Vanished towers and chimes of Flanders

by George Wharton Edwards

Detail of the Chimes in Belfry of St Nicholas: Dixmude

On one of Hemony's bells dated 1674 and bearing the inscription, "Laudate Domini omnes Gentes," we noticed a long procession of cherub boys dancing and ringing flat hand bells such as are even now rung before the Host in street processions.

Some of the inscriptions are barely legible because of the peculiarity of the Gothic letters. Haweis mentions seeing the initials J.R. ("John Ruskin") in the deep sill of the staircase window; underneath a slight design of a rose window apparently sketched with the point of a compass. Ruskin loved the Malines Cathedral well, and made many sketches of detail while there. I looked carefully for these initials, but I could not find them, I am sorry to say.

Bells have been strangely neglected by antiquaries and historians, and but few facts concerning them are to be found in the libraries. Haweis speaks of the difficulty he encountered in finding data about the chimes of the Low Countries, alleging that the published accounts and rumors about their size, weight, and age are seldom accurate or reliable. Even in the great libraries and archives of the Netherlands at Louvain, Bruges, or Brussels the librarians were unable to furnish him with accurate information.

He says: "The great folios of Louvain, Antwerp, and Mechlin (Malines) containing what is generally supposed to be an exhaustive transcript of all the monumental and funereal inscriptions in Belgium, will often bestow but a couple of dates and one inscription upon a richly decorated and inscribed carillon of thirty or forty bells. The reason of this is not far to seek. The fact is, it is no easy matter to get at the bells when once they are hung, and many an antiquarian who will haunt tombs and pore over illegible brasses with commendable patience will decline to risk his neck in the most interesting of belfries. The pursuit, too, is often a disappointing one. Perhaps it is possible to get half way around a bell and then be prevented by a thick beam, or the bell's own wheel from seeing the outer half, which, by perverse chance, generally contains the date and the name of the founder.

"Perhaps the oldest bell is quite inaccessible, or, after a half hour's climbing amid the utmost dust and difficulty, we reach a perfectly blank or commonplace bell."

He gives the date of 1620, as that when the family of Van den Gheyns were bringing the art of bell founding to perfection in Louvain, and notes that the tower and bells of each fortified town were half civic property. Thus the curfew, the carolus, and the St. Mary bells in Antwerp Cathedral belong to the town.

"Let us," he says, "enter the town of Mechlin (Malines) in the year 1638. The old wooden bridge (over the river Dyle) has since been replaced by a stone one. To this day the elaborately carved façades of the old houses close on the water are of incomparable richness of design. The peculiar ascent of steps leading up to the angle of the roof, in a style borrowed from the Spaniards, is a style everywhere to be met with. The noblest of square florid Gothic towers, the tower of St. Rombauld (variously spelled St. Rombaud, St. Rombaut, or St. Rombod) finished up to three hundred and forty-eight feet, guides us to what is now called the Grand' Place, where in an obscure building are the workshops and furnaces adjoining the abode of Peter Van den Gheyn, the most renowned bell founder of the seventeenth century, born in 1605. In company with his associate, Deklerk, arrangements are being made for the founding of a big bell.

"Before the cast was made there was no doubt great controversy between the mighty smiths, Deklerk and Van den Gheyn: plans had to be drawn out on parchment, measurements and calculations made, little proportions weighed by fine instinct, and the defects and merits of ever so many bells canvassed. The ordinary measurements, which now hold good for a large bell, are, roughly, one-fifteenth of the diameter in thickness, and twelve times the thickness in height. Describing the foundry buildings: The first is for the furnaces, containing the vast caldron for the fusing of the metal; in the second is a kind of shallow well, where the bell would have to be modeled in clay.