Tulipomania

by Mike Dash

  But however modest their dress, Dutch regents and merchants were not immune to the temptation to display their wealth. The riches that came in with the tides and flowed into the coffers of these immensely wealthy merchants and their backers had to find outlets of some sort. Some of the money, spent on food and wine or used to import produce to the towns from the countryside, trickled down to the lower levels of society and helped to raise standards of living throughout the republic. Much was saved, or reinvested. Still, there is no question that the profits of the rich trades also fueled consumption of all manner of luxuries, from great houses to paintings to tulips, making possible the remarkable variety and richness of the Golden Age that the United Provinces enjoyed between 1600 and 1670.

  It was a time of tremendous cultural progress. The arts flourished as never before, fueled not only by the establishment of Leiden and other universities and schools but also by the arrival of many painters and writers from the south. So many artists, indeed, were looking for work that it became possible to commission a new painting or a play for a fraction of the usual cost. Many towns and private citizens took advantage of this fact, and visitors to the United Provinces were always greatly impressed by the variety and magnificence of the canvases, the tapestries, and the statuary that turned up in the most surprising places. At the same time several of the most brilliant artists were developing new techniques of realistic portraiture, creating the styles that men of the stature of Rembrandt (a Leiden miller’s son) and Frans Hals (a refugee from Antwerp) perfected. Architecture, too, enjoyed a renaissance as the new republic commissioned many imposing public buildings, and there were more books, more pamphlets, and more schools.

  Individual Dutchmen, too, acquired a taste for building work. One of the principal reasons for the ever-increasing popularity of the tulip was the newfound passion among Dutch merchants and gentry for building grand country houses where they could enjoy—and indeed show off—their burgeoning wealth. Substantial mansions sprang up in clusters outside the richest Dutch towns: at Leiderdorp, a village on the outskirts of Leiden, among the rolling sand dunes on the coast west of Haarlem, and on the river Vecht, where it flowed from Utrecht to Amsterdam. They were typically built in the Classical style, fully staffed, amply proportioned, and set in extensive grounds that generally included formal gardens as well as parkland. For busy and successful merchants and for the hardworking members of the regent class, they acted as retreats from the hasty world of the city.

  Social historians have found in this passion for house building an indicator of changing moods among the ruling classes of the United Provinces. During their Golden Age the once sober, God-fearing Dutch—so Calvinist that their society frowned on ostentation in all its forms and ministers were fined for venturing the merest semblance of a joke in church—slowly acquired something of a taste for display. From this point of view, perhaps the most interesting product of the building craze was Zorghvliet (“Fly from Care”), the country home of a prominent regent named Jacob Cats. Cats was one of the most famous Dutchmen of his day—a mild-mannered and extremely religious man who pursued dual careers as a politician and a popular writer and became without question the most widely respected Dutchman of the age. His fortune rested on his immense success as the author of popular moralistic verse, which sold in staggering quantities throughout the republic. A typical Cats stanza, in which the poet rather savored the opportunity to warn a beautiful young girl not to trade on her good looks, went like this:

  Blond turns to gray

  Light-hearted becomes grave

  Red lips will turn blue

  Beauteous cheeks will be dull

  Agile legs become stiff

  And nimble feet halt

  Plump bodies lean

  Fine skin wrinkled

  Father Cats, as he was universally known, turned out more than a dozen books filled with this sort of verse, and something like fifty thousand copies of his complete poems found their way into Dutch homes; often a volume of Cats would be the only book in the house apart from a Bible. Many Dutch families regarded him fondly as an honest source of wisdom and saw his verses as a reliable guide to the moral problems of the day. If Jacob the poet thought there was nothing wrong with owning a country retreat, it was difficult to argue that there was.

  This fashion for sumptuous country houses led naturally to the planting of many extensive country gardens. Dutch interest in horticulture had begun to flourish in the previous century and still showed no signs of abating. The grounds of Lord Offerbeake’s residence in Allofein, near Leiden (which an English member of Parliament, Sir William Brereton, visited in 1634), contained “spacious gardens and mighty great orchards, and a store of fish-ponds,” as well as twelve different varieties of hedgerow, a maze, long wooded walks, and of course a good number of flower beds. To be sure, Offerbeake’s was one of the grander plots in the United Provinces, but other wealthy men followed his example as best they could. Such gardens were regarded less as places of relaxation than as means of displaying the proprietor’s collection of plants.

  The tacit approval of moralists such as Father Cats meant that the connoisseurs’ enthusiasm for the tulip, whose beauty was after all one of those minor miracles wrought by God and whose cultivation involved honest toil in the open air (an activity heartily recommended by Cats himself), escaped the censure it might otherwise have attracted from the more Calvinist elements of Dutch society, and the flower quickly became a prominent feature of many of the grandest new residences. One tulip garden that we know something about was planted at a country house called the Moufe-schans, which was celebrated in an epic poem of some sixteen thousand verses published in 1621 by a virulently anti-Spanish minister named Petrus Hondius. The Moufe-schans, which was built on the site of some German entrenchments dug during the Dutch Revolt and whose decidedly unbucolic name actually means “Trenches of the Krauts,” was owned by Johan Serlippens, the burgomaster of Neuzen. Serlippens invited his friend Hondius to stay with him, and in time the clergyman planted an herbal garden in the grounds that included six full beds of tulips, an impressive quantity for the time. Hondius probably had received some of his bulbs from Clusius and others from an apothecary friend, Christiaan Porret of Leiden.

