LIBRARY

THE UNIVERSITY
OF CALIFORNIA

SANTA BARBARA

PRESENTED BY
MR. GEORGE OOBB

DUTCH BULBS AND GARDENS

UNIFORM WITH THIS VOLUME

GARDENS
OF ENGLAND

Bv E. T. COOK

WITH 20 FULL-PAGE ILLUS-
TRATIONS IN COLOUR BY

BEATRICE PARSONS

A. AND C. BLACK,
SOHO SQUARE, LONDON, W.

AGENTS

AMERICA . THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

64 & 66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YOKK

AUSTRALASIA THE OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

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CANADA . THE MACMILLAN COMPANY or CANADA, LTI>.
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INDIA . . MACMILLAN & COMPANY, LTD.

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309 Bow BAZAAR STREET, CALCUTTA

DUTCH BULBS
AND GARDENS

PAINTED BY

MIMA NIXON

DESCRIBED BY

UNA SILBERRAD AND SOPHIE LYALL

LONDON
ADAM AND CHARLES BLACK

1909

TO
MY DEAREST FRIEND

GERTRUDE CROFTON

IN MEMORY OF HAPPY DAYS SPENT IN HOLLAND

WHICH WE SAW TOGETHER FOR

THE FIRST TIME

MIMA NIXON.

PREFACE

Miss NIXON wishes me to present her humble duty
and thanks to Her Majesty, the Queen of the
Netherlands, for graciously honouring her with the
permission to make drawings of Her Majesty's
Summer Palace and Gardens at Het Loo.

Miss Nixon also wishes me to thank His
Excellency Baron Sistema van Grovestins for his
kindness in procuring for her the privilege of access
to the Royal Gardens at Het Loo, and to thank
the Rt. Hon. Sir Horace Rumbold, Bart, P.C.,
G.C.B., G.C.M.G., for his kind help.

Her thanks are also due to Mr. W. H. Wind,
Her Majesty's Head Gardener at Het Loo ; to
Miss van der Laan, Bennebroek ; and to Messrs.
Tubergen, Kersten, Krelager, Roozen, and the
other growers at Haarlem.

viii DUTCH BULBS AND GARDENS

I wish to thank Mr. Thomas Hoog of Haarlem,
who helped me in the compiling of the following
pages by supplying much valuable information,
which I trust I have not too greatly mishandled.

UNA L. SILBERRAD.

March I, 190f).

