 Julian Lowell Coolidge was appointed Master of a House later called Lowell House. Between that day and the date when students first occupied the House, Coolidge participated in all aspects of building the House and there are innumerable items of correspondence between him and President Lowell and between him and the architect, yet among all those documents I have been unable to find any referring to the bells with Coolidge’s name on it. Why was Lowell so secretive?

In favor of the purchase in June 1928 rather than June 1930, is the fact that in January 1930, Harvard altered the plans for the Lowell house tower to accommodate the bells. This is five months before the Whittemore letter to Gano in June 1930 saying, “I have bought the bells.” The text of that letter could be misleading for it did not say, “I have ‘just’ bought the bells.” If bought in June 1928, Crane could not have obtained the bells with the intention of placing them in Lowell House since the money for the Houses came only five months later, after the first meeting between President Lowell and Harkness on October 24, 1928. There were neither Houses nor plans for houses in June 1928. Which meant that Crane had to peddle the bells after he bought them. Under these circumstances, why is there no correspondence about the bells as he sought a place to hang them outside Russia? He was not the sort of man to get on the phone and call friends. He wrote letters.

Though we learn much about the bells, in the end we are defeated. The secret of the bells remains intact. We know neither the transaction by which the bells were acquired or how they came to reside in a bell tower in Cambridge.

When Whittemore died in 1950, by his will, he left correspondence to the Byzantine Institute in Paris, the organization he had established in 1930. His letters apparently were moved several times and ended up in the Byzantine Bibliothиque (part of the Bibliothиque Nationale) in Paris, where Ermolov, the surviving executor of the will, worked until his death in 1985. Scrutiny of these letters should have helped unscramble this riddle. A recent search for them has proven futile. They have simply disappeared. His diaries went to Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, now a part of Harvard University by virtue of a gift, but they contain only professional materials, no letters.

An Internet search identified a grandson of Seth Gano living in the Gano summer home in Maine. He informed me that he had an extensive correspondence between Gano and Whittemore, which he would share. For reasons as yet unexplained, further correspondence was not possible.

P.S. A manuscript in Russian without a date or author begins in translation as follows: “In 1930, two Americans turned up at the door step of Konstantin Solomonovich with an offer for his son, Mr. Saradjev, to travel to the United States. They promised to purchase bells in the Soviet Union and then transport them to America where a bell tower was being constructed at Harvard.” Could the two men have been Crane and Whittemore? Attractive as that idea seems, it is manifestly untrue since we know during the period 1927–1930 Whittemore was communicating with Crane in New York by cable. In this same document, the American visa for Saradjev is reported to have read as follows: “Citizen of a country which is not recognized by the United States of America is hereby permitted to temporarily enter the country for a period of 12 months in the capacity of a bell expert.” The remainder of the text makes little sense to me, but seems to be an excerpt from a biography of Saradjev. This manuscript was mailed to me as an attachment to e-mail by my correspondent in Moscow. I have been unable to reestablish contact with him.

Sources

Harvard University Archives
Harvard University Information Office
Fogg Museum
Harvard Office of Planning and Real Estate
Lowell House Scrap Books and “Bell Ringers’” archives
Office of General Counsel, Harvard University
Charles Richard Crane Papers, Bakhmeteff Archive of Russian and East European History and Culture, Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Columbia University, New York
Shepley, Bullfinch, Architects, Boston
Boston Public Library
Harvard Crimson Archives
Margaret Picher, Biographer of Charles Crane, Boulder CO
Vladimir Korzh, Member “Eurocarilon”, Moscow
Moira Lovegrove, Archivist staff, INGBarings, London
Catherine Piganiol, Conservateur-en-Chef, Bibliotheque Byzantine (Fond Thomas Whittemore), Paris
Tufts University Archives
National Archives, Washington DC, Boston Harbor & New York Harbor
John Burnett, Executive Manager, Blagovest Russian Church Bells
Rockefeller Archives Center, Pocantino Hills, NY, Thomas Rosenbaum
Georgetown University
Dumbarton Oaks, Washington DC
Time Magazine, March 9, 1931
The Lowell House Belles of Charles Crane, Wm. J. Carter, Yankeetown, FL
Naissance d’une vocation: aux sources de la carriere byzantine de Thomas Whittemore; Remi Labrusse & Nadia
Podzemskaia, Dumbarton Oaks Papers. Number fifty-four, 2000.
William L. MacDonald, Historian, Byzantine art; Biographer of Thomas Whittemore
Mosaics of Hagia Sophia, Istanbul, Natalia B. Terteriatnikov
Dumbarton Oaks Research Library Collection,1998

Illustrations

Figures 1, 2, 3, & 6
From the Charles Richard Crane Papers, Bakhmeteff Archive of Russian and East European History and Culture, Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Columbia University, New York, NY.
Figures 4, 5, & 7
From the Harvard University Archives, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA.