Tulipomania_ The Story of the World's Most Coveted Flower and the Extraordinary Passions It Aroused

Chapter 4

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Once a newcomer"s eyes had become somewhat accustomed to the murk, however, he would have seen that the tavern was packed and lively. Some of the details, which would not have struck a contemporary Haarlemmer as in any way unusual, might seem odd to modern eyes. One was the requirement to surrender weapons at the door, the result of one too many knife fights in the past. (Dutchmen of the Golden Age had a dangerous pa.s.sion for this sort of combat-"a hundred Netherlanders, a hundred knives," as a contemporary proverb bluntly warned.) Another was the quality of the paintings displayed on the walls. Works of art were so ubiquitous in the Golden Age, and prices so low-a matter of a few stuivers or a guilder or two in some cases-that it was very common for taverns to display fine canvases or tapestries and allow them to yellow and blacken in the smoky air.

Most remarkable of all, though, was the sheer scale of the debauchery within. Even at a time when drinking was universal and drunkenness commonplace, the Dutch were Europe"s most notorious sots. Beer was cheap-a whole evening"s drinking could be enjoyed for less than a guilder-and Sir William Brereton found scarcely a sober man among the denizens of the Dutch taverns he visited. Even the English, no mean drinkers themselves, complained of the Hollanders" appet.i.te for beer and accused the Dutch of exporting the habit of drunkenness to Britain.

Virtually every Dutchman, in fact, frequented one tavern or another, as did many of the less genteel women and a good number of children. The atmosphere within these establishments was both convivial and inclusive, although there was a general suspicion, in many of the less salubrious establishments, that the staff were engaged in a systematic attempt to defraud their customers-which occasionally they were. As well as the usual tricks of shortchanging sozzled patrons or watering down their beer, some innkeepers colored wine with sunflower or stuffed cloths into the bottom of their pitchers to reduce the amount of drink they would hold. Visitors to such estabishments-at least those who avoided being bilked-were frequently appalled by the systematic way in which Netherlanders set about becoming intoxicated. Dutchmen seldom drank alone; they came in company or would be welcomed into one of the groups already working their way through vast flagons of beer. Typically the consumption of each new round would be prefaced by a toast, which was one of the rituals that the tulip traders adopted with enthusiasm. "These gentleman," the Frenchman Theophile de Viau observed of the habitues of one tavern he visited, "have so many rules and ceremonies for getting drunk that I am repelled as much by the discipline as by the excess."

It was, in any case, all but impossible to avoid beer in the seventeenth century. The water was generally undrinkable-that would certainly have been true in Haarlem, thanks to the bleacheries-and tea and coffee were little-known luxuries; wine was relatively expensive. Beer was drunk with every meal: warmed and spiced with nutmeg and sugar at breakfast time, on its own at lunch and supper. Naturally not all the beer consumed in Haarlem was very alcoholic-it was brewed in two strengths, "simple" and "double," the former to quench thirst, the latter to intoxicate-but what there was was drunk in quant.i.ty. At the turn of the century, when the population of Haarlem was only thirty thousand men, women, children, and babes in arms, the consumption of beer ran at about 120,000 pints a day, which is five and a half million gallons a year, a third of which was drunk in taverns. To meet this demand, Haarlem alone contained about a hundred breweries, fifty of which were of a good size. The brewers were, in fact, not only wealthy but a potent political force in the city; a cabal of twenty-one of them had actually controlled the government of Haarlem for a number of years from 1618.

The florists of the city, cloistered in a back room of The Golden Grape away from the worst noise and smell of the city and the tavern itself, met by arrangement two or three times a week. In the early days of the tulip trade, these meetings took an hour or two at most, but as the mania took hold, the colleges began to sit for longer periods, sometimes starting in the morning and not concluding the last of their business until the early hours of the next morning. Since each deal was celebrated with a call for wine-in itself a symbol of ostentation and wealth in what was a predominantly beer-drinking province-and since wine in Dutch taverns was served in vast pewter pitchers that held anything from two pints to one and a half gallons, the trade was conducted for the most part in a haze of inebriation. Doubtless this, combined with the bravado generated by groups of friends laughing and talking into the night, explains a good deal about the otherwise puzzling mechanisms of the mania.

In important respects the tavern colleges seem to have operated independently from the rest of the tulip trade. Their members, though they did include a few merchants and other affluent dealers, were drawn almost exclusively from the working cla.s.ses. These men would have had little if any contact with the connoisseurs or established growers, and they generally possessed at best secondhand knowledge not only of tulips but also of finance, the stock exchange, and the way that regents and great merchants dealt shares and bought and sold commodities.

Many of the elaborate customs developed by the colleges seem to have been deliberately modeled on the methods of the stock exchange, a practice that must have heightened the florists" sense of self-importance and also helped to persuade the tulip traders that they were involved in a genuine and properly regulated business. Bulbs were put up for sale by auction, and where the more established growers and dealers sometimes visited a local attorney and had their agreements notarized so as to ensure there was no possibility of any dispute, the florists subst.i.tuted the quicker and cheaper system of recording all their transactions in their own bulky ledgers. Each college also elected a secretary, who kept records of the deals struck around his table.

The tulips that were bought and sold by these tavern traders were rarely if ever the superbly fine varieties that obsessed the connoisseurs and wealthy dealers such as Jan Quaeckel. Probably they were bulbs of the second rank at first; and then, when demand rose further and even these became scarce, the colleges started to deal mostly in the least coveted and most common varieties of tulip. These flowers were known as vodderij vodderij, which means "rags," or more politely as gemeene goed gemeene goed, "common goods." They were unicolored or poorly variegated tulips that were often descendants of the earliest varieties to reach the United Provinces. Being both long-established and beneath the notice of the richer dealers, they were readily available by the end of 1636.

The vodderij vodderij were sold not by the ace but in baskets that were weighed out by the half-pound or the pound (9,728 aces in Haarlem, 10,240 in Amsterdam). In florists" slang they were often called "pound goods," to distinguish them from the piece goods that were sold individually by the ace or by the thousand aces. A one-pound basket might contain as many as fifty or one hundred bulbs, and so a single tulip, even at the height of the mania, would have been priced within reach of all but the poorest traders. were sold not by the ace but in baskets that were weighed out by the half-pound or the pound (9,728 aces in Haarlem, 10,240 in Amsterdam). In florists" slang they were often called "pound goods," to distinguish them from the piece goods that were sold individually by the ace or by the thousand aces. A one-pound basket might contain as many as fifty or one hundred bulbs, and so a single tulip, even at the height of the mania, would have been priced within reach of all but the poorest traders.

