The Tulip

by Anna Pavord

  The growth of florists’ societies, including those devoted to the tulip, was the result of a new self-confidence in a new kind of British grower. In the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, the tulip had been mostly a rich man’s play-thing, a toy expensively acquired from The Netherlands or Flanders to be shown off as proof of the owner’s good taste (and healthy bank balance). But as new fashions took over in the grand gardens, the tulip became démodé. Some sensible landowners, such as James Justice of Crichton, Midlothian, never lost faith with the flower, but the fabulous English florists’ tulips developed through the late eighteenth and the whole of the nineteenth century were in the main bred, developed and shown by artisans such as the gunsmith, John Findlay, who swept the board with his tulips at the Paisley Florists’ Society in 1796 and the shoe-making Gill family of Wakefield in Yorkshire. George Crabbe noted the trend in The Parish Register (1807), where in a florist’s garden:

  The reed-fence rises round some favourite spot

  Where rich carnations, pinks with purple eyes,

  Proud hyacinths, the least some florists prize,

  Tulips tall-stemm’d, and pounced auriculas rise.

  Rescuing the tulip from aristocratic scrap heaps, these amateur growers infused it with characteristics that had nothing to do with either French or Dutch influence. By the end of the nineteenth century, they had brought the flower to the peak of perfection. Then, unaccountably, they dumped it, adopting instead the dahlia and the chrysanthemum as their favourite show flowers. Of the hundreds of tulip societies that once flourished around Manchester, Bolton and other commercial centres of Yorkshire, Lancashire, Cheshire and Derbyshire, only the Wakefield and North of England Tulip Society now survives.

  Up until this time, such breeding as took place was centred in France and Flanders. Dutch nurserymen to a great extent controlled the supply of bulbs, which were sold expensively to rich landowners. The English florists were not rich, but they had time and patience on their side. The way forward had been suggested by Philip Miller of the Chelsea Physic Garden. ‘There are some curious persons who have lately obtained many valuable breeders from seeds sown in England’ he wrote, ‘and doubtless were we as industrious to sow the seeds of these flowers as the people of France and Flanders, we might in a few years have as great a variety as is to be found in any part of Europe’.5 Miller does not name these ‘curious persons’ but it is likely that they were amateurs rather than professionals and he was right in concluding that the key to establishing a separate identity for the English florists’ tulip lay in initiating an independent source of supply.

  The process began in the south where professional nurserymen, such as James Maddock the Elder (1718–1786), built up a thriving business supplying flowers to London florists. These were a different breed to the northern ones. They were amateur growers, not gentlemen, but certainly more comfortably situated than the typical members of a northern florists’ society. Their gardens lay in suburbs such as Woolwich, Sydenham, Clapham, Lambeth, Pentonville and Camberwell. Maddock, a Quaker from Warrington in Lancashire, had his business at Walworth, south London and was said to be ‘well known to the curious in flowers throughout the kingdom’. A record of the flowers sold at the nursery, published by Richard Weston in 1777, shows that at that time nearly all Maddock’s stock (including 800 different tulips) was ‘selected from the most esteemed and curious Dutch Florists’. But the fifty-two page Catalogue of Flowers, Plants, Trees etc sold by Maddock & Son, Florists, at Walworth published fifteen years later indicates a gradual shift to English stock. Maddock listed more than 700 tulips; of the 664 late-flowering florists’ tulips, 103 now had English names. The most expensive tulips cost ten pounds each but they were not as costly as the most expensive hyacinth, a double red variety called ‘Compte de la Coste’. Early-flowering tulips (the kind originally introduced in the sixteenth century) had by now gone completely out of fashion and were little grown. Only the beautiful red and white striped ‘Viceroy’, ‘Duc van Thol’ and ‘Kongings-Kroon’ were still used as early flowers in mid eighteenth-century gardens.