CONTENTS

BY UNA L. SILBERRAD
CHAPTER I

FACE

ON GETTING THERE 1

CHAPTER II

CROCUS AND EARLY SPRING FLOWERS .... 28

CHAPTER III

HYACINTH OR IRIS ? 47

CHAPTER IV

SOME OLD FAVOURITES AND NEW ..... 68

CHAPTER V

THE ARISTOCRAT OF THE BULB GARDENS ... 83

CHAPTER VI

BULB BARNS, NAMES, AND GROWERS . . . .104
ix

DUTCH BULBS AND GARDENS
APPENDICES

Bv SOPHIE LYALL

I

PAGI

HYACINTH CULTURE AT HAARLEM IN THE EIGHTEENTH

CENTURY • • • 121

II

THE TULIP TRADE, FROM DE KONINO'S " HISTORY OF

HAARLEM" (1635) . . . . - . . .168

III

THE HYACINTH TRADE, FROM DE KONINO'S "TAFEREEL

DER STAD HAARLEM" (1808) 171

INDEX. 173

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

1 . Het Loo Frontispiece

FACING PAGE

2. The " Berceau," Het Loo 8

3. Palace Gardens, Het Loo 16

4. Azaleas, Het Loo 24

5. The Return of the Storks 28

6. The Promise of Spring 32

7. A Crocus Field 40

8. Hyacinths scattered on the Sand .... 48

9. "In emerald tufts, flowers purple, blue, and white,

like sapphire, pearl, and rich embroidery " . . 56

10. Spanish Irises 64

11. A Bulb Farm near Overveen 68

12. "They spring, they bud, they blossome fresh and

faire, and decke the world with their rich

pompous showes " 72

13. Bulb Time, Haarlem 78

14. Tulips in their Prime . . . . . • 84

xi

xii DUTCH BULBS AND GARDENS

FACING PAGE

15. " Here are tulips for you — white, for the bridal or

the burial " 88

16. "Whose leaves with their crimson glow Hide the

heart that lies burning and black below " . . 94

17. Darwin Tulips 100

18. A Bulb House 104

19. Flower-Market, Haarlem . . . . . ' . 108

20. Hyacinth Flowers going to Market . . . .112

21. A Bulb-Grower's Garden . . . • ". . . 116

22. "When Spring unlocks the flowers to paint the

laughing soil " 128

23. A Boatload of Fragrance . . . . . .144

24. A Dutch Garden in Spring 160

DUTCH BULBS & GARDENS

CHAPTER I

ON GETTING THERE

UNDOUBTEDLY the way to go to the Bulb Gardens
of Holland is to go the way by which the bulbs
come to England. Or at least follow that route
to a certain extent — the bulbs usually make part
of the inland journey in their own country by canal
boat, neither a very possible nor a very comfortable
proceeding for the average traveller. But for the
rest, their route is the one for those who have
leisure and who want to get to the gardens in the
most suitable way.

One boards a little Dutch steamer at the Tower
Stairs, a steamer that seems in the greatest hurry
to be off, but never is, though everyone and every-
thing, including the steam escape, are very busy
till it finally shrieks itself under the Tower Bridge
and so down the river. These steamers are some-

i

2 DUTCH BULBS AND GARDENS

times slightingly referred to as cargo boats, and
certainly the bulbs, in their clean white packing
cases, come to England that way ; and when they
are not coming, Dutch cheeses in quantity and
other things take their place. But the passenger
accommodation has much to recommend it. I
remember a large deck cabin, much larger and
lighter than a good deal of the first-class accom-
modation on the great Indian and Australian
liners. I remember sheets of stout Low Country
linen, reminiscent in their scent of woodruff of the
Spanish mahogany dower chests where housewives
lay up their gear with the aromatic herb. I
remember a snug place with a swinging lamp and
lockers, more suggestive of the cabin of the
"Schooner Hesperus" when "the skipper had taken
his little daughter to bear him company," than the
saloon of a cross-Channel steamer. It is true the
food is Dutch, but if, as not infrequently happens,
one is sole passenger, one has it when and where
one pleases, which is a compensation. It is true,
too, there is no stewardess, and not often anyone
who speaks much English on board, and that the
journey takes rather long, but these are trifles.

By choosing the right tide, one drops down the
river in the afternoon, in itself an interesting and

ON GETTING THERE 3

instructive thing; spends the night at sea, which
if one has to go to sea seems the best time to
spend there ; and, if it is summer, sees the piers
of Ymuenden when sea and sky look like the
two halves of a pink pearl in the dawn. After
Ymuenden one is in the Great Canal of Amsterdam,
and it is a bad sailor who can then find reason to
object to the motion or vibration. The latter
appears principally to be connected with the steam
whistle, which gives notice of approach to railway
bridges, and the former to be rather conspicuous
by its absence. Children driving goats to pasture
and early astir pedestrians seem as if they could
easily outdistance the very steady and matronly
pace of the little steamer. But it is quite suitable,
everything else on the water moves at the same
pace, which agreeably allows of greeting and con-
versation with occasional sister craft, even allows
of learning what they have for breakfast on board.
And no doubt it is necessary, — the banks which
shut the canal from the land, usually lying below
the water-level, are very soft ; even as it is, dredgers,
those most fascinating craft of childhood, are
eternally at work.

It appears to be the cautious custom of the
country not to open the swing railway bridges

4 DUTCH BULBS AND GARDENS

within twenty minutes of the scheduled time of a
train's coming. As the trains do not invariably
keep time, there are occasionally long waits for the
steamers, which, being privately owned, wait the
good pleasure of the State-owned railways. But
it does not very much matter, there is the better
chance to look around and see the country, which
is so very flat here that there is a great deal of it
to be seen ; and so wide and peaceful that it puts
to rest the sense of hurry. One who goes to the
bulb gardens does well to put that sense to rest,
for, seen hastily, run through in a few hours or a
day at most, they produce little but an impression
of sheets of gorgeous colour, which might possibly
have been more beautiful had they been otherwise
arranged. Time is wanted to see them, the
leisureliness which regards them as gardens rather
than as so many acres of scarlet, blue, or white, and
the opportunity of knowing a few of the flowers
individually. It is for this reason, among others,
and as a suitable preparation to the leisurely observa-
tion, that a man does well to go to the gardens the
way the bulbs come ; and does well to possess his
soul in patience, while the Dutch captain attends
the pleasure of the man who minds the bridge, and
while the steamer creeps up to Amsterdam.

