by Anna Pavord
Unfortunately, tulips that fitted Hardy’s tightly drawn specification were rarely to be found. Even such favourites as the feathered Bizarre ‘Charles X’, the fabulous feathered Bybloemen ‘Bienfait’, the old feathered Rose favourite ‘Heroine’ and Lawrence’s flamed Rose ‘Aglaia’, if measured against his ideal, would be found to be too long in the cup. But, undeterred, Hardy returned to the attack in the next issue of the Midland Florist, when he considered the correct form for the rim or the margin of the flower and the most appropriate shape for the petals. Mr Groom and Mr Slater once more came in for criticism because when they talked of petals being ‘well-rounded’ they did not define what they meant by round. Should this roundness be half or any other designated portion of a circle? Mr Hardy thought he should be told. Mr Glenny is derided for preferring flat-topped tulips, which nature, as Hardy was at pains to point out, does not generally provide. Glenny, perched precariously on his high horse, retreated from the battlefield, saying he ‘did not intend honouring the gentleman by any further notice’. Hardy also took violently against an illustration that had accompanied an article by his own editor, John Frederick Wood. The petals of Wood’s tulip, he said, looked as though they had been chopped off with scissors. Florists, complained Hardy, subjected ‘the operations of nature to laws as crude as their own imaginations, and regardless of the truthful lessons which she herself plainly teaches, vainly require the production of forms she was never designed to create’.
In the tulip, Hardy saw a ‘manifest tendency to the production of graceful curves’ and urged readers of the Midland Florist to examine a petal of the flower under a microscope or a powerful magnifying glass. By way of an elegiac appraisal of its underlying structure, he argued that in the tulip, function and form were indissolubly united. The curved margin was an intrinsic part of its make-up. Ever in search of finite parameters, Hardy concluded that the perfect curve was one that was equal in radius to half the diameter of the flower and added a magnificently complicated method by which judges could measure it.
At the end of his exhaustive treatise, Hardy proposed four rules which taken together would constitute perfection of form in the florists’ tulip:
1. Every tulip, when in its greatest perfection, should be circular in its outline throughout; its depth being equal to half its width across from the top, or highest point, of one petal to the tip of the other immediately opposite.
2. It should be composed of six petals, three inner and three outer, which should all be of the same height, and have such a form as will enable them to preserve this circular outline; their edges being even, stiff and smooth; and their surfaces free from shoulder or inequality of every kind.
3. The breadth of the petals should be amply sufficient to prevent any interstices being seen between them, so long as the flower retains its freshness.
4. There should be exact uniformity between the outline of the cup, and the outline of the upper margin of the petal, which should form an arc or curve, whose radius is equal to half the diameter, or whole depth of the flower.
Hardy was confident that his rules would stand the test of time and generally the ‘Hardy protocol’ was well received. Even up in Falkirk, where florists were a law unto themselves, the eminent tulip grower George Lightbody (1795–1872) took note. Lightbody had spent his early years in the navy, serving at the defence of Cadiz and in the war against the US. The medal he always wore commemorated his capture of a French vessel in the Mediterranean. The Hardy protocol, as he could see, was much needed. At a time of frenetic activity among breeders, when thousands of new seedling tulips were being released onto the market each season, some attempt to regularise the aims and objectives of the florist’s ideal bloom had to be made. The form of a tulip was a more attainable objective for breeders than its markings. The volatile virus that provided the ‘breaks’ in a tulip and its consequent feathering and flaming, was not easily manipulated. Florists hoped too that the fixing of certain criteria would offset the irritating partiality shown by judges at tulip shows, both in the north and the south. The Midland Florist with a foot, geographically at least, in both camps, was perhaps the only possible arbiter between the northern growers, with their delight in markings, and the southern growers, with their insistence on form and purity.