  John Pearson (fl. 1780s–1825), who set up a nursery business at Chilwell in Nottinghamshire in 1782, was the kind of ‘curious person’ that Philip Miller had in mind. Pearson had started his working life as a stocking maker, while his wife ran a small dame school. He grew his florists’ flowers in a small garden in front of his shop and gradually built up a lucrative business in polyanthus and tulips. The key to his success lay in controlling supply; he never released any of his seedlings until he had built up a good stock of the best kinds, such as his rosy Bybloemen ‘Lady Stanhope’. Then he would let out perhaps a hundred bulbs at a time, charging ten shillings each for them. Once the bulbs were distributed, the price he could charge of course fell. In 1821, he sold eight beds of his seedlings, in full bloom, for five pounds a bed, which was how Nottingham florists first got their hands on the famous tulips ‘Magnum Bonum’ and ‘Royal Sovereign’. A local grower, Thomas Hewitt, bought one of the beds wholesale and it was from Hewitt that John Frederick Wood, editor of the influential magazine the Midland Florist, in turn had his tulips. The blood lines of flowers were understood and followed by florists as closely as aristocrats might study the antecedents of their racehorses.

  Much tulip-breeding was carried out by amateur growers who could not afford to buy bulbs at nursery prices, but they could recoup some of their costs through the nurserymen by selling spare bulbs on to them. Nurserymen specialising in florists’ flowers though were hard hit by the shift in taste and gardening style in the mid eighteenth century and the consequent falling off of rich customers who would pay fancy prices for rare tulips. Perhaps this is why James Maddock the Younger (1763–1825), son of the founder of the Walworth nursery, supported so enthusiastically the publication of James Sowerby’s The Florist’s Delight. Various florists, said Sowerby, had ‘expressed a wish to see some of their best Fancy Flowers delineated’ and perhaps it was Maddocks who suggested the tulip shown life size in Plate V, the ten-guinea ‘The Rodney’ described as a Bybloemen, raised in The Netherlands. Plate VI was the five-guinea Bizarre tulip, ‘Peregrinus Apostolicus’; Plate XI another Bizarre, though cheaper, ‘Castrum Doloris’. The penultimate plate is of a tulip simply labelled ‘black and white’. The text gives every indication of a flower being ‘talked up’ by a dealer desperate to make back money laid out abroad. ‘As diamonds are valuable when of the first water, or unique specimens to the naturalist, so this extraordinary tulip, from the many properties discovered by florists, is to them of the first consequence, and when compared with the original of its species, is almost a phenomenon; though it is very probable it may be more so this year than last: the present price of the root is 100gns. We will give the name in some future number; the present proprietor does not wish to have it made public at present’ The tulip could only have been ‘Louis XVI’, expensively sold to James Maddock by the Dutch collector and dealer, Schneevogt. It appeared in Maddock’s 1800 catalogue at the more reasonable price of twenty guineas.6

  Sowerby’s lack of success did not deter Robert Thornton from beggaring himself with his own Temple of Flora, published between 1798 and 1807. A group of six tulips, painted by Philip Reinagle, was Thornton’s choice for the first of the prints made for the work and although the flowers were set against a Dutch background, a significant shift of emphasis had taken place. Set alongside foreign tulips such as ‘Louis XVI’, ‘La Majestieuse’ and the famous Bizarre ‘Gloria Mundi’ are two English seedling tulips, one raised by Thomas Davey (c1758–1833) nurseryman and well-known tulip fancier of the King’s Road, Chelsea, London, the other by John Mason (fl. 1780s–1810s), seedsman and florist who had a business at the Orange Tree, 152 Fleet Street, London. Thornton named the seedlings ‘after two very distinguished patrons of this work, Her Grace the DUCHESS OF DEVONSHIRE, no less eminent for her fine sense and expressive beauty, than EARL SPENCER, for his memorable conduct of our navy, which has eclipsed, under his a
dministration, even the glory of our ancestors, which was previously imagined to exceed almost the bounds of human credibility’.

