0564
0564f
A Bell's Biography
A BELL'S BIOGRAPHY
By
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Hearken to our neighbor with the iron tongue. While I sit musing over my
sheet of foolscap, he emphatically tells the hour, in tones loud enough
for all the town to hear, though doubtless intended only as a gentle hint
to myself, that I may begin his biography before the evening shall be
further wasted. Unquestionably, a personage in such an elevated
position, and making so great a noise in the world, has a fair claim to
the services of a biographer. He is the representative and most
illustrious member of that innumerable class, whose characteristic
feature is the tongue, and whose sole business, to clamor for the public
good. If any of his noisy brethren, in our tongue-governed democracy, be
envious of the superiority which I have assigned him, they have my free
consent to hang themselves as high as he. And, for his history, let not
the reader apprehend an empty repetition of ding-dong-bell.
He has been the passive hero of wonderful vicissitudes, with which I have
chanced to become acquainted, possibly from his own mouth; while the
careless multitude supposed him to be talking merely of the time of day,
or calling them to dinner or to church, or bidding drowsy people go
bedward, or the dead to their graves. Many a revolution has it been his
fate to go through, and invariably with a prodigious uproar. And whether
or no he have told me his reminiscences, this at least is true, that the
more I study his deep-toned language, the more sense, and sentiment, and
soul, do I discover in it.
This bell--for we may as well drop our quaint personification--is of
antique French manufacture, and the symbol of the cross betokens that it
was meant to be suspended in the belfry of a Romish place of worship.
The old people hereabout have a tradition, that a considerable part of
the metal was supplied by a brass cannon, captured in one of the
victories of Louis the Fourteenth over the Spaniards, and that a Bourbon
princess threw her golden crucifix into the molten mass. It is said,
likewise, that a bishop baptized and blessed the bell, and prayed that a
heavenly influence might mingle with its tones. When all due ceremonies
had been performed, the Grand Monarque bestowed the gift--than which none
could resound his beneficence more loudly--on the Jesuits, who were then
converting the American Indians to the spiritual dominion of the Pope.
So the bell,--our self-same bell, whose familiar voice we may hear at all
hours, in the streets,--this very bell sent forth its first-born accents
from the tower of a log-built chapel, westward of Lake Champlain, and
near the mighty stream of the St. Lawrence. It was called Our Lady's
Chapel of the Forest. The peal went forth as if to redeem and consecrate
the heathen wilderness. The wolf growled at the sound, as he prowled
stealthily through the underbrush; the grim bear turned his back, and
stalked sullenly away; the startled doe leaped up, and led her fawn into
a deeper solitude. The red men wondered what awful voice was speaking
amid the wind that roared through the tree-tops; and, following
reverentially its summons, the dark-robed fathers blessed them, as they
drew near the cross-crowned chapel. In a little time, there was a
crucifix on every dusky bosom. The Indians knelt beneath the lowly roof,
worshipping in the same forms that were observed under the vast dome of
St. Peter's, when the Pope performed high mass in the presence of
kneeling princes. All the religious festivals, that awoke the chiming
bells of lofty cathedrals, called forth a peal from Our Lady's Chapel of
the Forest. Loudly rang the bell of the wilderness while the streets of
Paris echoed with rejoicings for the birthday of the Bourbon, or whenever
France had triumphed on some European battle-field. And the solemn woods
were saddened with a melancholy knell, as often as the thick-strewn leaves
were swept away from the virgin soil, for the burial of an Indian chief.
Meantime, the bells of a hostile people and a hostile faith were ringing
on Sabbaths and lecture-days, at Boston and other Puritan towns. Their
echoes died away hundreds of miles southeastward of Our Lady's Chapel.
But scouts had threaded the pathless desert that lay between, and, from
behind the huge tree-trunks, perceived the Indians assembling at the
summons of the bell. Some bore flaxen-haired scalps at their girdles, as
if to lay those bloody trophies on Our Lady's altar. It was reported,
and believed, all through New England, that the Pope of Rome, and the
King of France, had established this little chapel in the forest, for the
purpose of stirring up the red men to a crusade against the English
settlers. The latter took energetic measures to secure their religion
and their lives. On the eve of an especial fast of the Romish Church,
while the bell tolled dismally, and the priests were chanting a doleful
stave, a band of New England rangers rushed from the surrounding woods.
