Tulipomania : the story of the world's most coveted flower and the extraordinary passions it aroused

252 Pages·1999·1.33 MB·English

by  Dash

BY THE SAME AUTHOR
The Limit
Borderlands

For Ffion
C
ONTENTS
MAP OF THE UNITED PROVINCES OF THE NETHERLANDS
A NOTE ON PRICES
1 A Mania for Tulips
2 The Valleys of Tien Shan
3 Within the Abode of Bliss
4 Stranger from the East
5 Clusius
6 Leiden
7 An Adornment to the Cleavage
8 The Tulip in the Mirror
9 Florists
10 Boom
11 At the Sign of The Golden Grape
12 The Orphans of Wouter Winkel
13 Bust
14 Goddess of Whores
15 At the Court of the Tulip King
16 Late Flowering
NOTES
BIBLIOGRAPHY
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

A N P
OTE ON RICES
It is impossible to make accurate comparisons between prices in the
Golden Age of the Dutch Republic and those today. Figures can certainly
be calculated, based on the comparative prices of gold or essential
foodstuffs, but they do not take into account vital differences such as
what constitutes a minimal standard of living (in many respects, people
who today would be called poor live more comfortably than the richest
Dutch in the seventeenth century) and certainly not what luxuries such
as tulip bulbs were worth in the Golden Age.
The best comparisons probably come from looking at different salaries
and earnings. The table that follows sets out some typical examples from
the Dutch Republic in the first half of the seventeenth century.*
The basic unit of currency in the republic was the guilder. One guilder
was made up of 20 stuivers.
20 stuivers = 1 guilder
½ stuiver Cost of a tankard of beer
6½ stuivers Cost of a 12-pound loaf, 1620
Daily wage of an experienced Haarlem bleacher, 1601
8 stuivers
(= about 110 guilders a year)
Daily wage of an Amsterdam cloth-shearer, 1633 (=
18 stuivers
about 250 guilders a year)
Exchange price of one Dutch ton of herring, 1636 60
13 guilders guilders Exchange price of 40 gallons of French brandy,
1636
250 guilders Annual earnings of a carpenter, 1630s
750 guilders Clusius’s salary at the University of Leiden, 1592
Typical earnings of a middle-ranking merchant, 1630s
1,500 guilders Typical earnings of a middle-ranking merchant, 1630s
Rembrandt’s fee for his greatest masterpiece, The Night
1,600 guilders
Watch, 1642
3,000 guilders Typical earnings of a well-off merchant, 1630s
Highest reliably attested price paid for a tulip bulb,
5,200 guilders
1637
*Sources: Deursen, Plain Lives; Hunger, Charles d’Ecluse; Posthumus, Inquiry; Zumthor, Daily Life
in Rembrandt’s Holland.
They were possessed with such a Rage or,
to give it its proper Name, such an Itching for their Flowers,
as to give often three thousand Crowns for a
Tulip that pleased their Fancies;
a Disease that ruined several rich Families.
MONSIEUR DE BLAINVILLE, TRAVELS THROUGH HOLLAND
(LONDON, 1743), vol. 1, p. 28