  Despite his distinguished patrons, Thornton’s work was a financial disaster. He had to write an ‘Apology’ to his potential subscribers, attributing his problems to the fact that ‘The once moderately rich very justly now complain that they are exhausted through taxes laid on them to pay armed men to diffuse rapine, fire and murder, over civilised EUROPE’. War had broken out against France in 1793 and peace was not finally established until after the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. The Paddington Green florist Thomas Hogg (1771–1841) noted ‘the fresh spirit that has been infused into the cultivators of [tulips] since our return to peace and to peaceful pursuits’. Florists had been sufficiently encouraged to raise a fresh set of ‘breeders’, sowing seed saved from their finest flowers. ‘The most gratifying and complete success’ said Hogg, ‘has attended the labours of Mr Carter of Foxgrove, Wilts, of a Mr Austen, a Mr Strong, a Mr Lawrence and a Mr Goldham who have raised from seed and matured and broke into colour perhaps some of the finest Tulips in the country. Mr Clarke of Croydon, a scientific and experienced florist, has the best breeders in the country, raised from the seed of “Louis”, “Charbonnier”, Davey’s “Trafalgar” etc. with finely formed cups and clear bottoms; they are in very high repute among florists.’7 With this, the shift was complete; an independent English strain of the florists’ tulip had been forged. No longer content to accept a Flemish or a Dutch breeder’s idea of beauty in a tulip, English growers could now impose their own.

  Bursting, with all the shockingness of the new, onto the Augsburg stage in 1557, the tulip had remained a rare and stylish flower until at least 1720. Then it became the province of specialists: a hobby flower. At first, southern growers were pre-eminent, especially around London, and included trade growers as well as true amateurs. But the fancy soon became well established in the north and the two groups enjoyed a happy state of warfare until about 1860, when tulip societies began to die out in the south. Southern growers thought the form of the flower of paramount importance and looked for purity in the base and filaments. Growers in the north were prepared to overlook an unshapely petal provided the flower was correctly marked with its feathers and flames. The Bybloemen (deep purple markings on a white ground), the Rose (red or pink markings on a white ground) and the Bizarre (red or brownish-black markings on a yellow ground) were the hallowed triumvirate of the English florists’ tulips and only flowers that conformed to one of these three types could be shown in competition. Feathered flowers had petals finely etched with contrasting colour round the edges. Flamed flowers had a broad beam of the darker colour running up the centre of each petal. The feathering had to be light, the flame up the centre of the petal symmetrical and steady. Good flamed flowers were reckoned to be easier to find than good feathered ones. Contrarily, tulip fanciers did not like double tulips, though double flowers were much prized by lovers of other florists’ flowers such as hyacinths. In the long, narrow beds where florists grew their tulips, bulbs were planted in the strict grid arrangements recommended by the French designer, Dezallier-d’Argenville nearly 150 years earlier, the flowers with the longest stems in the centre and the shortest outermost. The width of the bed rarely varied as it was designed to accommodate seven tulips, planted in the same repeating pattern of Rose, Bybloemen and Bizarre. The length depended on the size of the collection, but when the tulips were in flower, the patterned planting gave the illusion that the beds were lengths of the finest silk brocade, the deep mustard yellows of the Bizarres contrasting sumptuously with the rich purple tones of the Bybloemens. Tulip fanciers never deviated from this mode of planting.

  Hogg had wondered whether to include the tulip among the other florists’ flowers in his 1820 Treatise as he felt they were generally out of fashion. That had perhaps been the case between 1780 and 1820, when poor Sowerby was trying to drum up support for The Florists’ Delight. But by 1820, the tulip was being avidly cultivated again by florists who seized on the new race of English seedlings, bred first by the nurseryman Thomas Davey, then by William Clark (c1763–1831) of Dulwich, who raised many tulips from seed, including the famous ‘Lawrence’s La Joie’. He was an amateur, and, wrote his obituarist, ‘never received money for flowers; but when he gave a seedling bulb away, he generally arranged to have one bulb of every flower that broke’.8