  Hondius was no tulip maniac. He grew all manner of plants in Serlippens’s garden, from carnations to hyacinths and narcissi, and he looked down on those who favored the tulip over other flowers, writing scathingly in his verse of those who had allowed themselves to get too caught up in the burgeoning craze:

  All these fools want is tulip bulbs

  Heads and hearts have but one wish

  Let’s try and eat them; it will make us laugh

  To taste how bitter is that dish

  But the poet was himself far from immune to the new flower’s allure. In Of de Moufe-schans he challenged contemporary painters to capture the tulip’s beauty on canvas—only to admit, a line or two later, that the task was quite impossible. In his garden alone, Hondius wrote, the tulips on display exhibited a greater profusion of colors than artists even knew existed. The success of his epic poem—a treasure house for social historians that contains copious information concerning not only gardening but also the lives and habits of the country people of the time—brought some of the most eminent men of the day to Serlippens’s house. The visitors we know about included Maurice of Nassau, the new prince of Orange, commander in chief of the Dutch armies fighting the Spaniards, and one of the most celebrated soldiers of the day. Maurice must have liked what he saw of Hondius’s garden, for tulips were henceforth grown in the grounds of his palace at The Hague, in such quantities that they were eventually offered for public sale. (Sir William Brereton, who visited the palace a decade or so later, was able to purchase a hundred bulbs there for the modest price of five guilders.)

  By 1620, then, the tulip was an established favorite with many of the Dutch elite and the private passion of some of the most influential men in the republic. But as the example of Prin
ce Maurice shows, it was not yet so widespread as to be a commonplace for every citizen of the United Provinces. The flower was still comparatively rare, and some of the most highly sought-after varieties were hard to obtain at any price. Only in the coming decade would this scarcity be properly addressed.

  CHAPTER 8

  The Tulip in the Mirror

  Other regents had their country houses. Adriaen Pauw, the immensely wealthy burgomaster of Amsterdam, owned a castle. It was only a ruin, but it stood at the center of a substantial estate called Heemstede, which Pauw acquired in 1620, and occupied the only high ground between the North Sea coast and Amsterdam. From the top of the crumbling walls, Pauw enjoyed commanding views over the heartland of the Dutch Republic. On clear days, he could see all the way to the roofscape of Amsterdam. Even when it was overcast, his country home offered an arresting view of bodies swinging in the gibbets that stood outside the walls of Haarlem, less than a mile to the north.

  Heemstede became Pauw’s greatest indulgence. The burgomaster lavished money on his estate. He tore the old castle down and replaced it with a modern manor house where he entertained not only the most important men of the republic but, on separate occasions, the queen of England and the queen of France. The interiors were suitably splendid; Pauw packed his new home with expensive furniture, finely woven tapestries, and the best paintings. There was a trophy room full of burnished armor and a library of sixteen thousand books, a truly gigantic quantity for the time.

  While the manor house was being built, Pauw set about improving the grounds. Always an enthusiastic investor in land reclamation projects, he had tons of poor topsoil scraped away to reveal more fertile earth beneath. He actively encouraged farming and even light industry in the remoter portions of the estate, enlarging the population of Heemstede to more than one thousand people over time.

  But Adriaen Pauw’s greatest joy was not his manor house but his garden. It was carefully laid out, after the formal fashion of the time, just in front of the house, with long tree-shaded walks bisecting ornamental lawns and flower beds filled with roses, lilies, and carnations, whose color splashes set off the geometric precision of Pauw’s box hedges and paths to perfection. And in a prominent position in the center of the garden, the new lord of Heemstede planted a single bed of tulips.

  There was one very peculiar thing about Pauw’s garden, though. It wasn’t something that visitors noticed right away; in fact, although the burgomaster entertained lavishly and even permitted sightseers to wander around the estate on weekdays when he was occupied in Amsterdam, some left without even realizing it was there. But that was not altogether surprising. It was not something Pauw wanted his visitors to see.

  The secret of the gardens of Heemstede was a weird contrivance of wood and cunningly angled mirrors that stood in the middle of the tulip bed. It was a looking-glass cabinet, designed to multiply whatever stood before it. Its purpose was to create an illusion of plenty where really there was none.

  From a distance, and with this strange invention’s help, Pauw’s single tulip bed looked densely planted with hundreds of brilliant flowers. It was only when a curious or appreciative visitor approached more closely that he would realize it was just an optical illusion. The mirrors of the wooden cabinet had turned the few dozen tulips in Pauw’s collection into a spectacular profusion.

