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By Root 158 0

Hondius wrote, the tulips on display exhibited a greater profusion of colors than artists even knew existed. The success of his epic poem—a treasure house for social historians that contains copious information concerning not only gardening but also the lives and habits of the country people of the time—brought some of the most eminent men of the day to Serlippens’s house. The visitors we know about included Maurice of Nassau, the new prince of Orange, commander in chief of the Dutch armies fighting the Spaniards, and one of the most celebrated soldiers of the day. Maurice must have liked what he saw of Hondius’s garden, for tulips were henceforth grown in the grounds of his palace at The Hague, in such quantities that they were eventually offered for public sale. (Sir William Brereton, who visited the palace a decade or so later, was able to purchase a hundred bulbs there for the modest price of five guilders.)

By 1620, then, the tulip was an established favorite with many of the Dutch elite and the private passion of some of the most influential men in the republic. But as the example of Prince Maurice shows, it was not yet so widespread as to be a commonplace for every citizen of the United Provinces. The flower was still comparatively rare, and some of the most highly sought-after varieties were hard to obtain at any price. Only in the coming decade would this scarcity be properly addressed.

CHAPTER 8

The Tulip in the Mirror

Other regents had their country houses. Adriaen Pauw, the immensely wealthy burgomaster of Amsterdam, owned a castle. It was only a ruin, but it stood at the center of a substantial estate called Heemstede, which Pauw acquired in 1620, and occupied the only high ground between the North Sea coast and Amsterdam. From the top of the crumbling walls, Pauw enjoyed commanding views over the heartland of the Dutch Republic. On clear days, he could see all the way to the roofscape of Amsterdam. Even when it was overcast, his country home offered an arresting view of bodies swinging in the gibbets that stood outside the walls of Haarlem, less than a mile to the north.

Heemstede became Pauw’s greatest indulgence. The burgomaster lavished money on his estate. He tore the old castle down and replaced it with a modern manor house where he entertained not only the most important men of the republic but, on separate occasions, the queen of England and the queen of France. The interiors were suitably splendid; Pauw packed his new home with expensive furniture, finely woven tapestries, and the best paintings. There was a trophy room full of burnished armor and a library of sixteen thousand books, a truly gigantic quantity for the time.

While the manor house was being built, Pauw set about improving the grounds. Always an enthusiastic investor in land reclamation projects, he had tons of poor topsoil scraped away to reveal more fertile earth beneath. He actively encouraged farming and even light industry in the remoter portions of the estate, enlarging the population of Heemstede to more than one thousand people over time.

But Adriaen Pauw’s greatest joy was not his manor house but his garden. It was carefully laid out, after the formal fashion of the time, just in front of the house, with long tree-shaded walks bisecting ornamental lawns and flower beds filled with roses, lilies, and carnations, whose color splashes set off the geometric precision of Pauw’s box hedges and paths to perfection. And in a prominent position in the center of the garden, the new lord of Heemstede planted a single bed of tulips.

There was one very peculiar thing about Pauw’s garden, though. It wasn’t something that visitors noticed right away; in fact, although the burgomaster entertained lavishly and even permitted sightseers to wander around the estate on weekdays when he was occupied in Amsterdam, some left without even realizing it was there. But that was not altogether surprising. It was not something Pauw wanted his visitors to see.

The secret of the gardens of Heemstede was a weird contrivance of wood and cunningly