Tulipomania - Mike Dash [58]
The Samenspraecken give further examples of the sort of agreements struck by these inexperienced tulip traders once the idea of paying deposits in kind became generally accepted. As Gaergoedt talks his friend Waermondt through the deals he has made and noted in his ledger, he points out one in which he sold a packet of a variety called Witte Croon—“White Crown”—for 525 guilders in cash, with a deposit of four cows to be paid immediately, and another in which he purchased a quantity of Genten by handing over a deposit of “my best shot coat, one old rose-noble, and one coin with a silver chain to hang around a child’s neck” and agreeing to pay eighteen thousand guilders cash when the bulbs were ready for delivery. Some agreements appear to have been even more complicated than that. For example, the Samenspraecken suggest that florists sometimes offered bulbs of one variety in part exchange for tulips of another. One of Gaergoedt’s most extravagant arrangements called for him to receive a large quantity of Witte Croonen, together with a coach and horses, two silver bowls, and 150 guilders cash. On his part, the weaver agreed to hand over a silver dish worth sixty guilders, an equal amount of Gheele Croonen (“Yellow Crowns”), and two hundred guilders in cash.
As the autumn of 1636 shaded into winter, all seemed well in the flower business. The number of florists and the number of bulbs in circulation both continued to increase. Prices rose steadily. Profits were enormous. Yet in reality the tulip trade that the florists had built rested on the shakiest of foundations.
It was not simply a matter of whether the market could possibly sustain the rapid rise in bulb prices. All sorts of problems occurred when a florist was unable to inspect the flowers he was purchasing. To begin with there was no guarantee that the tulips were being handled with proper care. The Haarlem archives contain the details of a case concerning a local baker named Jeuriaen Jansz., who in the spring of 1636 found a beautiful specimen of Admirael Liefkens flowering in the Amsterdam garden of Marten Creitser. Jansz. struck a deal to buy the offsets. A few months later the baker was sitting in a tavern college when another florist told him the bulb had been lifted prematurely and thus might have been damaged. Jansz. had to threaten legal action to force Creitser to release him from his obligation to purchase the offsets. Even rich connoisseurs ran the risk of buying damaged goods. Cornelis Guldewagen, who had been one of the aldermen of Haarlem, acquired no fewer than thirteen hundred tulips from Anthony van Flory of The Hague and retained Barent Cardoes to plant them in his garden outside the Cruyspoort by the city moat. When the bulbs were unpacked, Cardoes and his assistant found they had been lifted very clumsily and about half had been badly damaged.
The poorly understood mysteries of breaking also caused considerable problems. Anyone who purchased an offset risked buying a breeder bulb rather than the broken tulip he desired. In May 1633 Abraham de Goyer, one of the most prominent tulip dealers of Amsterdam, bought two Paragon Schilders at an auction organized by the man who had created the variety, Abraham de Schilder himself. Paragon Schilder was a new variety and highly coveted; judging by the date that de Schilder chose to hold his auction, de Goyer had probably seen the tulip in flower a few days earlier and been entranced by it. At any rate he paid what was by the standards of the time a substantial price for his two bulbs—fifty guilders for one and forty-one guilders for the other—planted them in his garden just outside the city walls, and settled back to wait nine long months for them to bloom again. Finally, in the spring of 1634, the longed-for tulips flowered—but when they did, the two Paragons proved to be nothing like the glorious Rosens that de Goyer had anticipated.