Inevitably though, there was still friction between amateur growers of tulips and professional dealers, who used the burgeoning number of shows to unveil (and sell) their new seedlings. ‘I think it would give far greater satisfaction, and even be more to their own interest’ wrote a disgruntled amateur grower ‘if the dealers, on such occasions, would come forward handsomely with their contributions, but leave the prizes to be contended for by amateurs only’.23 He suggested the dealers should put up what we would now think of as a trade exhibit, ‘ticketed with the name of the subscriber and his residence’. Amateur growers could then follow up with a visit to the dealer’s plot and select bulbs for their own collections. Under the present system, continued the amateur, he felt disinclined to compete. But the line between the two was sometimes difficult to draw. James Haigh of Ashton-under-Lyne, killed in one of the cholera epidemics that raged through Britain in the 1830s and 1840s, would generally have been regarded as an amateur florist. When he died in 1846, his valuable collection of tulips was put up for auction. That was standard practice. The proceeds of such sales provided necessary funds for the dead florist’s family. But Haigh was also joint proprietor of the Buckler’s Collection of seedling tulips, bought in partnership with his friend James Walker of Harper House, Ashton. The amateur begins to look more like a dealer.
Though the image of the noble artisan has dominated the iconography of the florists, the artisans needed richer, perhaps less skilled, less patient florists around them to buy their new seedling tulips. Florists such as Howitt described on the Hunger Hills allotments in Nottingham, depended for part of their income on collectors such as John Shelmerdine of Altrincham, who ‘spared no expense’ in building up his collection of tulips. The jewels of his tulip beds were seedlings raised from the old feathered black and white tulip ‘Louis XVI’. Shelmerdine, typical of a type that might be classed as ‘aldermen florists’, died in the same cholera epidemic as James Haigh and a contemporary noted sadly that ‘his place in the Altrincham Floral Society will perhaps never be supplied’. The Pickwickian turn of phrase is echoed in the poem written after the union of the Felton Florists’ Society with the Floral and Horticultural. It was sung at the second exhibition of the Felton Union of Florists and Horticulturists on 23 June 1845 to the tune of the hymn ‘Of a’ the airs the wind can blow’.
Hail, happy spring of forty-five!
A union thou hast brought,
Cementing interests all in one –
Just what we all have sought:
We’ll show our beauties as before,
While all will now declare
That it is best for all to blend
The useful with the rare.
After the introductory verse, the poem goes on to extol the virtues of parsnips, leeks and, finally, of tulips, which had been on show that day at the newly combined Felton Union show:
And while the tulip we extol,
We’ll give the reason why;
’Tis not because their gaudy hues
Attract the vulgar eye, –
No! ’Tis because their varied charms,
As thus they brightly shine,
Remind us of the Almighty hand –
Omnipotence divine!
Pickwickian too is the report of the Open Tulip Show at Derby in 1847, when ‘upwards of fifty gentlemen dined together at the Nag’s Head. After the cloth had been removed and the usual loyal toasts responded to, Mr Sadler, who was in the chair, rose and in an able speech, which was repeatedly cheered in its delivery, dwelt upon the desirability of a Midland Horticultural Society.’
Competitive showing reached fever pitch in the late 1840s and early 1850s. At the King’s Head, Barton, Lancashire, the feathered
Bizarre ‘Royal Sovereign’, one of the key tulips of the age, triumphed at the show held on 24 May 1847. In Falkirk, a silver jug was the prize offered for the best pan of tulips, with one guinea going to the second-best. Richard Headley of Stapleford House, near Cambridge, swept the board at the rather smart tulip show held by the Cambridge Florists’ Society in the concert room of the Lion Hotel on 18 May 1848. At Peter Eaton’s tulip meeting, held at Bedford, near Leigh, Lancashire, the following day, the ‘factory prize’ (a kettle) was won by Thomas Belshaw with ‘Rose Unique’. When purity came into fashion, northern growers found it very hard to abandon this old pink and white variety with its beautifully refined markings – but dirty bottom. It was perhaps inevitable that florists’ feuds should erupt with such magnificent regularity. There were so many shows – at the Queen’s Head Inn, Burslem, at the Woodman Inn, Gower Street, Leeds, at the Green Man Inn, Vindercliff near Bradford – to fuel their dissatisfaction. Only the bravest men took on the thankless task of judging. Mr Alexander of Lamb Farm, Kingsland in Islington, north London was generally reckoned to be ‘an honest man’ – no small compliment for a florist, but he was a southerner, so automatically suspect in the north, where the majority of the shows took place. John Frederick Wood, editor of the Midland Florist, was much in demand as a judge, as was John Slater (c1799–1883) of Cheetham Hill, Manchester. But Slater was also a breeder of tulips; his was the heavily feathered Rose tulip ‘Julia Farnese’ and the Bizarre seedling ‘Adonis’, raised from the famous ‘Polyphemus’. Could his impartiality be relied on? Disinterested and competent judges were vital, if the fancy was to mature, but, as a disenchanted competitor wrote, finding them ‘appears to be as great a difficulty as societies have to contend with’. There was uproar at the Wakefield Show of 1847 when one of the judges flung out a pan of tulips just because he had never heard of its name.
