The Tulip is the aristocrat of bulbs, the one with whose name is connected squandered fortunes, romantic tales, long history, and other attributes of traditional aristocracy. It is also the one which, more than any, has made Holland famous. To go to see the bulb gardens usually means to go to Haarlem towards the latter part of April, when the tulips are at their best and there are literally acres of flowers. A patch of seven hundred square metres of scarlet tulips, and beyond perhaps as much of yellow or white, and beyond, with nothing but a hedge between, others, yet others, everywhere.—It is a wonderful sight. Red tulips and purple tulips, rose colour, buff colour, yellow and white and streaked. Though it must be said the streaked tulips are less than they were, for they are somewhat out of fashion now; it is the plain-coloured varieties which are most in favour, more especially the late “cottage” sorts. In earlier days, in the time of the tulip mania—at its height about 1634 to 1637—the fashion was for variegated tulips, and the enormous prices that were given were for streaked and pencilled, late blooming, single flowers; and the more they were striped, violet and rose on a pure white ground, the more was paid for them. The following description of what a tulip should be was written between 1790 and 1797; the prices by then had dropped to comparative moderation, but the standard of beauty was much the same: “The colours in greatest estimation in variegated tulips are the blacks, golden yellow, purple violets, and rose, and vermilion, each of which being variegated various ways; and such as are striped in three different colours distinct and unmixed, with strong regular streaks, but with little or no tinge of the breeder, may be called the most perfect tulip.” Some of the varieties famous in the early days are still grown in Holland, Louis the XVI. and the notorious Semper Augustus, one bulb of which is said, at the height of the madness, to have been sold for as much as 13,000 florins, though the price dropped to fifty when a paternal government stepped in and put an end to the gamble. Now, though these two historic names are still known and the bulbs still grown, neither flower is of great repute for beauty, and, generally speaking, neither would be so much admired as the self-coloured sorts—the scarlet Gesneriana spathulata, with its intense blue-black centre, the snow-white Dora, or even the insignificant little red flower, for a single bulb of which eight guineas was asked in London not many years ago. Asked and readily paid too; from which, one may conclude, the real tulip mania is not quite dead, though, of course, the price is a mere trifle compared to those paid in the early eighteenth century, or even as late as the beginning of the nineteenth, when, it is reported, a florist of Amsterdam paid £640 for the bulb of a new species, The Citadel of Antwerp. This last man must have been either a cultivator or a collector buying for the sake of having the bulb, for by then the gamble, which largely made the great mania what it was, had long passed away. When the mania was at its height men obviously did not buy for that reason. The madness, which then inexplicably affected so large a part of the steady Dutch nation, was more nearly related to a Stock Exchange gamble than a collector’s craze; though one cannot help thinking that, without the real existence of the latter the former would not have been possible, at least not in that manifestation.
TULIPS IN THEIR PRIME
There are still many tales told of that time, some supported with sufficient evidence, some resting on report, all equally remarkable. To the first class belongs that which can be found in the registers of the city of Alkmaar, where in 1637 there is an entry of the sale of tulips for the benefit of the Orphan Hospital, when 120 bulbs were sold for 9000 florins—a florin then about represented a bushel of wheat, so the approximate equivalent of that sum in modern money is rather startling even for gambling prices. To the latter class of tales belongs that of the man who believed himself to be the possessor of a unique tulip, and, hearing that there was another like it in Haarlem, repaired to that city, bought the bulb at great cost and crushed it with his foot, so that his tulip should really be unique. There is the other tale of the sailor, who, having been given a raw herring at the kitchen door of a rich merchant and a tulip fancier, picked up some roots which were lying outside, cooked them with it, and ate them, thinking them to be onions, and unaware that they were priceless tulips. Which last story is somewhat hard to believe, for if the rich merchant and tulip fancier was anything like the Dutchmen of to-day, he would not have left his priceless bulbs lying about, either by his kitchen door or anywhere else. And if the sailor was so really foolish as, at that time when tulips were the things of moment, to mistake an uncooked one for an onion, he would have been better informed about a cooked one. He would not, as according to the tale he did, have needed enlightening by the merchant, who is narrated to have exclaimed, after the event: “Inconsiderate man! Thou hast ruined me with thy breakfast! I could have regaled a king with it!” If the king had been so regaled, at least with cooked tulips, it is possible the royal pleasure would not have been great, for tulips, according to those who have tried them, are very poor eating. Parkinson, certainly, says they are pleasant, though truth compels him to qualify the statement by adding, “at least, not unpleasant.” He, by his own account, tried them preserved in sugar, and apparently did not persevere with his experiment, as he ascribes no medicinal value to them.
