10 September: Boreham on Bells

The Melodies That Linger
It was on the afternoon of September 10, 1517 that, according to old Ebenezer Barrington, a peal of bells was first heard from the belfry of a parish church in England. In his "Here, There, and Everywhere," Lord Frederic Hamilton comments on the poignancy and permanence of the influence of bells. He has been particularly impressed, for example, by the length of time that the reverberating hum of a great bell will linger in the air. The same phenomenon intrigues the fancy of Charles Lamb and he discoursed upon it with characteristic charm. How, one wonders, is the peculiar appeal of bells to be explained? And from whence do they derive their distinctive genius for spanning the tyrannical chasms of time? Everybody is familiar with the stimulating effect of their harmony upon the memory.

In his autobiography, Frank T. Bullen says that, in his early days before the mast, nothing made him so homesick as the sound of bells. As the ship lay at anchor in some unfamiliar port, a peal from a nearby belfry would send his mind flying back across the oceans and across the years; his rough and roving sea life would be left worlds behind; and the surge of emotion would be almost uncontrollable.

The bells annihilate both space and time, linking up lives that stand severed by the despotism of circumstance. In his "Golden Legend," Longfellow describes Prince Henry and Elsie standing in the twilight on the terrace of the old castle at Vautsberg on the Rhine. Suddenly they catch the strains of distant bells. Elsie asks what bells they are. The Prince replies:

They are the bells of Geisenheim,
That, with their melancholy chime
Ring
out the curfew of the sun.

And then he adds:

Dear Elsie, many years ago,
Those same soft bells at eventide
Rang in the
ears of Charlemagne
As, seated at Fastrada's side,
At Ingleheim, in all
his pride,
He heard their sound with secret pain.

Thus, through the melodious medium of the bells, the royal lovers on the terrace cross the long centuries that intervene and enter into communion with those other royal lovers of an earlier time.

Does Eloquence Of Bells Originate In Ourselves?
Did the great iron bells as they swung in the belfry of that foreign port know anything of the lump that they had brought to the throat of the homesick sailor boy who was burnishing the brasses of his ship? Did the bells of Geisenheim know anything of the loves of Charlemagne and his Fastrada, of Prince Henry and his Elsie?

Our reverie of speculation puts us in excellent company, for Paul Dombey expensively pondered a very similar problem. He submitted it to a workman whom he found mending the great clock on the stairs. "He asked the man," Dickens tells us, "a multitude of questions about the chimes; as whether people watched up in the lonely church steeples by night to arrange their melodies; and how it came to pass that the bells were rung when people died; and whether they were different bells from wedding bells or only sounded different in the fancies of the living." In this last question of his, Paul probes to the very heart of the psychological question. Do the bells say the things that they seem to say or do they only seem to say them? Did the bells in that distant part speak to Frank Bullen of his distant home? Did the bells of Geisenheim murmur of love to the lovers on the castle towers? To ask such questions is to answer them.

The bells take us as they find us and set us to music; that is all. Paul Dombey, who died young, half suspected it, and Trotty Veck of "The Chimes," who lived to be old, proved it from experience and proved it to the hilt. When things were going badly with Trotty, and the magistrate said that he and those like him ought to be put down with the utmost rigour of the law, the chimes, when they pealed suddenly out, made the air ring with the refrain: "Put' em down! Put 'em down! Facts and figures! Fact and figures!"

"If," says Dickens, "the chimes said anything, they said this, and they said it until Trotty's brain fairly reeled." Later in the story, we have the same chimes and the same people listening to them. But this time all is going well. Meg and Richard are to be married on the morrow, and Trotty is at the height of his felicity. Suddenly, the chimes ring out. They seem to go mad with merriment. The bells are simply themselves articulate.

Where Are The Notes That Seem To Die?
In his "Cheapside to Arcady," Mr. Arthur Scammell suggests that the music of the bells has in it a subtle element of deathlessness. It awakens the echoes of all the infinities and all the eternities. No limit can be set to the ambit and duration of those vibrations that so beguiled the fancy of Lord Frederic Hamilton. Mr. Scammell points out that, long after the last stroke of the bell is heard in the building beneath the tower, the sound survives in the belfry in a protracted diminuendo.

How long will it be before that vibrant hum is completely extinguished? All through the night the air about the bells may still be throbbing with faint echoes and reverberations; and, if for an hour or a night, why not for a year or a century? The sound of the very first ringing of these old bells may yet lisp against the walls and roof in infinitesimal vibrations. The tower may be alive with the thin ghosts of all the joyous and mournful notes that have endeared and embittered the sound of bells to human hearts since the pageant of time began.

It is a pleasing field in which to let the fancy wander. For, following the same line of argument, who is to say that the chimes that, a mile distant, fall so tunefully upon the ear do not haunt the air a hundred, even a thousand miles away, with microscopic trillings and tremblings of their delicious melodies? It may be merely due to the grossness of our perceptive faculties that we, on this side of the world, do not catch, without adventitious aids, the pealing of Bow Bells?

And, if Mr. Scammell's philosophy be true of bells, why not of other sounds? Pondering his arresting suggestion, we find it easier to understand the inspired declaration that whatsoever is spoken in darkness shall be heard in the light whilst that which is whispered in the ear shall be shouted from the house tops. The universe boasts a few deathless treasures and Lord Frederic Hamilton's remark seems to furnish a clue to the identity of one of them.

F W Boreham

Image: Church bells