Tulips, like the ruddy evening streaked.
_Southey_.
The TULIP (_tulipa_) is the glory of the garden, as far as color without
fragrance can confer such distinction. Some suppose it to be 'The Lily
of the Field' alluded to in the Sermon on the Mount. It grows wild in
Syria.
The name of the tulip is said to be of Turkish origin. It was called
Tulipa from its resemblance to the tulipan or turban.
What crouds the rich Divan to-day
With turbaned heads, of every hue
Bowing before that veiled and awful face
Like Tulip-beds of different shapes and dyes,
Bending beneath the invisible west wind's sighs?
_Moore_.
The reader has probably heard of the Tulipomania once carried to so
great an excess in Holland.
With all his phlegm, it broke a Dutchman's heart,
At a vast price, with one loved root to part.
_Crabbe_.
About the middle of the 17th century the city of Haarlem realized in
three years ten millions sterling by the sale of tulips. A single tulip
(the _Semper Augustus_) was sold for one thousand pounds. Twelve acres
of land were given for a single root and engagements to the amount of
L5,000 were made for a first-class tulip when the mania was at its
height. A gentleman, who possessed a tulip of great value, hearing that
some one was in possession of a second root of the same kind, eagerly
secured it at a most extravagant price. The moment he got possession of
it, he crushed it under his foot. "Now," he exclaimed, "my tulip is
unique!"
A Dutch Merchant gave a sailor a herring for his breakfast. Jack seeing
on the Merchant's counter what he supposed to be a heap of onions, took
up a handful of them and ate them with his fish. The supposed onions
were tulip bulbs of such value that they would have paid the cost of a
thousand Royal feasts.[079]
The tulip mania never leached so extravagant a height in England as in
Holland, but our country did not quite escape the contagion, and even so
late as the year 1836 at the sale of Mr. Clarke's tulips at Croydon,
seventy two pounds were given for a single bulb of the _Fanny Kemble_;
and a Florist in Chelsea in the same year, priced a bulb in his
catalogue at 200 guineas.
The Tulip is not endeared to us by many poetical associations. We have
read, however, one pretty and romantic tale about it. A poor old woman
who lived amongst the wild hills of Dartmoor, in Devonshire, possessed a
beautiful bed of Tulips, the pride of her small garden. One fine
moonlight night her attention was arrested by the sweet music which
seemed to issue from a thousand Liliputian choristers. She found that
the sounds proceeded from her many colored bells of Tulips. After
watching the flowers intently she perceived that they were not swayed to
and fro by the wind, but by innumerable little beings that were climbing
on the stems and leaves. They were pixies. Each held in its arms an
elfin baby tinier than itself. She saw the babies laid in the bells of
the plant, which were thus used as cradles, and the music was formed of
many lullabies. When the babies were asleep the pixies or fairies left
them, and gamboled on the neighbouring sward on which the old lady
discovered the day after, several new green rings,--a certain evidence
that her fancy had not deceived her! At earliest dawn the fairies had
returned to the tulips and taken away their little ones. The good old
woman never permitted her tulip bed to be disturbed. She regarded it as
holy ground. But when she died, some Utilitarian gardener turned it into
a parsley bed! The parsley never flourished. The ground was now cursed.
In gratitude to the memory of the benevolent dame who had watched and
protected the floral nursery, every month, on the night before the full
moon, the fairies scattered flowers on her grave, and raised a sweet
musical dirge--heard only by poetic ears--or by maids and children who
Hold each strange tale devoutly true.
For as the poet says:
What though no credit doubting wits may give,
The fair and innocent shall still believe.
Men of genius are often as trustful as maids and children. Collins,
himself a lover of the wonderful, thus speaks of Tasso:--
Prevailing poet! whose undoubting mind
Believed the magic wonders that he sung.
All nature indeed is full of mystery to the imaginative.
And visions as poetic eyes avow
Hang on each leaf and cling to every bough.
The Hindoos believe that the Peepul tree of which the foliage trembles
like that of the aspen, has a spirit in every leaf.
"Did you ever see a fairy's funeral, Madam?" said Blake, the artist.
"Never Sir." "_I_ have," continued that eccentric genius, "One night I
was walking alone in my garden. There was great stillness amongst the
branches and flowers and more than common sweetness in the air. I heard
a low and pleasant sound, and knew not whence it came: at last I
perceived _the broad leaf of a flower move_, and underneath I saw a
procession of creatures the size and color of green and gray
grasshoppers, _bearing a body laid out on a rose leaf_, which they
buried with song, and then disappeared."