Fierce shouts, and the report of musketry, pealed suddenly within the
chapel. The ministering priests threw themselves before the altar, and
were slain even on its steps. If, as antique traditions tell us, no
grass will grow where the blood of martyrs has been shed, there should be
a barren spot, to this very day, on the site of that desecrated altar.
While the blood was still plashing from step to step, the leader of the
rangers seized a torch, and applied it to the drapery of the shrine. The
flame and smoke arose, as from a burnt-sacrifice, at once illuminating
and obscuring the whole interior of the chapel,--now hiding the dead
priests in a sable shroud, now revealing them and their slayers in one
terrific glare. Some already wished that the altar-smoke could cover the
deed from the sight of Heaven. But one of the rangers--a man of
sanctified aspect, though his hands were bloody--approached the captain.
"Sir," said he, "our village meeting-house lacks a bell, and hitherto we
have been fain to summon the good people to worship by beat of drum.
Give me, I pray you, the bell of this popish chapel, for the sake of the
godly Mr. Rogers, who doubtless hath remembered us in the prayers of the
congregation, ever since we began our march. Who can tell what share of
this night's good success we owe to that holy man's wrestling with the
Lord?"
"Nay, then," answered the captain, "if good Mr. Rogers hath holpen our
enterprise, it is right that he should share the spoil. Take the bell
and welcome, Deacon Lawson, if you will be at the trouble of carrying it
home. Hitherto it hath spoken nothing but papistry, and that too in the
French or Indian gibberish; but I warrant me, if Mr. Rogers consecrate it
anew, it will talk like a good English and Protestant bell."
So Deacon Lawson and half a score of his townsmen took down the bell,
suspended it on a pole, and bore it away on their sturdy shoulders,
meaning to carry it to the shore of Lake Champlain, and thence homeward
by water. Far through the woods gleamed the flames of Our Lady's Chapel,
flinging fantastic shadows from the clustered foliage, and glancing on
brooks that had never caught the sunlight. As the rangers traversed the
midnight forest, staggering under their heavy burden, the tongue of the
bell gave many a tremendous stroke,--clang, clang, clang!--a most
doleful sound, as if it were tolling for the slaughter of the priests and
the ruin of the chapel. Little dreamed Deacon Lawson and his townsmen
that it was their own funeral knell. A war-party of Indians had heard
the report, of musketry, and seen the blaze of the chapel, and now were
on the track of the rangers, summoned to vengeance by the bell's dismal
murmurs. In the midst of a deep swamp, they made a sudden onset on the
retreating foe. Good Deacon Lawson battled stoutly, but had his skull
cloven by a tomahawk, and sank into the depths of the morass, with the
ponderous bell above him. And, for many a year thereafter, our hero's
voice was heard no more on earth, neither at the hour of worship, nor at
festivals nor funerals.
And is he still buried in that unknown grave? Scarcely so, dear reader.
Hark! How plainly we hear him at this moment, the spokesman of Time,
proclaiming that it is nine o'clock at night! We may therefore safely
conclude that some happy chance has restored him to upper air.
But there lay the bell, for many silent years; and the wonder is, that he
did not lie silent there a century, or perhaps a dozen centuries, till
the world should have forgotten not only his voice, but the voices of the
whole brotherhood of bells. How would the first accent of his iron
tongue have startled his resurrectionists! But he was not fated to be a
subject of discussion among the antiquaries of far posterity. Near the
close of the Old French War, a party of New England axe-men, who preceded
the march of Colonel Bradstreet toward Lake Ontario, were building a
bridge of logs through a swamp. Plunging down a stake, one of these
pioneers felt it graze against some hard, smooth substance. He called
his comrades, and, by their united efforts, the top of the bell was
raised to the surface, a rope made fast to it, and thence passed over the
horizontal limb of a tree. Heave ho! up they hoisted their prize,
dripping with moisture, and festooned with verdant water-moss. As the
base of the bell emerged from the swamp, the pioneers perceived that a
skeleton was clinging with its bony fingers to the clapper, but
immediately relaxing its nerveless grasp, sank back into the stagnant
water. The bell then gave forth a sullen clang. No wonder that he was
in haste to speak, after holding his tongue for such a length of time!