Competition (and the prizes it offered) inevitably encouraged skulduggery. It was impossible, wrote one competitor, who signed himself only as FAIRPLAY of Kirkstall, near Leeds, ‘to make all growers honest showers…even, a midnight prowl is not scrupled at, if an addition can be made to their own collection, at the expense of a poor man and a neighbour. I fear there are few, if any, societies whose lists are clear of these gentry. Of a similar class are those who, when unsuccessful, seek to vilify their more fortunate competitors.’ Once again the open tulip show at Wakefield was the cause for complaint. An exhibitor from Leeds had taken the premier prize and a member of the home team got up a rumour that one of the prize-winning blooms had not been grown by the florist in question. Forty furious Leeds florists testified that the rumour was a calumny, but such occurrences became more and more common.
The idealists who set up the National Tulip Society in 1849 must have hoped that the National tag would paper over differences between north and south, as well as add dignity to their favourite flower. The northern growers were not to be so easily bought. The Great All England Tulip Show for 1851 was held at Derby, and Ephraim Dodwell, cigar merchant and tulip fancier, urged that organising committees be set up ‘in every city and town, village and floral district, throughout the kingdom’. But this Olympian vision was unrealised and the All England turned out to be yet another local derby. E Y Ours (surely a pseudonym) could not hide his resentment. The show, he wrote ‘went off much to the satisfaction of the great northern growers, and was especially pleasing to a class of dealers who cannot throw away foul tulips. Having secured three patrons of smudge-bottomed varieties for judges, and Mr Henry Goldham, from London, as a fourth, to give countenance to their proceedings, they did as they pleased. They would not disqualify foul-bottomed sorts, and the tulips which had prizes were a disgrace to the fancy. Mr Henry Goldham could not have carried his point against the lovers of foul flowers, but he could have retired, and upheld the dignity and taste of the South, which rejects as unworthy of notice, all varieties with dirty bases. He could have said “Gentlemen – As I am no use against three of you, and never will sanction a prize to a foul flower, I beg to retire, and leave you to the indulgence of a taste which I hope will always be confined to the North.” Mr Turner of Slough, the best professional, and Mr Edwards of Holloway, a spirited amateur, had to sit down quietly under the disgrace of being beaten with tulips that the poorest grower in the metropolis would not disgrace his stand with’.24
Despite the skirmishes, the belligerence, the slandering of judges and growers alike, expertise in the actual growing of the tulip was at a peak. This reflected a general trend in horticulture, which during the second half of the nineteenth century became a serious science, seriously assimilated. Growing techniques, in all fields, were endlessly refined. During the growing season, a man would have to spend every waking hour on his tulip bed, if he was to follow all the advice handed out by pundits in the Floricultural Cabinet, the Gardeners’ Chronicle, the Florist, the Cottage Gardener, Gossip from the Garden and other such magazines which now appeared faster than buds in May. First, bulbs had to be planted in beds the regulation four feet wide. The earth may need liming. The beds may need earthing up to provide better drainage. Newcomers to the fancy may even have to make a bed, a complex sandwich of rubble, muck and carefully sifted compost, prepared as carefully as a bed for an emperor’s state visit.
In spring there was the problem of water settling in the angle between leaf and stem and possibly injuring the embryo bloom. No better way to deal with it than crawl round the bed on all fours and blow the water out, advised one grower. Nets had to be set up on hoops over the emerging tulips, to protect them from hail, heavier covers to guard against frost. Jute canvas was thought to do the best job. John Cunningham, a Scottish grower, kept the winter rain off his beds with tents of yellow oilskin. Each tulip, as it grew, had to be carefully supported with a stake in case wind should snap the stem. Sometimes, lines of twine (painted green) were stretched from one end of the bed to the other, about two feet (0.6m) off the ground and the stems of the tulips tied to these with strips of green worsted.