The hundreds of novice florists who flocked to the bulb trade in the autumn and winter of 163637 generally began by dealing in small quant.i.ties of pound goods, and the fantastic inflation that quickly occurred in the prices of these bulbs is a better indicator than any other of the vigor of the flower trade and the hold that tulip mania quickly exerted over the tavern colleges. A parcel of one of the cheapest pound goods, Gheele Croonen, which could have been had for as little as 20 guilders in September or October 1636, cost 1,200 guilders by the end of January. The more popular Switsers, a comparatively dull Bizarden variety, came onto the market in the autumn of 1636 at 60 guilders per pound. But by January 15, 1637, the price was 120 guilders; on January 23 it was 385; and by February 1 it had all but quadrupled again, to 1,400 guilders per pound. The peak price for this variety, recorded two days later, was 1,500 guilders per pound.

Remarkable though the tulip"s history had been up to this point, it was in the months of December 1636 and January 1637 that the bulb craze really reached its peak and tulip trading turned into tulip mania. There are, unfortunately, no eyewitness accounts of what really went on in the tulip colleges during the extraordinary winter of 1636, or how exactly bulbs were bought and sold. However, the three Samenspraecken Samenspraecken appear to have been written by an author with a detailed knowledge of the tavern colleges, and they are generally agreed to give an accurate picture of the mania at its height. appear to have been written by an author with a detailed knowledge of the tavern colleges, and they are generally agreed to give an accurate picture of the mania at its height.

In the first pamphlet Gaergoedt, the weaver who has become a florist, attempts to persuade his friend Waermondt to become a tulip dealer. He explains that he will teach him the secrets of the tavern trade and promises to tell his friend how to get himself admitted to one of the colleges and strike his first deal. Then he urges Waermondt to drink some wine with him. "This trade," he confides, "must be done with an intoxicated head, and the bolder one is, the better." As a one-line explanation of the worst excesses of the tulip mania, the weaver"s aphorism could hardly be bettered.

First, Gaergoedt explains, Waermondt needs to find one of the taverns where the florists meet. There he should ask the landlord to show him into the presence of the tulip dealers. "Because you are a newcomer," he warns, "some will crow like a c.o.c.k. Some will say, "A new wh.o.r.e in the brothel," but take no notice."

Once accepted into the company, the weaver continues, Waermondt can start to deal in bulbs. First he has to understand that it is the custom of the colleges that no one actually offers tulips for sale. Instead, florists are expected to make their intentions known by means of dropped hints and veiled allusions. It is, for example, permissible to say: "I have more yellows than I can use, but I want some white." When it does finally become clear that there is a deal to be done, two methods of trading are employed in the tulip taverns, and which is used depends on whether one wishes to buy or sell. Either way the trader chosen to be the secretary of the college will make a note of all transactions-and each and every deal means the donation of wijnkoopsgeld wijnkoopsgeld ("wine money") to the seller. ("wine money") to the seller.

The first method, met de Borden met de Borden, "with the boards," was the one used by those who wished to buy. Wood-backed slates were given to both the buyer and the seller, and the florist who wished to buy would jot down the price he was prepared to pay on his slate; but he would choose a sum well below the actual value of the bulbs he wanted. The seller would name his own price on another slate, and naturally that would be exorbitantly high. The two bids would then be pa.s.sed to intermediaries nominated by the princ.i.p.als, and they would mutually agree on what they considered a fair price. This sum would fall somewhere between the two prices written on the slates, but certainly not necessarily in the middle. The compromise price would then be scrawled on the slates, and the boards would be pa.s.sed back to the florists.

At this point bulb buyer and bulb seller had the option of either accepting or rejecting the arbitration. They accepted by letting the revised price stand; at that point the transaction was concluded, and the purchase price would be noted in the college register. The buyer was then expected to pay a commission of half a stuiver per guilder of the purchase price; if the agreed price was 120 guilders or more, the commission remained fixed at the maximum of three guilders. This was the wijnkoopsgeld wijnkoopsgeld. If, however, either the buyer or the seller did not want the deal to go through, he could signal his refusal to accept the compromise price by rubbing it off his slate. If both parties did this, the deal was off; but if only one rubbed out the new price, he had to pay the price-a fine of somewhere between two and six stuivers-for his intransigence. Thus the met de Borden met de Borden system did offer an incentive to trade. system did offer an incentive to trade.

Those who wished to initiate a sale employed a slightly different system known as in het ootje in het ootje, "in the little o." Today this phrase is a piece of Dutch slang that means "to pull someone"s leg," but during the tulip mania it referred to a portion of the rough diagram that the secretary of the college would draw to keep track of the bidding in what was effectively a form of auction. The diagram looked like this: When selling in het ootje in het ootje, this same figure was sketched on the slates of each member of the college. A florist who wished to dispose of some bulbs would write in the small o o at the bottom of the diagram the number of stuivers he was prepared to donate as a bounty or commission to a buyer. The amount would vary depending on the seller"s a.s.sessment of the value of his bulbs, but again it would be somewhere between two and six stuivers-that is, about the cost of a round or two of drinks. Prospective florists among the college would then offer what they thought the tulips were worth, the secretary keeping track of the bids by noting down the highest offer in thousands in the top semicircle, in hundreds in the bottom one, and in units underneath the vertical line. When the bidding was at an end, the secretary would strike three lines through the diagram on his board and surround the whole thing with a big at the bottom of the diagram the number of stuivers he was prepared to donate as a bounty or commission to a buyer. The amount would vary depending on the seller"s a.s.sessment of the value of his bulbs, but again it would be somewhere between two and six stuivers-that is, about the cost of a round or two of drinks. Prospective florists among the college would then offer what they thought the tulips were worth, the secretary keeping track of the bids by noting down the highest offer in thousands in the top semicircle, in hundreds in the bottom one, and in units underneath the vertical line. When the bidding was at an end, the secretary would strike three lines through the diagram on his board and surround the whole thing with a big O O-the tulip trade"s equivalent, it would appear, of the modern auctioneer"s cry of "Going, going, gone." This concluded the auction, and the seller had the option of accepting or rejecting the highest bid; but if he refused it, he still had to give the thwarted buyer the commission specified in het ootje in het ootje. This method of trading bulbs, then, also placed a premium on accepting rather than rejecting a decent bid.

So far so good, and it is clear that the tavern clubs facilitated the tulip trade by providing a meeting place for like-minded florists, offering them warm and comfortable surroundings and ensuring that their business was conducted in a haze of alcoholic enthusiasm. If they had done no more than that, the colleges would probably have ensured that bulb prices rose sharply, and a mania of some sort would have ensued. In fact, the customs of the tavern trade had an even greater impact.

