THE ARISTOCRAT OF THE BULB GARDENS
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.
[Illustration: 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.
[Illustration:
“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.
The ways of seedling tulips are rather strange; when they first flower,
which is sometimes not till they are as much as seven years old, they
are usually self-coloured. But in a few years’ time they “break,” that
is, the flowers are no longer self-coloured but variegated. When this
will happen it is not possible to foretell, sometimes, most usually,
within two or three years of first blooming; sometimes, though not
often, not till after five-and-twenty or thirty years. The reason of
this remarkable peculiarity does not seem to be clearly understood.
Parkinson, it is true, offers one: “All such flowers not having their
originall in that manner (for some that have such or the like marks
from the beginning, that is, from the first and second years flowering,
are constant, and doe not change), but as I said, were of one colour at
the first, do show the weakness and decay of the roots, and this
extraordinary beauty in the flower, is but as the brightness of a
light, upon the very extinguishing thereof, and doeth plainly declare
that it can doe his master no more service, and therefore with this
jollity doth bid him good-night.” Unfortunately modern experience
proves this to be incorrect, for the variegation when produced usually
continues without reversion to the self-coloured original for an
indefinite length of time. There are certain distinct types in the
variegations. Robinson describes them as follows: “A feathered tulip
has the colour finely pencilled round the margin of the petals, the
base of the flowers being pure; in a “Flamed” flower stripes of colour
descend from the top of the petals towards the base. In the Bizarres
the colours are red, brownish-red, chestnut and maroon, the base being
clear yellow; in the Bybloomens the colours are black and various
shades of purple, the base being white; and in the Roses, rose of
various shades, and also deep red or scarlet, the base being white
again.” Most of which variegations, though still much appreciated by
some people, have not the place in popular admiration they had two
hundred years ago, or even as recently as one hundred, some of the
authors of which period give simple directions for the helping of
nature in “effecting the marvellous work of breaking the breeding tulip
into diversified colours.”
[Illustration:
“WHOSE LEAVES WITH THEIR CRIMSON GLOW
HIDE THE HEART THAT LIES BURNING AND BLACK BELOW”
]
Seeing the admiration of these connoisseurs of the past for streaked
tulips it is surprising we hear little or nothing of the Parrot
(_Tulipa turcica_). In some form it must have been in existence at the
time of the mania, for Parkinson, writing earlier, mentions among his
“mean flowering tulips” something which appears to be it. It is classed
as a subdivision of the “Yellow Fool’s Coat” tulip, and is described as
“of a paler or yellowish green passed with yellow and called the
Parret, with white edges.”
Striped or streaky flowers appear always to have been the florist’s
ambition. Nature, in the general way, is not much addicted to the
unaided production thereof; probably it is for that reason that growers
have always regarded them as choice. As far back as Shakespeare’s time
pied or striped flowers would seem to have been the choicest; “the
favourite flowers o’ the season,” Perdita says, “are our carnations and
streaked gilly’vors.” The taste of the general public on the subject
may vary—a Perdita of to-day would not feel it necessary, as
Shakespeare’s Perdita did, to apologise for not growing the admired
streaked gillyflowers; but the taste of the florist is more faithful,
he knows the art of the thing. It is he, also, who truly appreciates
the double flower. Nature of herself does not very often double
flowers, man invariably doubles every kind he can so soon as he takes
it into cultivation. Tulips have been doubled very long, and were at
one time much admired, though they are thought less of now. In England,
at all events, they meet with comparatively little patronage, excepting
a few dwarf sorts used for forcing and for carpet-bedding, and some
large white ones which, when wide open, find a place in bouquets and
floral trophies, where they look rather like peonies.
The history of the origin of the tulip as we have it is somewhat lost
in mist. Robinson says _Tulipa suaveolens_ from South Russia is now
regarded as the type of the numerous early flowering tulips (_Duc van
Tholl_, etc.), but the finer, later forms, which open in May, have all
come from _Tulipa Gesneriana_. Some of the Dutch growers, on the other
hand, regard the _Gesneriana_ as the parent of all the garden forms;
which also seems to be the opinion of some of the eighteenth-century
English writers, who give Cappadocia as the home of the bulb. Various
native lands have been ascribed to it: Turkey, South Russia, Asia
Minor, and what is called “the Levant”—in bulb history a wide and vague
locality—have all been suggested as the source from which we derived
it. But from wherever it came to us, it seems likely that the original
home of the bulb was Persia; from whence probably it spread to all the
above countries, if not before historic times, at least very long ago.
Tulips have long been known and admired in Persia; they were clearly as
much a commonplace of poetry in the time of Omar Khayyám as the
nightingale and the rose—
the Tulip for her wonted sup
Of Heavenly Vintage lifts her chalice up—
he writes, or we presume he writes, since the lines with very little
variation appear in all editions of the Quatrains.
The tulip is said in the East to be regarded as a symbol of declared
love. The writer of my grandmother’s _Language of Flowers_ is less
agreeable in his symbolism. “On account of the elegance of its form,”
he says, “the beauty of its colours, but its want of fragrance and
other useful qualities, this flower has been considered as an
appropriate symbol of a female who possesses no other recommendation
than personal charms.” Which is rather severe, and inclines one to
suggest that the good man, if he really felt that a flower should
possess useful qualities, might have tried this one, as was recommended
in the early seventeenth century, for “cricke in the neck.” The eastern
lover more poetically symbolised the condition of his love-inflamed
face and burning heart by the gift to his adored of the flower:
Whose leaves with their crimson glow
Hide the heart that lies burning and black below.