It is the custom to say that the romance of tulip-growing has gone; it is wonderful how often Romance is announced as dead and gone, a many-lived thing one must think it to need so many death-knells. Tulip-growing now, it is said, is a mere commercial enterprise, a growing without interest of hundreds of thousands of the cheapest sorts and selling them for the best price obtainable; no longer any interest or individuality in it, no one thinking or caring for new sorts or history, or anything but price per hundred. It may be; romance is a strange thing; whether the term is applied to flower or adventure, callings or institutions, it does not really refer to the concerned actors and doers, but to the sentiments and opinions of the unconcerned lookers-on. These unconcerned at one time had a craze for tulips,—then tulips were romantic; now they are not, and romance is gone. Now these folk merely order, or let their gardeners order, so many red and so many white, so many double, single, striped, or plain. There is no more romance now to them in tulip producing and buying than in grocery producing and buying: that is to say, they talk little more about the one than the other, their horticultural conversation is now centred on hybrid teas and herbaceous borders. It was not so a hundred years ago, tulips were then in fashion. In an old miscellany of that time there is a delightful conversation on the tulip subject, the writer purporting to have overheard a talk between two people he could not see on the behaviour and condition of persons of importance. Very strange behaviour it sounded—how a crowned head was feeling the weather, how a favourite general was doing well, seeing his situation, and, finally, how one speaker would show the other a Painted Lady and a Chimney Sweep in the same bed. The writer describes himself as hastening after to share the sight, and as being delighted to find the conversation referred to nothing scandalous, but to “the beautiful vegetables” then in fashion. He may have been delighted, we can give him the benefit of the doubt—possibly he did not frequent country houses and large suburban villas. He could hardly have done so, else the talk would not have had the charm of novelty for him, for wheresoever two or three glove-gardeners are gathered together—or even where there is only one—the specific names of varieties of the flower then in fashion fall like rain on the interested and uninterested alike.
“HERE ARE TULIPS FOR YOU—WHITE, FOR THE
BRIDAL OR THE BURIAL”
Not that the Dutch grower has any quarrel with the glove-gardeners, he has none at all; if the trend of fashion prevents them from buying expensive and choice tulips, it also prevents them from caring for the ones they do buy, and so necessitates the frequent replenishing of their stock. They are the grower’s chief purchasers, and though he feels a little hurt when they, ignoring his plain directions for cultivation, and getting poor results in consequence, complain of the quality of his bulbs, he never gainsays their taste in varieties. On the contrary, he compiles his catalogue to what he thinks is their fancy, and grows by the acre whatever they and their gardeners ordain to be beautiful. But the real interest and life of bulb-growing did not begin with the enthusiasm of folk of this kind, nor did it die when that died. The true grower still feels a holy joy over a new streak of colour, a new shape of petal; he still has his collectors over the world looking for novelties; he still sows and hybridises, and patiently and intelligently works, and feels the connoisseur’s satisfaction in success, his own or another’s.
Tulips are grown in Holland to-day much as they were two hundred years ago. The land is very deeply worked in winter, so that the frost may penetrate and kill mice and other vermin; also if, as is not often the case round Haarlem, the ground is stiff to soften it fit for the bulbs. In the spring it is manured: for tulips there is not such heavy manuring as for hyacinths, these last are by far the fattest liking of all the bulbs. It is possible, in fact it is often advisable, to grow tulips one year on the ground which was used for hyacinths the year before, this without any further enriching. After the spring manuring many of the bulb fields are let to market men, who grow vegetables there, but with the understanding that all must be removed and the ground cleared in August, for, though tulips are not put in until the end of September, some other bulbs are planted earlier, so the rule is usually made to apply to all fields. The tulip bulbs are set by hand, four or five inches apart and four inches below the surface, and left untouched until it is time to cover them with straw for the winter. The covering in their case is very light, not more than half an inch thick, for tulips are perfectly hardy, and need no protection from the cold; but the sandy soil is so light that, unless something were put on it, it would be blown away in the high winds and the bulbs left bare. The flowering time covers a good while, beginning in mild springs with Duc van Tholl in the early days of March, and ending with the late-blooming May varieties well on in that month. There is one rare specimen of tulip from Central Asia, Tulipa kaufmanniana, which flowers in Holland in February, but as yet this is not widely grown. It is, unfortunately, necessary to cut off the flower heads of all varieties, excepting such as are being saved for seed, before their beauty is quite spent. Happily, however, the cutting does not have to be done too soon after the opening, unless the weather is very rainy. Wet engenders some disease in the flower, which goes downwards and infects the roots unless the blooms are cut off in time. They are usually cut stalkless, really beheaded; rows of them so treated are rather a woful sight, although the delicate colour of their broad leaves makes the gardens where they are still beautiful. In June they are taken out of the ground. The new young bulbs are found to be developed from within the old, which gradually shrivel away to give room to the young; in the end there is nothing of the parent left but a few hard scales, which can be removed by hand.
New varieties are usually raised from seed, though some are sports; there is at Haarlem one such now, a fine yellow tulip, which, a few years ago, “sported” from a well-known red variety; the man who owns it found it when the bulbs were in bloom. It is not a “rogue” but a true bulb, in leaf and flower representing the old red type, only in colour yellow instead of red.