First, as we have seen, the colleges proved willing to trade not just real, physical tulips but also the rights to ownership of bulbs that were still in the ground. Thus they changed the tulip trade from a seasonal thing, possible only for a few summer months after the bulbs had been lifted, to a business that could continue all the year round. This gave the traders-who, it must be remembered, rarely had gardens of their own to tend-something to do during the winter, maximized their potential for profit, and also ensured that the wijnkoopsgeld wijnkoopsgeld continued to flow to everyone"s satisfaction. Second, the colleges failed utterly to check whether their members had enough money to cover their debts or even owned the tulips they traded. In the absence of physically real bulbs, this would seem to be an elementary precaution, but they did not take it. The tavern clubs thus encouraged unbridled speculation, while offering their members absolutely no safeguards against insolvency and fraud. It was now quite possible for a florist who owned no bulbs to trade, in the expectation that he would be able to shift his obligation to actually buy a given bulb onto another dealer long before he was called to account, then use the profit on that deal to fund his next purchase. And it was equally possible for the same man to become technically insolvent the moment the price of tulips fell. continued to flow to everyone"s satisfaction. Second, the colleges failed utterly to check whether their members had enough money to cover their debts or even owned the tulips they traded. In the absence of physically real bulbs, this would seem to be an elementary precaution, but they did not take it. The tavern clubs thus encouraged unbridled speculation, while offering their members absolutely no safeguards against insolvency and fraud. It was now quite possible for a florist who owned no bulbs to trade, in the expectation that he would be able to shift his obligation to actually buy a given bulb onto another dealer long before he was called to account, then use the profit on that deal to fund his next purchase. And it was equally possible for the same man to become technically insolvent the moment the price of tulips fell.

In the Samenspraecken Samenspraecken Gaergoedt boasts of earning sixty thousand guilders from the flower trade in only four months. In the winter of 163637, the real tulip maniacs were to get a chance to see if they could match him. Gaergoedt boasts of earning sixty thousand guilders from the flower trade in only four months. In the winter of 163637, the real tulip maniacs were to get a chance to see if they could match him.

CHAPTER 12

The Orphans of Wouter Winkel.

Tulip mania had made Wouter Bartelmiesz. Winkel one of the richest men in the town of Alkmaar. Although a mere tavern keeper by trade (he was the landlord of an inn called the Oude Schutters-Doelen in the center of the town), he could count on the fingers of one hand the number of fellow citizens who were wealthier than he. The only problem, which he shared with every other tulip dealer, was that he could not lay his hands on his money. It lay buried in the ground in the form of bulbs.

Wouter Bartelmiesz. seems to have come originally from the village of Winkel, which lies about ten miles to the north of Alkmaar in the farthest tip of the province of Holland. His parents, while not wealthy, appear to have been reasonably well off. His brother Lauris was able to complete an apprenticeship and become a goldsmith-always one of the best-paid occupations to which a member of the artisan cla.s.s could aspire-and when Wouter married Elisabet Harmans in 1621, he was able to promise his wife that they could afford a large family of their own. No fewer than seven of the children he had with Elisabet survived infancy, and because even in 1636 only one, fourteen-year-old Willem, was old enough to start earning his own living, the whole family must have been supported by the profits of the tavern and Winkel"s bulb trade.

Alkmaar was one of the smaller towns of the United Provinces, but to a villager from Winkel it must have held all the allure of a metropolis. It was the market town for much of what was called the North Quarter of Holland, where it competed with its ancient rivals Hoorn and Enkhuizen for trade, and it was a notoriously independent place, uninterested in conforming to the fashions of the rest of the republic. The women of Alkmaar, for example, almost alone among the Dutch, did not wear white linen caps but fashioned their hair into an extraordinary style-all interwoven braids-that resembled a sort of helmet.

The expanse of countryside that the town dominated had shrunk considerably since the Middle Ages, when it had effectively controlled most of North Holland and even several of the islands strung across the mouth of the Zuider Zee, but it was still surrounded by rich farmland and had benefited considerably from the recent draining of some of the small lakes to the south. The town specialized in beef and dairy produce and particularly in the huge wheel-shaped cheeses that had already made the United Provinces famous throughout Europe.

The Winkel family seems to have prospered in Alkmaar for a while, but like every other family of the period, they lived lives that were permanently on the brink of tragedy. Even during its Golden Age the Dutch Republic remained prey to many of the dangers that made life in seventeenth-century Europe so frequently miserable. It was an era of war and want, short life expectancy, recurrent plague, and high infant mortality; the few doctors were still all but helpless in the face of even common illnesses, and the potions and cures they did prescribe were frequently deadlier than the illnesses they were supposed to counter. Few families could hope to go through life without losing a child or two, a husband, or a wife.

In the Winkel family it was Elizabet Harmans who went first. She died sometime between 1631 and 1635, perhaps of disease, perhaps in childbirth, leaving her husband with three boys and four young girls to care for. There is no record of a second marriage, so the presumption is that Winkel struggled on very much alone, his older children helping to take care of their younger brothers and sisters, perhaps with the a.s.sistance of a servant or the serving girls at the Oude Schutters-Doelen.

In those days Dutch children began their schooling at the age of seven, so the whole family except the youngest, a boy of six named Claes, were already of school age. That suggests that Wouter Winkel would not necessarily have had to hire anyone to help him with the children. Even so he would undoubtedly have felt the loss of his wife financially as well as emotionally. Someone would have to be paid to do the sewing, the cleaning, and the cooking that Elizabet had done, and so the profits of the tulip trade would have been even more important to the surviving members of the family now.

Wouter Bartelmiesz. seems to have gotten involved in bulb dealing relatively early on. He was certainly buying and selling tulips in 1635, well over a year before the market really boomed, and the chances are that he started dealing in bulbs a year or two before that. This early start, combined with a little luck and a good understanding of the flower trade, enabled him to ama.s.s a tulip collection of quite spectacular quality.

By the spring of 1636 the tavern keeper owned more than seventy fine or superbly fine tulips, representing about forty different varieties, together with a substantial quant.i.ty of pound goods totaling about thirty thousand aces of lower-value bulbs. His tulips included some of the most valuable flowers to be found anywhere in the United Provinces: a very rare Violetten called Admirael van Enkhuizen, together with two Viceroys and five Brabansons of various types; three bulbs of the celebrated Rosen Admirael van der Eijck, an Admirael Liefkens, a Bruyn Purper ("Brown and Purple"), a Paragon Schilder, and no fewer than seven examples of the increasingly sought-after Gouda. At the height of the mania bulbs of every one of these varieties could easily change hands for a thousand guilders and often substantially more. a.s.sembling such a quant.i.ty of the most sought-after tulips in the United Provinces was an astonishing feat of dealing on Winkel"s part. If his tulips were not the most fabulous collection of flowers in the republic, they must have come close, for no other record has yet been found of a bulb trader whose tulips even approached the quality and variety of those owned by Wouter Bartelmiesz.