From the description it is clear that the Persian tulip was
self-coloured and red, possibly something like the _Gesneriana
spathulata_.
The date of its coming to Western Europe is not much more certain than
the actual place from whence it came. The introduction has been
ascribed to Busbecq, ambassador from the Emperor Maximilian to the
Porte—it is astonishing how many flowers that enterprising man is
accredited with introducing to his own and other western countries. He
is reported to have seen tulips in bloom on the road between Adrianople
and Constantinople in mid-winter, and, struck with their beauty,
brought some home with him. Then there is the story of a bulb being
brought to England by a sailor and given by him to an apothecary’s
wife, as a token of his gratitude for her kindness to him in sickness.
According to this story, the bulb first bloomed in 1557, but according
to some authorities tulips were not seen here at all until 1577. The
sailor story, when told in detail, offers several other difficulties.
It rather presupposes that the man thought the bulb of value, which he
might or might not have done. And it certainly demands that the
recipient of it should have been a good gardener and woman of business,
for she is narrated to have at once grown and multiplied her tulip and
sold the offsets for a guinea apiece—a large price in Elizabethan
England for a new and as yet unfashionable flower, introduced merely by
a country apothecary’s wife. It also puts the date of the first
flowering in England as 1559, the date when, it is said, Conrad Gesner,
the Swiss botanist and name-father to the _Gesneriana_, brought the
tulip from Constantinople to Augsburg. There is another story which
ascribes the first introduction of the tulip into England to Sir Philip
Sidney, who is reputed to have brought it from the Continent.
Personally I prefer that account; it is in keeping with the character
of the great Elizabethan, also it offers less difficulties. Sidney, we
know, was on a diplomatic mission to the German court, where he made a
friend of William of Orange; this in 1577, by which time tulips,
whether first introduced by Gesner to Augsburg or by Busbecq to
Maximilian, would have had time to grow and increase in Germany and the
Low Countries, and might well have attracted the attention of the
widely interested and cultivated Sidney.
But how they came and when they came does not greatly matter now. Come
they did, both to Holland and to England, and early find their way to
favour and to cultivation and variation. The date of the earliest
varieties is as unknown as the date of introduction, but some are
certainly very old, many late single kinds, Darwin tulips among them,
have been found by Dutch growers in old Flemish gardens with long
histories, other sorts seem to be quite as old. The tulip, like the
dog, appears to have taken very kindly to domestication and variation
for the pleasure of man.
[Illustration: DARWIN TULIPS]
There are, of course, wild tulips in some countries, the _Sylvestris_
of Italy, for instance, though none are native to Holland. They are
accredited to England, and said to be indigenous in Gloucestershire,
but the thing is very doubtful, much more likely have they been
introduced—as rabbits to Australia—and taken to the West Country. There
is a garden in Devonshire where they multiply wonderfully, and where,
to a certain extent, a record of their multiplication is kept.
Incorporated in the lease of the house is a clause to the effect that
the lessee, when he leaves, shall, besides the usual “habitable
condition,” etc., leave so many hundred of a special kind of red tulip
in the garden. The which is rather a pleasing clause to read in these
days, when no one may put a window in his woodshed without the
permission of the Urban District Council. It is pleasing to realise
that a man, though dead, has that much right over his own property, and
can perpetuate his fancy for red tulips, or (as is the case of an east
county estate) ordain that the garden he loved shall continue to be as
it has been since the days of Anne Boleyn—that, not only shall no
Council say him nay, but no Englishman would ever wish it, on the
contrary they all, privately, think it a very right and proper thing.
Perhaps it will be permitted to close these desultory remarks on tulips
past and present, English and Dutch, with a few lines from two early
Victorian poets. The early Victorians loved the tulip, and, as usual
when they loved a flower, they enshrined it “in poesy,” a rather
doubtful compliment:—
And sure more lovely to behold
Might nothing meet the wistful eye,
Than crimson fading into gold
In streaks of fairest symmetry.
This sounds like the old original _Duc van Tholl_, which is almost ugly
enough to deserve such a fate; at least in some people’s opinion,
although an old grower, once contemplating it in admiration, exclaimed,
“It is a grand flower—grand! But the English amateurs now have no
taste. They no longer know what a tulip should be! This, this I tell
you, this is a Tulip!”
One other quotation, this from Montgomery, admired of our grandmothers.
He would seem to have been planting a tulip bulb, evidently one of the
streaked florist’s variety, and the thought of the flower to come moved
him to utterance worthy of the “Elegant Album”:—
Two shapely leaves will first unfold;
Then, on a smooth, elastic stem,
The verdant bud shall turn to gold,
And open in a diadem.
Not one of Flora’s brilliant race
A form more perfect can display;
Art could not feign more simple grace,
Nor Nature take a line away.
Yet, rich as morn, of many a hue,
When flushing clouds through darkness strike,
The Tulip’s petals shine in dew,
All beautiful, but none alike.
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