The Dutch went wild about tulips in the mid part of the 1630s, mortgaging their homes, their lives and just about anything and everything they could think of. Numerous books have been written about it including Anna Pavord’s exhaustive Tulip, The Story of a Flower That Has Made Men Mad.
Passing reference to it have even been made in fiction books like Tracy Chevalier’s The Girl with the Pearl Earring.
In honor of Garden Blogger’s Muse Day (and my own bouquet, purchased last Wednesday and still going strong!) here is a wonderful poem about tulips by Susan Kinsolving. I found it in a small volume called Among Flowers, which has wonderful paintings by Susan Colgan.
Tulipomania, The Wind Trade (1634-37)
When Holland went insane, a tulip bulb replaced each brain. Speculation soared. Fortunes in florins would afford merely a bulb. In shrieks, brokers bid paying dearly for “broken” petals of enflamed streaks. Merchants offered the moon for one bulbil of Zomerschoon and called it “sport” when mutations might distort a Rembrandt’s variegation. Everywhere fast money was made though skeptics said such a “Wind Trade” would never last, for the goddess Flora and her fools made folly of fiscal rules. And each exotic tulip bearing an inflated price bore a virus transmitted by lice. When overnight the crash came, no one dwelt on blight or blame. Fusing fantasy, finance and flowers still seemed better than other worldly powers. Inasmuch, God blest the Dutch.