The most impressive thing about Winkel"s collection, though, was neither the variety nor the magnificence of the tulips in it, but the fact that he actually owned every flower in his inventory. Wouter might have been a tulip trader, but he was neither a connoisseur nor a florist; he was a grower. That meant his a.s.sets were more substantial than those of the majority of dealers, who owned nothing but promissory notes inscribed with a price and a notional delivery date and had no guarantee that their tulips were of good quality or even that they actually existed. Winkel"s a.s.sets were bulbs, planted in a garden close to his inn.

Unfortunately for Wouter Winkel and his seven children, he did not live long enough to reap the enormous profits that his canny trading would have earned him. He saw his tulips flower in the spring of 1636, but he died sometime in the early summer, probably aged only in his late thirties or early forties. We do not know what accident or illness killed him, only that shortly afterward a party of grim-faced representatives of the local orphans" court arrived at the Oude Schutters-Doelen and took the tavern keeper"s children off to Alkmaar"s orphanage.

In some respects the children"s plight was not quite as catastrophic as it appeared. The death of both parents was a relatively common occurrence in the seventeenth century, and the United Provinces probably made better provision for caring for its orphans than any other country at that time. Most places of any size had their own orphanage, funded by the town and governed by a board of regents, who a.s.sumed responsibility for the children"s interests, supervised the full-time staff, and made sure sufficient funds were raised to keep the inst.i.tution running smoothly. The same cities typically also ran homes for the elderly-one for men and another for women-which were open to any aged citizens who met certain residency requirements. These early social services, as we would call them today, were unique to the Dutch and were the envy of the foreigners who saw them.

Nevertheless, the orphans of Wouter Winkel faced an uncertain future if they stayed in the Alkmaar orphanage. Their guardians, their uncles Lauris Bartelmiesz. and Philip de Klerck, would no doubt do what they could to help them, and the town would feed and clothe and school them for a year or two. But they were a.s.sured of board and lodging at the orphanage only until they were old enough to work for their living. Then it was very much expected that they would be packed off to some factory, mill, or workshop to learn a useful trade that would ensure they did not remain a burden on their hometown. The children would have very little choice as to where they were sent, and though they might then be no worse off than the children of other artisans, they had only one chance of a.s.suring themselves a more comfortable life: They had to sell their father"s flowers.

Their first step was to ensure that the tulips were safe. This was a very necessary precaution. As prices spiraled ever upward, every grower feared the loss of his bulbs, and some were already taking elaborate precautions to guard them. Some slept with their tulips, and one man, from the village of Blokker, installed trip wires around his bulbs and connected them to a bell that hung close to his bed. Confined to their orphanage and with their father dead, the Winkel children"s bulbs would have been especially at risk, and they must have greeted lifting time with some relief. Within a day or two all the tulips had been safely gathered and locked in a secure room in the orphanage while the trustees of the orphans" court considered how best to proceed.

That was in July 1636. It was not until December, however, with the bulbs carefully graded and weighed and back in the ground once more under the watchful eye of a gardener named Pieter Willemsz., that the trustees finally authorized a sale.

It is not clear whether this long delay was caused by the labyrinthine bureaucracy of the orphans" court or whether one of the regents of the orphanage had watched the rise in tulip prices and waited for the right moment to sell the Winkel bulbs. But whether it was by accident or design, it can hardly be doubted that the auction that finally took place at the Nieuwe Schutters-Doelen, Alkmaar, on February 5, 1637, was held at the perfect moment. In the months since Wouter Winkel"s death, tulip prices had doubled, then doubled and doubled again. With so many new buyers in the market, his rarest and finest bulbs were now far more sought after than ever before. And as chance would have it, the auction took place at precisely the moment that prices peaked.

The trustees of the orphans" court had taken care to publicize the sale, and the innkeepers of Alkmaar must have done good business as dozens of wealthy florists and growers crowded into the town in the first few days of February. Potential bidders were invited to inspect a special tulip book commissioned by the court that contained 124 watercolors of Winkel"s tulips and forty-four of the lilies, anemones, and carnations that made up the balance of his collection. The book acted as a sort of sale catalog and a reminder to potential buyers of the glories that could be theirs in only a month or two if they bid successfully.

The auction at Alkmaar was the supreme moment of the tulip mania. The crowd attracted to the sale seems to have been a cut or two above the general hoi polloi of the taverns, and almost certainly the bidders would not have been permitted to get away with college practices such as offering part payment in kind. This was an auction for connoisseurs and affluent dealers. Real bulbs were being sold on a large scale for cash.

Even before the proceedings began, one determined buyer had contrived to negotiate privately with the regents of the orphanage for the jewel of Winkel"s collection, the Violetten Admirael van Enkhuizen. When this tulip had been lifted the previous summer, the mother bulb was found to have grown a small offset, which promised to become a viable bulb itself in the new year. The presence of this offset substantially increased the value of the already rare bulb, and the regents sold it for an astonishing 5,200 guilders, close to the price that had been quoted for a Semper Augustus in 1636. The same wealthy buyer also purchased two of the increasingly popular lilac-flamed Brabansons for 3,200 guilders the pair, and a miscellaneous lot that appears to have consisted of some more rare tulips and Winkel"s collection of lilies, carnations, and anemones. For these flowers the buyer paid an additional 12,467 guilders-a staggering total, for this one sale alone, of more than 21,000 guilders, enough to buy not one but two large houses on the Kaisersgracht in Amsterdam.

The lucrative private sale of these few bulbs set the tone for the auction that now began. The buyers appear to have been convinced, either by the tulip book or by Winkel"s reputation, that the flowers were of the highest quality and that this was a rare opportunity to acquire some of the most sought-after tulips in the United Provinces. They bid fiercely, and the prices achieved at Alkmaar were, with few exceptions, the highest ever recorded for the various tulips on sale.

Most of the best lots were concentrated at the beginning of the auction. The first, a 563-ace bulb of a middle-ranking variety called Boterman, sold for 263 guilders, about half a guilder per ace, but the next, a tiny Scipio of only 82 aces, was knocked down for 400 guilders-five guilders an ace. A Paragon van Delft sold for 605 guilders, then Winkel"s prized Bruyn Purper, a subtle flower that mixed a hint of brown into its lilac flares, went for 2,025, which was six guilders seven stuivers per ace.