  The yellow and red Bizarre tulip ‘Marcellus’ was another of Clark’s seedlings, illustrated in fine style in the Florist’s Magazine of 1836. The fact that so many common tulips were yellow made the Bizarres at first less highly valued than the red and white Roses or the purple and white Bybloemens, but from the 1820s onwards, the Bizarres gained ground and became favourites, particularly among northern growers. ‘Marcellus’ was introduced c1826 but it did not increase easily and was always considered a ‘delicate’ flower. ‘It has been sold at seven and eight guineas a root, which among florists is considered moderate…’ said Frederick W Smith, correspondent of the The Florist’s Magazine, in which ‘Marcellus’ was featured. Clark also raised the breeder from which ‘Polyphemus’, one of the most famous tulips of the early nineteenth century, was broken. It was the combination of very dark markings on the pale lemon ground that made it so highly valued. The Bybloemen ‘Fanny Kemble’ was another of his flowers, actors and actresses being then, as now, favourite sources of flower names. It was generally shown as a ‘feathered’ flower, the markings elegantly incised round the edges of the petals. Thomas Davey of the King’s Road, Chelsea, London, gave William Clark £100 for his single bulb of ‘Fanny Kemble’. Davey ranked high among florists, his spring exhibitions of auriculas, hyacinths, tulips and carnations always drawing huge and admiring crowds. At Davey’s death, the ‘Fanny Kemble’ bulb with the two offsets it had produced passed to another fancier, John Goldham, who paid £72. 10s. for it. The tulip was a shy grower, slow at producing offsets, which was why it continued to command exorbitant prices.

  When the English tulip breeders and florists began their work, there was already a broad understanding of the qualities of a perfect flower. Northern and southern growers enjoyed their skirmishes on points of detail, but there was general agreement that a fine tulip should rise to a height of at least three or four feet (approximately lm. The height was a characteristic inherited from the sturdy Flemish Baguets). It should grow with perfect symmetry, the flower well supported on a firm and elastic stem. The cup of the flower should be perfectly adapted to the stalk, appearing neither too light nor too heavy for it. The flower itself should be regular, perfect in the margins of the petals, and of good texture. The colours had to be distinct, bright and glossy, the base of the flower bright and clear, and the petals of equal height, neither pointed, nor broken round the edges.

  Agreed standards of excellence had to be set, once tulips began to be shown in competition. It was inevitable, too, that shows everywhere should offer the same six classes, allowing florists to exhibit feathered or flamed flowers in each of the three main groups – Roses, Bybloemens and Bizarres. What was surprising was the speed with which all this happened. When James Maddock of Walworth had first brought out his Florist’s Directory in 1792, he was still using French terms such as Primo Baguets, Baguet Rigauts and Incomparable Verports to describe tulips. He talks about the properties of ‘fine variegated late tulips’, rather than in terms of feathers or flames. He mentions Bybloemens and Bizarres, but not Roses, which were added later by Samuel Curtis in an ‘improved’ edition of 1810. Maddock, in the original edition, had been content to give credit to foreign tulip breeders.9 Curtis had a different, more bullish slant on the matter. ‘The perfection in which these flowers are now obtained is certainly owing to foreign cultivators; but so fond are the Dutch of their money, that they forego all English improvements, rather than become purchasers of our new varieties, many of which possess as much merit as any of theirs.’

  This bullishness increased after Britain’s victory over
the French at the Battle of Waterloo. The growth of the florists’ societies themselves was fuelled, too, by the cataclysmic changes which swept over Britain during the first quarter of the nineteenth century, when about half the world trade in manufactured goods was controlled by British ironmasters, owners of British cotton mills and other such entrepreneurs. Sir Robert Peel, father of the future Tory prime minister, alone employed 15,000 people in his calico mills. England’s first railway, the Stockton and Darlington line, opened in 1825. Towns grew as the countryside emptied. Mill owners and other manufacturers were not slow to link the efficiency of their workers with the state of their health, so it was not entirely altruistic on their part to think of providing them with garden plots. These could be anything from a twelfth to a quarter of an acre in size, and were usually on outlying ground, separate from the typical tenements where the workers lived. Matthew Boulton (1728–1809), one of the inventors of the steam engine, created workers’ gardens in Birmingham as early as 1761, buying a lease of ground around Handsworth Heath and turning it into dozens of small plots. Erasmus Darwin (a fellow member of Birmingham’s famous Lunar Society) described Boulton’s transformation of the barren heath as ‘a monument to the effects of Trade on Population’. William Howitt described a typical plot at the Hunger Hill allotments in Nottingham, a florist’s garden ‘with his show of tulips, ranunculuses, hyacinths, carnations, or other choice flowers, that claim all his leisure moments, and are a source of a thousand cares and interests’.10 It was in small plots such as these that the florists, always an urban phenomenon rather than a rural one, cultivated their flowers.