Tulipomania - Mike Dash [65]
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 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 cock. Some will say, ‘A new whore 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 (“wine money”) to the seller.
The first method, 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 passed to intermediaries nominated by the principals, 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 passed 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