So it went on, bulb after bulb attaining record prices. Only two of the seventy main lots that went under the hammer in the first part of the auction sold for less than a hundred guilders, and nineteen tulips were valued at more than a thousand guilders each. The most expensive bulbs were two good-sized Viceroys of 658 and 410 aces, which sold for 4,203 and 3,000 guilders respectively, but in terms of value per ace the most coveted flower was a Rosen of the variety Admirael Liefkens. This bulb, when planted, weighed a mere 59 aces, which made it the lightest tulip (bar one) to be sold that day. It can have been little more than an offset, but it cost its buyer 1,015 guilders, which is seventeen guilders four stuivers per ace.

Even the cheaper piece goods that were sold at the end of the day-after all the superbly fine tulips had found buyers-attained good prices. Five hundred aces of Violetten Rotgans were sold for 805 guilders and for 725 to another, and a thousand aces" worth of bulbs produced by Jan Casteleijn, a Haarlem grower who had a garden on the south side of the Campeslaen, was knocked down for a thousand guilders.

Even before the auction had finally drawn to an end, it must have been obvious to those watching the bidding that Wouter Winkel"s bulbs were going for sums that were staggering even by the standards of the tulip mania. In addition to the 21,467 guilders raised in the earlier private sale, the seventy individual tulips auctioned at the Nieuwe Schutters-Doelen were sold for a combined total of 52,923 guilders and bulbs of the twenty-two varieties sold by the thousand aces went for a further 15,610. The total for the whole auction and the private sale combined came to a round 90,000 guilders.

In the s.p.a.ce of an hour or two, the Winkel children had gone from poor orphans to exceptionally rich young men and women. We know nothing about how the money raised at the auction was collected and what commissions, deductions, and tax may have been payable on this fantastic windfall. But if each of Winkel"s seven offspring simply took one-seventh of the gross sum, they would have received almost thirteen thousand guilders each, more than forty times the annual income of a typical artisan family. An ambitious boy could take that money and buy his way into almost any profession he cared to enter. A cautious one, living modestly, needed never do a day"s work in his life. And any girl with such a dowry could rely on making a very advantageous match.

There does not seem to have been any doubt in the mind of Dutch tulip traders that the auction at Alkmaar was an extraordinary event that deserved to be commemorated. Within a few days of the sale, a one-page pamphlet with the modest t.i.tle List of Some Tulips Sold to the Highest Bidder on February 5th 1637 List of Some Tulips Sold to the Highest Bidder on February 5th 1637 had gone on sale. It gave a few brief details of the circ.u.mstances of the auction and listed the prices paid for each of the ninety-nine lots. Some writers have suggested that this pamphlet was meant as a warning against extravagance, but its princ.i.p.al purpose would appear to have been to boost confidence in the tulip trade by making as many people as possible aware of the phenomenal prices that bulbs were now commanding. had gone on sale. It gave a few brief details of the circ.u.mstances of the auction and listed the prices paid for each of the ninety-nine lots. Some writers have suggested that this pamphlet was meant as a warning against extravagance, but its princ.i.p.al purpose would appear to have been to boost confidence in the tulip trade by making as many people as possible aware of the phenomenal prices that bulbs were now commanding.

In this it was at least partially successful. The pamphlet attained a sufficiently wide circulation for the prices it listed to be regarded as in some way official, even typical. A number of contemporary tulip books that actually indicate the cost of various varieties give the prices attained at Alkmaar, even though they were far in excess of anything that had been realized earlier in the mania. (The idea, presumably, was to persuade potential purchasers that they should pay high prices.) Thus Admirael Liefkens, the most expensive tulip purchased at the auction in terms of guilders paid per ace, had been worth only six guilders twelve stuivers per ace in June 1636, and Winkel"s three Admirael van der Eijcks-bulbs of a variety that had sold at two guilders ten stuivers per ace the previous July-went for as much as seven guilders fourteen stuivers per ace at Alkmaar.

Tulip mania reached its peak throughout the United Provinces in the last week of January and the first week of February 1637. During this extraordinary fortnight huge amounts of money were pledged in mere moments. Hendrick Pietersz., a baker from Haarlem, paid a hundred guilders for a Gouda weighing just seven aces-a price of more than fourteen guilders per ace, one of the highest ever recorded for a tulip. And extracts from the trading ledger of a Haarlem merchant named Bartholomeus van Gennep, preserved in the legal archives of his city, show that late in January he agreed to pay a single dealer, Abraham Versluys, more than 3,200 guilders for a collection of second-rate bulbs that included none of the highly coveted varieties most commonly a.s.sociated with the mania:

Two pounds of Yellow and Red Crowns 385 guilders 385 guilders A pound of Switsers 280 guilders 280 guilders 3,000 aces of Centen 380 guilders 380 guilders Half a pound of Oudenaers 1,430 guilders 1,430 guilders 1,000 aces of Le Grands 480 guilders 480 guilders 1,000 aces of Gevleugelde Coornharts 220 guilders 220 guilders 70 aces of Kistemaecker 12 guilders 12 guilders 410 aces of Gevlamde Nieulant 54 guilders 54 guilders .

3,241 guilders 3,241 guilders

Moreover, though the pa.s.sion for bulb dealing was still concentrated in its oldest strongholds, Haarlem and Amsterdam, it had now reached beyond the borders of Holland and West Friesland, certainly to Utrecht and Groningen and most probably to other provinces as well. Indeed, the horticulturalist Abraham Munting (who was a boy during the mania) noted, without giving details, that speculation in tulips was raging, for a second time, in northern France as well.

The number of people involved in buying and selling tulips across the United Provinces must by now have been fairly considerable. One of the few detailed doc.u.ments that has survived suggests that in the city of Utrecht, which was far from being one of the largest centers of the bulb trade, there were only about forty serious growers in February 1637. This almost certainly means that a couple of hundred florists and hangers-on also traded in the town. Since bulb growing and flower dealing flourished in at least a dozen cities and districts in Holland alone, from Medemblik in the north to Gouda in the south, it is probably safe to estimate that a minimum of three thousand people found themselves caught up in the tulip mania in this one province. If so, there could scarcely have been fewer than five thousand growers and florists in the Dutch Republic as a whole by the time the mania reached its peak, and this figure could well be a very conservative estimate.

