Whoever had a plot of ground planted tulips therein. Rich and poor alike—house-painters, cobblers, tailors, weavers; in a word, nearly everyone either grew or speculated in tulips—some sold all their tools and instruments to buy bulbs. And indeed they might well look forward to great profits, seeing that the bulbs, which in the beginning cost but a few guldens, had now risen to hundreds and thousands. The most coveted and rare kinds it had now become impossible to buy. For one single bulb 12 acres of land in the Schermer were offered. The Semper Augustus must have been the rarest and most costly of any, the fabulous price of 13,000 florins was once paid for it, and soon after three of these bulbs were again sold for 30,000 florins.

The price of land and the hiring of fields to raise the bulbs in grew very high. A gentleman was offered 50,000 florins a year for his field for seven years, in addition to a share in the profits. Such was the rage for buying and selling, that most of the inns and taverns in the town were turned into places of Exchange and Mart, where bulbs were bought and sold even before they could be taken out of the ground. A book-keeper was employed, who kept a book of all the transactions and of the profits made, which seemed in some cases very large.

Many men, unused to the possession of so much money, became so very extravagant that they spent more than their income, and began to live at such a high rate of expenditure, buying carriages and horses, and living in such a fashion that only men who possessed untold wealth and capital could afford to do it.

What was foreseen by more wise and more thoughtful people came to pass. Everyone having now become bulb-grower, there came to be so many tulips in the market that prices suddenly dropped, and many buyers refused to take the bulbs at the price agreed upon, and many quarrels and disputes arose over the matter. Finally, the States-General of Holland appointed by decree that, from the 27th of April 1636, tulip-sellers had the right to force buyers to buy at a price agreed upon (a standard price?). So this decree stopped very high speculations, and a Semper Augustus, for example, for which previously several thousand florins had been paid, now fetched only 50 florins. There came a reaction, and a great number of people were ruined.

In this way, says De Koning, began and ended a trade or commerce in bulbs, which in nearly all the towns in Holland, but especially in Haarlem, Leyden, Amsterdam, Alkmaar, Hoorn, and Enkhuizen, was kept up with such energy that, alone in Haarlem, 10,000,000 florins for tulip bulbs was paid and received, and the States-General of Holland were even weighing the advisability of taxing the industry which brought so much luxury. The little gardens near and in and about Haarlem had both wide and narrow “moneyless paths,” all of which date from the time of the tulip mania in the seventeenth century, and remain as witnesses of the folly of our forefathers.

III
THE HYACINTH TRADE

From De Koning’s Tafereel der Stad Haarlem (1808)

De Koning gives us an account of the hyacinth trade which began in 1730, and which continues to the present day. It was not so astonishing as the tulip trade, and though the price of the hyacinth did not rise as high as that of tulips, yet fancy prices were paid for some:—

Passe non plus ultrafetched1850florins
Gloria Mundi eenjong„650„
Tempel Salomons„450„
Praal Sieraad„400„