ON GETTING THERE 5

The national virtue of Holland, the Holland
one sees from the canal, is industry ; not energy
exactly, certainly not ' hustle ' or any kindred thing,
but industry, coupled with a neatness which keeps
even the ditches tidy, and does not allow of that
inalienable right of the English rural dweller, the
garden rubbish-heap. The Dutch strike one as
more industrious than anything else in the world,
unless perhaps ants, to a community of which, it
must be admitted, they bear some resemblance.
The national ideal, at least in the bulb district, is
cleanliness. About the highest praise to be be-
stowed on anything is that it is clean. A fine
tulip bulb in its shining yellow-brown skin is
extolled as "so clean " ; the curious sandy soil in
which the bulbs grow is spoken of with pride as
always clean ; the great compliment to be paid to a
bulb barn is that it is clean. Possibly one of the
advantages of the growers' work is that it is clean.

It is, I believe, customary to speak of Amsterdam
as the Venice of the North. For one who has not
seen Venice it is impossible to draw a comparison,
but it seems difficult to imagine much resemblance
between them — beyond the fact that both possess
canals and houses and history. Amsterdam some-
how reminds one of Dickens' novels, it is immensely

6 DUTCH BULBS AND GARDENS

interesting, rather crowded, real, busy, homely, and
genuine ; not suggestive of devastating passions
or high romance exactly, but very comfortable and
wholesome. One would expect it to dine early, to
attend to business, and have a substantial supper.
This is not meant to imply that everyone in
Amsterdam does these things, only that that is the
general impression produced by the town. One
can perfectly understand Amsterdam being the
diamond mart of the world ; but one cannot
imagine an Amsterdamer ruining himself to buy
a parure for some fair woman's caprice ; or an
Amsterdamess jeopardising her immortal soul to
secure some special jewel. One no more expects
it than one expects the Jews, who are the art
dealers and bijou connoisseurs of the world, to be
the producers of these same articles. Not that one
thinks the less of them on that account. Artists
and romancists and subjects of the grand passion,
though no doubt adding to the joy of nations,
make indifferent folk to live with ; the sturdy man
of business and the shrewd and kindly citizen
might be a deal better for everyday use — and
most lives consist principally of such usings. In
Amsterdam one can perfectly understand the
famous struggle with Spain and some of the

ON GETTING THERE 7

difficulties of the Boer War. But one cannot
help feeling that, just as the French Revolution
and the '45 are not in the nature of the people,
neither are the ways and doings of Renaissance
Italy.

From Amsterdam one goes by train to Haarlem,
capital of the bulb country ; and if one holds any
hearsay opinions as to the unexcitable nature
of the Dutch people, one corrects them on the
way. Phlegmatic in big matters they may be, but
in small ones — No. It is only necessary to observe
them seeing each other off at the railway station
or starting one of their not too expeditious trains
to realise that. The excitement of getting the
people in, of arranging seats when in, closing
windows and placing the inordinate quantity of
packages everyone seems to carry, is astonishing
to the Englishman. So too, rather, is the amount
of help and service required by the exceedingly
capable Holland women. A Holland lady never
seems to think of opening a carriage door for her-
self; one imagines she would almost sooner go past
the desired station than do so, though such a
catastrophe could not well happen, for, in good
time, she uplifts her voice and excitedly calls upon
all and sundry to let her out, if no one has, unasked,

8 DUTCH BULBS AND GARDENS

come to do it. She never attempts to board the
train without at least one assistant ; if she be stout,
two. In the latter case it is not altogether un-
necessary, for the steps are steep, the door narrow,
and the stations, like others on the Continent,
guiltless of platforms ; the difficulties of getting a
really fat and baggage-laden lady in are consider-
able. Inside the train she is very helpless about
her belongings and prepared to cast herself upon
the kindness of any or all men ; outside Mevrouw
is as capable as any woman in the world. The
peculiarity probably arises from the fact that
Holland, in some respects, is still rather mid-
Victorian ; the women, at all events, cling to the
ideal of feminine helplessness in public places
which was counted becoming in that era.

Haarlem, it is said, is behind the rest of
Holland ; with what truth I do not know, I know
no other part half so well. It is a town not quite
like any other, so quiet and bright, so small scale
busy with its own concerns, so essentially cosy.
There is there a feeling of attending to your
own business, and the price of meat mattering
more than the Messina earthquake (as, indeed, it
is conceivable it may to a good many people) ; and
also a feeling of comfort and the settled home life ;

THE " BERCEAU, HET LOO

ON GETTING THERE 9

the hearth swept and the children coming down
to tea. The whole town is intersected by canals,
the which, always busy and doing away with a good
deal of road traffic, may help to produce the quiet,
bright, yet active feeling. The houses, many of
them, are right on to the street, with windows low,
so that one can hardly help seeing in and having a
momentary and intimate glimpse of the lives of
the inhabitants. This may help to give the com-
fortable homely feeling — it is hard to say, really
impossible to say, what produces and wherein lies
the spirit and atmosphere of a town.