The total value of the flowers bought and sold by such a large number of people must have been staggering. Some authorities suggest that at the height of the mania bulbs were changing hands as often as ten times in a single day-the price rising, presumably, with every deal. The rarest bulbs, on the evidence of the Alkmaar auction, could realize four or five thousand guilders apiece, and even if we accept that the prices realized at the Nieuwe Schutters-Doelen were exceptional, it certainly does not appear to have been unusual for superbly fine tulips to have changed hands for a couple of thousand guilders apiece; lesser varieties for somewhere between the 350 guilders per thousand aces recorded for the red and white Centen and the 750 paid for the popular Bizarden Gheel en Root van Leyde; and mere pound goods for somewhere between 250 and 1,500 guilders a pound. Thus even if we make the conservative estimate that in one of the largest centers of the tulip trade-a Haarlem or an Amsterdam-a total of, say, four hundred florists met in colleges to deal in bulbs just four times a week, the amount of money that changed hands in that one city during the three or four months that the mania was at its peak could have run well into seven figures. If, for example, the typical florist traded just one pound of tulips a day at an average price of 250 guilders per pound, the volume of trade in a single large town would have approached seven million guilders between the beginning of October 1636 and the end of January 1637 alone.

Some dealers appear to have been at least this active. While the mania was at its peak in December and January, a single tulip trader, Pieter van Rosven of Haarlem, bought bulbs worth 2,913 guilders in the s.p.a.ce of only six weeks. He began with the purchase of 306 aces of Petters, a Rosen variety owned by Wouter Tulckens of Alkmaar, and continued with the acquisition of a Violetten Jan Gerritsz. of 288 aces, a Tourlons of 275 aces, and half a pound of Oudenaers from the same dealer. Van Rosven also paid ninety guilders for a Legrant of 122 aces. (Tulckens appears to have acted as a sort of broker for several growers. One of the bulbs he sold to van Rosven was planted in the garden of a Cornelis Verwer, another in a plot kept by the Calvinist minister Henricus Swalmius on the Bollslaen ["Bulb lane"] that lay to the south of Haarlem, and a third in the garden of the painter Frans Grebber.) And these are merely the purchases that found their way into the legal archives of Alkmaar as a result of an action van Rosven brought against Tulckens for the nondelivery of his bulbs; he may well have bought and sold many other tulips in the same brief period.

Van Rosven"s example was certainly not unique. In the Samenspraecken Samenspraecken, Gaergoedt relates that in the colleges he attended, so many bulbs were bought and sold at high prices that drietjens drietjens-the maximum three-guilder sums paid as wine money when a deal exceeded 120 guilders-"fell like drops of water from thatched roofs when it has rained." "I have often been to inns and eaten baked and fried fish and meat," the florist adds. "Yes, chickens and rabbits, and even fine pastry, and drunk wine and beer from morning to three or four o"clock at night, and then arrived home with more money than when I left." When the chronicler Lieuwe van Aitzema guessed that ten million guilders" worth of tulips changed hands in a single Dutch town in the course of the mania as a whole, then, he may actually have been underestimating the true extent of the trading frenzy.

What, then, did the mania amount to? It is hard to resist the conclusion that in crude financial terms it really was an event of unparalleled magnitude, at least by the standards of the United Provinces. If we accept that van Aitzema was right and that perhaps twenty million guilders" worth of bulbs were bought and sold in Haarlem and Amsterdam together between 1633 and 1637, then even supposing that the trade in each of the other ten known centers of the mania amounted to no more than a tenth of that in those two great centers, the nominal turnover of the Dutch bulb trade as a whole in those four years can hardly have been less than forty million guilders. And if the florists of Holland really did trade as compulsively and as irresponsibly as the critics of the bulb trade maintained, and if the number of people involved was not thousands but tens of thousands, then the total could conceivably have been twice that figure or even more. By way of comparison, the total sum deposited by rich merchants with accounts at the Bank of Amsterdam in the years 163637 was probably only about 3.5 million guilders, and the all-powerful Dutch East India Company-which was the greatest trading organization in the whole of Europe at the time-was capitalized at 6.5 million guilders.

It was left to a contemporary pamphleteer, writing around December 1636, to give perhaps the most vivid impression of what the prices paid for tulip bulbs actually meant to the Dutchmen of the time. A flower worth three thousand guilders, the writer pointed out, could have been exchanged for a gigantic quant.i.ty of goods:

Eight fat pigs 240 guilders 240 guilders Four fat oxen 480 guilders 480 guilders Twelve fat sheep 120 guilders 120 guilders Twenty-four tons of wheat 448 guilders 448 guilders Forty-eight tons of rye 558 guilders 558 guilders Two hogsheads of wine 70 guilders 70 guilders Four barrels of eight-guilder beer 32 guilders 32 guilders Two tons of b.u.t.ter 192 guilders 192 guilders A thousand pounds of cheese 120 guilders 120 guilders A silver drinking cup 60 guilders 60 guilders A pack of clothes 80 guilders 80 guilders A bed with mattress and bedding 100 guilders 100 guilders A ship 500 guilders 500 guilders .

3,000 guilders 3,000 guilders

From this perspective, it is evident that the tulip trade really was not merely healthy but positively booming in Holland in the autumn and winter of 163637. Yet even as the mania reached its peak, there were disturbing indications that all was not well in the tavern colleges.

One warning sign was the florists" restless search for novelty. Although most seem to have agreed that one or two varieties, such as Viceroy, stood apart from their many rivals, there was very little consensus as to which tulips deserved to stand in the second rank-a problem that was exacerbated by the considerable similarities that existed between many of the more popular flowers. One college or town favored one variety, others another; furthermore, fashions and opinions changed, and new tulips continued to come onto the market to challenge the established favorites. Because of this the trade in bulbs was not just unstable but inherently illogical. No market can flourish for long if it does not possess elements of stability and predictability. The Dutch tulip trade had neither.

A notorious example of the florists" restless desire to find something new and different was the quest for the black tulip, a flower of such fabled rarity that it would certainly have been worth considerably more than even Semper Augustus if only an exemplar could have been found. The French novelist Alexander Dumas even wrote a novel t.i.tled The Black Tulip The Black Tulip, in which a young physician named Cornelius van Baerle seeks to win the huge prize offered to the first man to grow such a flower. Dumas was most likely inspired by an old Dutch account of an incident that allegedly took place at the height of the mania. According to one version of this story, a syndicate of Haarlem florists heard that a cobbler living at The Hague had succeeded in breeding a black tulip and determined to purchase the solitary flower that he possessed. They visited him in his shop, and after a certain amount of bargaining, the cobbler agreed to accept fifteen hundred guilders for his tulip and handed over the bulb. To his complete astonishment the Haarlem florists immediately hurled the black tulip to the ground and trampled on it, exclaiming: "Idiot! We have a black tulip too, and chance will never favor you again. We would have given you 10,000 guilders if you had asked it." a.s.sured that their own bulb was once again unique and therefore priceless, the Haarlemmers returned to their city, leaving the unfortunate cobbler so distraught at the thought of the wealth that might have been his that he hanged himself the same night.