Canker, every florist’s nightmare, might strike the bed and the tell-tale withered foliage had to be removed before the disease reached the precious bulb itself. Awnings were rigged up to shade the tulip beds, because growers knew that the separate colours of broken tulips tended to ‘run’ in bright sunlight Calico, lighter than jute, made the best summer covers, though growers in the Midlands often used Nottingham lace. Florists’ plots with their mats, canvas, nets and attendant supports, said one observer, were more like the back yards of warehouses than gardens. Tulips of less than perfect shape were fitted with corsets; bands of the soft, fleecy thread known to the cotton spinners as ‘rovings’, were tied round the unopened cup and left in place until the last minute before judging on the show bench. Curls of wood shaving were used in the opposite way to keep the incurving cup of a flower open. Sometimes this was to coax the shape of a tulip closer to the Hardy standard, sometimes to allow the sun to bleach the base of a tulip from an unclean cream to the approved level of purity.
Slices of raw potato and turnip were laid over the tulip beds to lure the small black underground slugs, known as leatherbacks, away from the tulip bulbs. One grower reported he had enjoyed the ‘melancholy satisfaction’ of catching thousands of slugs in this way. When the tulips had died down, growers had to attend to the rigmarole of lifting them, in strict order, so that none of the named varieties got mixed up. The bulbs had to be dried off and then stored somewhere, not too hot, not too cold, not too dry, not too damp, until planting time came round again. Mice would have their own, destructive agenda.
Instructions for viewing the flowers were as particular as those for growing them. James Maddock, the founder of the Walworth nursery in London and author of the influential Florist’s Directory, suggested that the paths by tulip beds ought to be lowered by several inches to bring the flowers nearer to the eye. For safety, a wooden frame two feet high should be built up round the bed ‘to prevent the garments of spectators from rubbing against, or brea
king off the flowers’. The flowers at least had the advantage of lasting longer than other florists’ flowers; tulip lovers could expect a display for more than three weeks in season. Maddock also described a curious contraption, rather like a mole trap, which could be sunk into the bed to draw out any tulip which had failed to bloom, or which for any other reason was spoiling the display. The same cylindrical tool (illustrated in his Directory) could be used to slide a new bulb in full flower into the gap. Florists had another trick for keeping their beds of tulips in full, unblemished perfection. They cut flowers from spare bulbs, grown in a separate back-up area, put them in small pots or phials of water and then sank the pots underground, so that the flowers appeared to be growing out of the earth. The Turks had done exactly the same thing, 150 years earlier.
Instructions for cross-breeding tulips to obtain new strains, were so complex they needed whole books to themselves. It had taken some time for early tulip growers to realise that the best broken tulips did not come from seed of the best broken tulips. They had to breed from the best plain-coloured tulips, and then wait for the resulting seedlings to break into the longed-for feathers and flames. June was the key month for tulip breeders, who, armed with their camel-hair brushes, carefully transferred the pollen from the stamens of one flower to the stigma of the other. John Slater, the Manchester florist, recommended that growers should then cover the whole with a cap made of Nottingham net. With or without the cap, the seed pod had to be covered with a glass to keep it dry.
If this part of the operation was successful and the breeder got his seedpod safely through to fruition, he then had to negotiate the laborious seven years that it took for the seeds to grow into flowering-size bulbs. The length of time compared badly with the speed at which other florists’ flowers could be bred, but, as one tulip lover observed philosophically, ‘although life is at best uncertain, it is nevertheless quite certain that raising seedlings will do nothing to shorten it’. The best dates for sowing tulip seed were earnestly discussed. The preference for autumn sowing gradually dissipated in the face of evidence that an early-spring sowing gave better results. At all stages of growing, drainage was the key to success. Oystershell – oysters were then food for the poor rather than the rich – was often used to line the bottom of the seed tray. Old raisin boxes were converted into the trays themselves. Canvas sails became awnings.