At Haarlem station it is customary for those
who have come in the bulb flowering time of
April and May to hire a carriage and go the route
prescribed by the driver ; thus, without leaving
their seats, seeing the gardens, and carrying away
the impression of a patchwork quilt of flowers.
An arrangement of foursquare bits of colour,
separated from each other by as yet scantily-leafed
hedges, and, here and there, intersected by pieces
of ground resting from bulb culture, and either
bare or green with vegetables, which, from sheer
exhaustion, if not contrariness, the eye is inclined
to prefer to the gorgeous flower patches. But
that is not the way to see the bulb gardens. It is

10 DUTCH BULBS AND GARDENS

better, for one who has leisure, to go first in early
summer, when the great mass of flowers is over,
and only the later and fewer bulbs are in bloom ;
when there is opportunity to know them as
individuals, and appreciate the exquisite contrast
of iris colours and green hedges, and to see to
full advantage ranunculus, and the early blooming
gladioli, and the hundred varieties of the lily tribe.
To see them, as the unaccustomed eye cannot see
them when it first meets flowers in sheets, field
after field of colour. In June, then, come to
Haarlem ; there take a tram, and do not forget
that the chances are some one in the vehicle will
understand English very well indeed. And when
the tram has come as near as may be to the
destination, walk the rest of the way to the house
of the grower. To see the bulb flowers without
the grower is not to see them. On arrival at the
house there is usually a meal first. It is always
mid-day "coffee -drinking" in my memories, and
there is never much talk of the flowers at it ;
questions, rather, about people in England and
Holland, and perhaps about fashions and food,
and the length of the winter, and the health of
Mevrouw. After that there is a rest, during
which Mevrouw offers cordials and home-made

ON GETTING THERE 11

liquors of a most excellent order, and den Heer
finishes important letters. After that, walk forth
to the flowers.

The gardens are sometimes rather far from the
house, and often not very near each other, one
man owning or renting several at considerable
distances apart. Some of the younger men use
bicycles to get from one to the other, some of the
elder tricycles, which seems a doubtful expedient,
seeing the nature of the roads. One old man who
used the latter method, and wished to try the
former, wept tears of sheer rage when his wife
and family interfered, for the sake of his safety,
to prevent him from learning to ride the swifter
machine. And, being Dutch not French, he was
not content with weeping, but proceeded to
frustrate their well-meant interference. Of an
evening, when by his own account he was late
working in the office, he took his son's bicycle to
a bulb barn, and, by the light of a lantern, rode
it up and down the centre aisle. He damaged
himself a good deal from time to time, and the
bicycle somewhat; but he was not discovered.
He explained his own injuries in various ingenious,
if not strictly truthful, ways ; and of the bicycle's
he was never suspected, although he showed

12 DUTCH BULBS AND GARDENS

himself generous in subscribing to the cost of
repairing the mysteriously caused damage. He
spent most of the evenings of one winter in this
way. It took him all that time to at all master
the machine. He was less apt than determined,
and, had he not been bent on proving his in-
dependence, he might have given up. But he
was bent, very seriously — one knows the concentra-
tion with which he ground up and down the barn
aisle night after night, peering with short-sighted
eyes for unseen obstacles among the lantern
shadows, and colliding with the same corner at
the same time each turn. In the spring he bought
a second-hand bicycle. He was too good a man of
business to risk the price of a new one on his own
proficiency as a rider on the roads ; moreover, he
wanted a machine with solid tyres, he preferred
the substantiality. On his purchase he rode
proudly to his own door, and dismounted in time
to save himself from falling off at his wife's feet.
He is now occasionally to be seen on the roads, a
proud and perspiring man. It is true, he does not
ride his bicycle very much when his wife is not
about to protest and object, but he is always
(verbally at least) an enthusiast about it. It is
his opinion that the roads of Holland are the most

ON GETTING THERE 13

excellent in the world for cycles. They are, he
says, no matter what the weather, always so clean.
That is true, clean they are ; but good ! — it is a
matter of opinion. There is a foot- wide brick track
in the centre, deep sand everywhere else ; at least
such are the roads to the bulb gardens I know
best.

But in den Heer's case part of the bulb land
was round the house. He had other farther away.
Land so near Haarlem is too valuable for a man
to own all he wants there. It would, of course,
be to this near garden he would go when the
important letters were finished and the visitor
rested. It is no impressionist picture of colour
splashes to be got there, but detailed, like an old
Dutch painting. You do not see the stretches of
blue and yellow iris, you see the flowers. They
are individuals to den Heer, not masses. He
knows them, or, at least, representatives among
them. He stops before the long strip of new
iris — mixed sorts raised from seed, in the hope
of producing some variety worth saving and
propagating.