The story of the black tulip is, of course, a myth. Indeed the botany of the genus is such that it is actually impossible to breed a flower with pure black petals; even today the handful of "black" tulips that exist are merely an exceptionally dark shade of purple. Nevertheless, the fact that the black tulip legend achieved a certain currency during the years of the tulip mania might perhaps have alerted the more astute florists to the fact that a dangerous gap was beginning to develop between ever-increasing demand in the bulb market and what growers could actually supply, given the time it took to introduce a new variety and the limited stock of botanical tulips available.

Still more worrisome was the boom in the market for pound goods that occurred in the autumn of 1636. The astonishing prices being asked for these previously worthless bulbs by the beginning of 1637 should have given any florist pause. However high the prices of superbly fine tulips rose, there was always some justification for them. Throughout the mania years there remained a small but genuine demand for such bulbs from the old tulip connoisseurs-the only people who actually wanted to plant and grow the bulbs rather than simply trade them. No such demand existed in the case of pound goods. Connoisseurs would not touch them, and most college florists were not remotely interested in actually cultivating them. They were traded solely because they were available, and by early February even devoted tulip maniacs began to be uneasily aware that their market was running out of control.

The success of the auction at Alkmaar did provide some rea.s.surance that high prices were still being paid for bulbs, but even so, a few of the more cautious dealers must have begun to wonder just how much longer tulip prices could continue to rise. Here and there an isolated florist sold his holdings and declined to reinvest his profits in yet more bulbs. In the tavern colleges dotted across Holland, rival traders looked on and wondered if the seller knew something they did not. Perhaps, they thought, they might dispose of a bulb or two themselves.

It was the first week of February, 1637. The boom time was over.

CHAPTER 13

Bust.

The great crash in tulip prices began in Haarlem on the first Tuesday of that February, when a group of florists gathered to buy and sell as usual in one of the city"s tavern colleges.

As was customary, an established member of the college began the day"s trading by testing the state of the market; he offered a pound of Witte Croonen or Switsers for sale. The florist asked a fair price-1,250 guilders-for the bulbs, and in the normal course of events he would have found several eager buyers. Slates and chalk would have been distributed, the tulips would have been knocked down to the highest bidder, and the rest of the day"s trading would have continued in its usual frenzied way. On this day, however, there were no bidders for the bulbs at 1,250 guilders. The auctioneer offered them again, this time cutting the price to 1,100 guilders. Still there was no interest. Desperately now, he offered his bulbs for a third time, dropping his price to a risible thousand guilders the pound. Once again there were no bids.

It is easy to imagine the awkward silence that must have descended upon the group of florists hunched around their table in the tavern as this awful, farcical auction ran its course: the half-drunk tankards of beer hanging in midair, partway to the lips of drinkers who suddenly understood the importance of what was happening in front of them; the nervous glances exchanged by traders who had not the slightest idea what to do next or how they were supposed to react. The silence must have lingered for a second or two and then been broken by a swelling hubbub of anxious conversation as bedlam enveloped the college and every florist present started talking at once.

In all likelihood every one of the traders present had paid similar prices for similar bulbs within the past few days in antic.i.p.ation of selling again for another handsome profit. Now, in a matter of no more than a minute or so, their a.s.sumptions had been shattered. The ugly question of what would become of the bulb trade had been raised. Plainly it would have been impossible to continue with the normal business of the day. Perhaps some brief attempt was made to sell other bulbs, without success, but the college must have suspended trading almost immediately, and in the general confusion one or two of the a.s.sembled company no doubt ran to inform their friends and family of what had occurred. In no time all the colleges in Haarlem would have heard the news, and every florist in the town and beyond the walls would have been gripped by a simple impulse: Sell.

It took only a few days for the panic to spread through the rest of the United Provinces. In college after college and in town after town, desperate florists discovered that flowers that had been worth thousands of guilders only a day or two before now could not be sold for any price. A few dealers kept their heads and tried to stimulate renewed interest by organizing mock auctions or offering bulbs at huge discounts, but they were ignored. In most places the tavern trade crashed so completely that it was not even a question of prices falling to a quarter or a tenth of what they had been when the mania was at its peak. The market for tulips simply ceased to exist.

Many florists must have found themselves in the same plight as Gaergoedt, the weaver described by the author of the Samenspraecken Samenspraecken. Caught out by the unexpected fall in prices, Gaergoedt"s first reaction is to go out to buy and sell again. He retains some of his old confidence, telling his friend Waermondt: "Flora may be ill, but she will not die." While his wife, Christijntje, bewails her husband"s decision to sell off his loom and all his weaving tools, Gaergoedt returns to the colleges, only to find that the market really has collapsed and all trading has come to a halt. Unable to find a single buyer for his bulbs, and conscious of the many debts he has incurred in buying tulips and laying out a garden, the hapless weaver asks his friend what he should do. Waermondt"s advice is brutally straightforward: The tulip trade is dead, he says, there is no chance of reviving it, and the florists have no option but to return to their old jobs and their proper stations. The best they can hope for is to be given the opportunity to discharge their debts honorably.

Confidence is everything in a booming market, but the fact that the tulip trade collapsed so rapidly suggests that some of the less sanguine florists must have been feeling uneasy about the continual escalation of bulb prices a few days before the crash. The mania took place before the introduction of daily newspapers, so there is no way of being certain of the sequence of events in the final week of January and the first few days of February, but it is unlikely that bulb dealing ceased completely and without warning simply because of one failed auction in a single Haarlem college. Trading must surely have become more and more difficult everywhere in Holland over the previous week or so; auctioneers would have found it harder and harder to push prices up at the old rapid rate, some varieties would have peaked in value, and the number of dealers anxious to sell would have begun to outnumber those still willing to buy. In the day or two before the fateful meeting at Haarlem, it is not too fanciful to suppose that a general feeling of unease and trepidation must have descended upon the colleges of Haarlem and Amsterdam like a clammy autumn fog rolling in off the Zuider Zee. The tulip traders had been waiting for something to happen, and now it had.