The pioneers shoved the bell to and fro, thus ringing a loud and heavy
peal, which echoed widely through the forest, and reached the ears of
Colonel Bradstreet, and his three thousand men. The soldiers paused on
their march; a feeling of religion, mingled with borne-tenderness,
overpowered their rude hearts; each seemed to hear the clangor of the old
church-bell, which had been familiar to hint from infancy, and had tolled
at the funerals of all his forefathers. By what magic had that holy
sound strayed over the wide-murmuring ocean, and become audible amid the
clash of arms, the loud crashing of the artillery over the rough
wilderness-path, and the melancholy roar of the wind among the boughs?
The New-Englanders hid their prize in a shadowy nook, betwixt a large
gray stone and the earthy roots of an overthrown tree; and when the
campaign was ended, they conveyed our friend to Boston, and put him up at
auction on the sidewalk of King Street. He was suspended, for the nonce,
by a block and tackle, and being swung backward and forward, gave such
loud and clear testimony to his own merits, that the auctioneer had no
need to say a word. The highest bidder was a rich old representative
from our town, who piously bestowed the bell on the meeting-house where
he had been a worshipper for half a century. The good man had his
reward. By a strange coincidence, the very first duty of the sexton,
after the bell had been hoisted into the belfry, was to toll the funeral
knell of the donor. Soon, however, those doleful echoes were drowned by
a triumphant peal for the surrender of Quebec.
Ever since that period, our hero has occupied the same elevated station,
and has put in his word on all matters of public importance, civil,
military, or religious. On the day when Independence was first
proclaimed in the street beneath, he uttered a peal which many deemed
ominous and fearful, rather than triumphant. But he has told the same
story these sixty years, and none mistake his meaning now. When
Washington, in the fulness of his glory, rode through our flower-strewn
streets, this was the tongue that bade the Father of his Country welcome!
Again the same voice was heard, when La Fayette came to gather in his
half-century's harvest of gratitude. Meantime, vast changes have been
going on below. His voice, which once floated over a little provincial
seaport, is now reverberated between brick edifices, and strikes the ear
amid the buzz and tumult of a city. On the Sabbaths of olden time, the
summons of the bell was obeyed by a picturesque and varied throng;
stately gentlemen in purple velvet coats, embroidered waistcoats, white
wigs, and gold-laced hats, stepping with grave courtesy beside ladies in
flowered satin gowns, and hoop-petticoats of majestic circumference;
while behind followed a liveried slave or bondsman, bearing the
psalm-book, and a stove for his mistress's feet. The commonalty, clad in
homely garb, gave precedence to their betters at the door of the
meetinghouse, as if admitting that there were distinctions between them,
even in the sight of God. Yet, as their coffins were borne one after
another through the street, the bell has tolled a requiem for all alike.
What mattered it, whether or no there were a silver scutcheon on the
coffin-lid? "Open thy bosom, Mother Earth!" Thus spake the bell.
"Another of thy children is coming to his long rest. Take him to thy
bosom, and let him slumber in peace." Thus spake the bell, and Mother
Earth received her child. With the self-same tones will the present
generation be ushered to the embraces of their mother; and Mother Earth
will still receive her children. Is not thy tongue a-weary, mournful
talker of two centuries? O funeral bell! wilt thou never be shattered
with thine own melancholy strokes? Yea, and a trumpet-call shall arouse
the sleepers, whom thy heavy clang could awake no more!
Again--again thy voice, reminding me that I am wasting the "midnight
oil." In my lonely fantasy, I can scarce believe that other mortals have
caught the sound, or that it vibrates elsewhere than in my secret soul.
But to many hast thou spoken. Anxious men have heard thee on their
sleepless pillows, and bethought themselves anew of to-morrow's care. In
a brief interval of wakefulness, the sons of toil have heard thee, and
say, "Is so much of our quiet slumber spent?--is the morning so near at
hand?" Crime has heard thee, and mutters, "Now is the very hour!"
Despair answers thee, "Thus much of this weary life is gone!" The young
mother, on her bed of pain and ecstasy, has counted thy echoing strokes,
and dates from them her first-born's share of life and immortality. The
bridegroom and the bride have listened, and feel that their night of
rapture flits like a dream away. Thine accents have fallen faintly on
the ear of the dying man, and warned him that, ere thou speakest again,
his spirit shall have passed whither no voice of time can ever reach.
Alas for the departing traveller, if thy voice--the voice of fleeting
time--have taught him no lessons for Eternity!