  For the lord of Heemstede, the looking-glass cabinet was an unfortunate necessity. Pauw needed it because there were some things even he could not buy. Rich and influential though he was, the burgomaster of Amsterdam could not obtain enough tulips to fill his garden, and all the efforts of the best gardeners in Holland could not persuade the bulbs that he already had to multiply as quickly as he wanted.

  Pauw’s problem was a simple one. The superbly fine varieties that he collected were extremely rare, because they were the products of a long process of selective breeding. Ever since the earliest Dutch tulips had flowered in Walich Ziwertsz.’s Amsterdam garden, connoisseurs had been carefully selecting the most exquisite specimens, cultivating them with special care, and crossing them with other fine bulbs to create ever more beautiful varieties. Thus while the earliest, rudest tulips had had decades to multiply, the most valuable flowers, those that bore the most delicate colors, were only recent creations. The finest tulips of all were available in such small quantities that not even Adriaen Pauw could obtain them.

  Of all the varieties acclaimed “superbly fine,” easily the most coveted was a flower called Semper Augustus, the most celebrated, the scarcest, and by common consent the most wonderful tulip grown anywhere in the United Provinces during the seventeenth century—and thus also by far the most expensive. Semper Augustus was a Rosen tulip, but to call it simply a red and white flower would be like describing rubies and emeralds as red and green stones. Everyone who saw it concurred that it was a plant of quite exceptional beauty. It had a slender stem that carried its flower well clear of its leaves and showed off its vivid colors to the best effect. Beginning as a solid blue where the stem met the flower’s base, the corolla quickly turned pure white. Slim, blood-colored flares shot up the center of all six petals, and flakes and flashes of the same rich shade adorned the flower’s edges. Those fortunate enough to actually see a specimen of Semper Augustus in flower thought it a living wonder, as seductive as Aphrodite.

  In truth, though, very few people ever had this privilege. Although the tulip was endlessly hymned by the connoisseurs, illustrated in more tulip books than any other variety, and mentioned so frequently in connection with the bulb craze that it has become virtually synonymous with it, Semper Augustus was practically never actually traded. It was so rare that there were simply no bulbs to be had.

  The earliest mentions of the flower date only to the 1620s. By 1624—according to the Dutch chronicler Nicolaes van Wassenaer, who is virtually the only reliable source on the subject—no more than a dozen examples were then in existence, and all twelve were in the hands of a single man who was generally rumored to live in Amsterdam. The identity of this unknown connoisseur is one of the great mysteries of the tulip craze. Van Wassenaer is careful not to name him, and in the absence of any other evidence, it seems unlikely that the puzzle will ever be solved. This, perhaps, is what the reclusive connoisseur would have wished, because the chronicler makes it clear that he was determined not to part with his flowers at any price.

  He could have sold his bulbs, easily. At a time when tulips were increasingly widely cultivated, the fact that no more than a dozen specimens of a superbly fine variety were in existence made them a fantastic rarity, and the evidence suggests that the owner could have charged almost any price he cared to ask for a single bulb of Semper Augustus. Instead, he turned down every request to sell his flowers.

  Throughout the 1620s the wealthy connoisseurs of the republic bombarded the man with ever more extravagant offers for a single bulb. The sums they were willing to pay were not just large, they were spectacular; van Wassenaer records that in 1623 twelve thousand guilders was not enough to procure ten bulbs. The reclusive connoisseur who grew the flower, he states, valued the private satisfaction of gazing on the beauty of Semper Augustus over any potential profit. Yet his refusal to consider offers merely drove his desperate colleagues to raise their bids. Next summer offers as high as two or three thousand guilders a bulb were made—and just as summarily rejected.

  It is with the mysterious Semper Augustus, then, that the first symptoms of what would become known as tulip mania appear. Quite how the flower first made its way to the United Provinces is not known. According to van Wassenaer, the tulip was grown originally from seed owned by a florist in northern France, but not recognizing its value, he disposed of it for a pittance. This must have been around the year 1614. Ten or twelve years later, when the species had eclipsed all other flowers, connoisseurs from Holland hurried south to scour the nurseries and gardens of Flanders, Brabant, and northern France for other specimens of the Semper Augustus. It was a fantastically difficult tas
k, and they met with no success. A few similarly patterned flowers were located—one even received the name Parem Augusto, in honor of its apparent kinship—but somehow none quite matched the empress of tulips in the vividness of its color or the purity of its form.

  This failure forced Dutch connoisseurs to try a new tack, and for a while they attempted to promote the most gorgeous specimens from their own collections as rivals to Semper Augustus. Van Wassenaer mentions the varieties Testament Clusii, Testament Coornhert, Motarum van Chasteleyn, and Jufferkens van Marten de Fort in this connection, but striking though these flowers were, none of them excited anything like the admiration reserved for the red-flamed empress. Nor did persistent rumors that a tulip eclipsing even Semper Augustus in beauty had been found growing in a garden in Cologne ever amount to anything.