Certainly rumors that the markets could rise no higher were already in the air before February 3, and some buyers were no longer confident that their investments would yield a profit. As early as the end of December, an apothecary and bulb grower named Henricus Munting, who lived in the town of Groningen, was able to complete a lucrative deal to sell a handful of his tulips for seven thousand guilders to a man from Alkmaar only by promising his nervous customer that if prices fell before the summer of 1637, he could cancel the purchase and pay no more than 10 percent of the agreed price. Then, two days before the crash, at a dinner party held at Pieter Wynants"s house in Haarlem, Pieter"s younger brother Henrik tried to badger one of the guests into buying a pound of Switsers for 1,350 guilders. Henrik"s target was a rich widow named Geertruyt Schoudt, but she demurred and could not be persuaded to buy. It was only when another dinner guest, a local dyer named Jacob de Block, offered to guarantee the price for eight days that Schoudt gave way and bought the bulbs.

The collapse of the tulip trade after February 3 was so complete that virtually no information has survived concerning the sort of prices paid for bulbs in the spring of 1637. It would appear that the only buyers left in the market were the connoisseurs and perhaps a few rich florists who were not entirely dependent on flowers for their wealth, and that only the rarest and most superbly fine varieties had any chance at all of being sold. According to one contemporary, a tulip that had been worth 5,000 guilders before the crash was sold later for only 50 guilders. In May a bed of tulips that would have fetched 600 to 1,000 guilders in January is said to have changed hands for 6 guilders, and a selection of bulbs worth about 400 guilders during the boom was sold for a mere 22 guilders one stuiver. These prices suggest that where tulips could be sold at all, they fetched, at best, just over 5 percent of their old values, and often 1 percent or less. There can be no doubt, then, that this was a truly spectacular crash. Even if it was not more or less instantaneous in each of the towns affected by the mania-and it probably was-the collapse of the tulip trade certainly cannot have taken more than three or four months. It was far more rapid and complete than history"s most notorious financial disaster, the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and the Great Depression that followed it. In that case it took more than two years for share prices to fall to a low, and even then they retained 20 percent of their old value.

Amid all the confusion few florists seem to have understood exactly why the bulb trade had collapsed in such spectacular fashion. Yet in retrospect it is not difficult to see that the crash was all but inevitable. Like a sun, tulip mania burned brightly and steadily while there was still fuel to feed it in the shape of a steady supply of bulbs. But during the winter of 163637 demand for tulips comprehensively outstripped supply, and the mania then began, in effect, to consume everything around it. Pound goods and unicolored tulips were pressed into circulation, and in a market where even the hitherto despised Switsers and Witte Croonen were selling for more than a thousand guilders a pound, the florists of Holland were dealing every last bulb they could lay their hands on.

Once even these vodderij vodderij were being traded, there were no longer any new varieties coming onto the market at affordable prices. The absence of cheap bulbs meant, in turn, that it was all but impossible for more novice florists to enter the market, for who could afford to do so if the very cheapest lots were selling for dozens or even hundreds of guilders? A handful of the existing traders were even selling up and trying to take their profits, so a shrinking group of florists, possessed of only a limited amount of capital, were somehow sustaining a constant rapid rise in prices. Sooner or later even those who still believed the trade was fundamentally healthy would become unable to afford the next price rise and hesitate to commit themselves. Thus, by the beginning of February, money and bulbs-the twin fuels of the flower mania-were both exhausted. And like a sun that has burned the last of its fuel, the tulip mania "went supernova" in a final, frenzied burst of trading before collapsing in on itself. were being traded, there were no longer any new varieties coming onto the market at affordable prices. The absence of cheap bulbs meant, in turn, that it was all but impossible for more novice florists to enter the market, for who could afford to do so if the very cheapest lots were selling for dozens or even hundreds of guilders? A handful of the existing traders were even selling up and trying to take their profits, so a shrinking group of florists, possessed of only a limited amount of capital, were somehow sustaining a constant rapid rise in prices. Sooner or later even those who still believed the trade was fundamentally healthy would become unable to afford the next price rise and hesitate to commit themselves. Thus, by the beginning of February, money and bulbs-the twin fuels of the flower mania-were both exhausted. And like a sun that has burned the last of its fuel, the tulip mania "went supernova" in a final, frenzied burst of trading before collapsing in on itself.

That was the reason for the crash, but not for the sheer extent of the collapse in prices. The explanation for that catastrophe lies in the extraordinary rapidity with which bulbs had pa.s.sed from one hand to another at the height of the boom. In most bull markets there are also bears, who hold back capital and wait for prices to fall so they can buy valuable stocks cheaply. But the majority of the tulips that were traded in the last month or two of the mania-the pound goods and some of the varieties sold by the thousand aces-were literally worthless. There was no demand for them, no connoisseur would plant them, and they had value only in the eyes of the people who had traded them. There was nothing there for a bear trader to exploit.

Worse, it would appear that tulip mania had sucked in everyone it touched in the tavern colleges. Few florists had had much capital to spare when they entered the market, and almost none were not now caught in one or more of the complex chains of obligation that the bulb trade had created. A large number had sold or mortgaged their few possessions to finance their dealings in the bulb market. Those who were in this desperate position faced not merely loss but ruin; and in the seventeenth century, even in the Dutch Republic, ruin meant not just dest.i.tution but consignment to the workhouse or even starvation and an early death. The last thing any of these people wanted to do was bid for another tulip. Every florist was a seller now.

That is not to say that prices fell instantly and simultaneously throughout the United Provinces. Some florists did move about from town to town, but most did not, so news took a day or two to travel. And in any case the Dutch bulb trade was really a number of separate markets, one in each of the towns affected by the tulip mania. Prices in one city lagged behind those in another; the florists traded different bulbs; the tulip traders who met in one tavern were subtly different from those who made up every other college in the republic.

Thus, while the tulip trade was in ruin in Haarlem, it continued to flourish briefly elsewhere. In Amsterdam-where news of the disaster in Haarlem must have reached the colleges by Wednesday-it was still strong on Friday, February 6, when a pound of Switsers was sold for 1,065 guilders in the college of a tavern called The Mennonite Wedding. But the trade in Amsterdam seems to have approached a similar crisis point the next day, February 7, when a florist named Joost van Cuyck bid eleven hundred guilders for another pound of the ubiquitous Switsers owned by Andries de Bosscher. Van Cuyck seems to have had second thoughts about the wisdom of this purchase, since he asked de Bosscher to guarantee him that the price would not fall. De Bosscher produced a colleague named Pieter van de Cruys, who was prepared to promise him twelve hundred guilders for the bulbs, but even this did not entirely satisfy van Cuyck. He seems

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