" Ah, Ah ! " he will purr as he touches some
one among them, "here we have a good flower,
the violet — the true violet — observe the eye."

14 DUTCH BULBS AND GARDENS

You observe the flower, and the three plush
spots on the lower petals, and do not perceive it
to be very different, or, to tell the truth, very
superior to anything you have seen before. But
he perceives it and has already marked the plant.

" This we will multiply," he says, " in time you
will see this in the catalogues. You shall give it a
name."

You give one, the name of the boat that brought
you to Holland perhaps, or perhaps "Amethyst,"
in honour of the purple tone which den Heer per-
ceives, although you do not. And then you turn
to admire another flower, a perfect blue, which
seems very beautiful. But the chances are your
admiration is misplaced.

" It is nothing," den Heer says with a shrug,
at the same time cutting the bloom for you with
the smallest and sharpest of knives. " There are
many as fine, many better, the Darling, the Sol-
fatarc, both more blue. Did this, now, show any
rosy markings, that would be something indeed in
Iris hispanica."

It no doubt would, though possibly not an
improvement in the eyes of the uninitiated. If you
are of this opinion, you do not say so, but follow
den Heer among the flowers, noticing how one here

ON GETTING THERE 15

and there is marked out for the honour of multi-
plication. A somewhat remote honour, which will
not bring them into catalogue fame yet ; may not
bring them at all. For this reason the naming of
the purple iris is hardly important, little more than
a graceful compliment to the namer. The chances
are rather in favour of the flower not being found
worthy of founding a family to use the name ; and
even if it were, like the thousands of babies daily
named, there is small likelihood of its achieving
great fame.

Beyond the irises, divided by a high hornbeam
screen, there are white gladioli ; from the distance
little but an irregular white blur in a small field
they do not fill ; but near spotless flowers, bending
like a bevy of shy girls at their first communion,
or novices waiting their bridal with the Church.
Den Heer will stop to tell you which is the " true
Bride," the perfect snow-white flower with no
suspicion of purple on the stamen tips or faintly
tinging the depth of the throat. He will tell you
how the beautiful Bride, no matter how carefully
grown and selected, has a tendency in these faint
colour stains to show its remote ancestor, the ugly
little magenta flower of the Canary Islands. He
will also pick out for you the full flower head,

16 DUTCH BULBS AND GARDENS

twenty florets on a stalk, five open at once, a per-
fection by no means always obtained.

By the white gladioli is a great patch of the
taller and later blooming sort, not yet fully out, but
already showing hints of their gorgeous colours,
salmon and scarlet, pale yellow and delicate mauve.
All the many tints to be found among them since
the discovery of varieties at the Cape (where, by
the way, the corms are eaten by the Hottentots)
has allowed of endless crossings and hybridisings,
and has removed them in beauty far from the
few indigenous European sorts. Those of which
Parkinson wrote with the satisfaction of one catch-
ing a famous rival tripping : " Gerard mistaketh
the French kind for the Italian."

In the ground which surrounds the grower's
house are to be found the choice varieties. This
ground is not often divided into big fields devoted
to some one or two kinds of bulbs only. It is
more usually given up to smaller patches of special
flowers, or new flowers, things which need care, or
watching, or else are experiments. It is here there
is likely to have been first seen green ixias (Ixia
viridiflord) in bloom, and the strange sound of their
dry rustling heard, — the sound which, taken in
conjunction with their colour, the blue-green of

PALACE GARDENS, HET LOO

ON GETTING THERE 17

mildew, is somehow suggestive of Jeremiah's valley
of dry bones. Here, too, will be California!! tulips
(Calochortus), and the rare great iris of Persia (Iris
Susiana), and other things in their season ; always
much more than can be seen before Mevrouw,
standing at the house door, claps her hands to tell
that dinner is ready.

To go to the more distant gardens, it is well to
choose the morning, if it is spring, the time of the
bulbs which have made Holland famous. A windy
time, this, in Holland, one well understands then
the advantage of pollarding the trees. Also one
understands the necessity of the high hedges or
screens which separate the garden into squarish
patches. They are sometimes of beech, more often
hornbeam, they quite enclose the piece of land,
only at each corner there is a square-cut gateless
gap, which makes a large area, seen from a distance,
suggestive of a gigantic maze. In hyacinth time
they are, of course, quite bare of leaves, unless one
counts a few yellow ones of last year clinging here
and there, a beautiful sombre background to the
astonishing vivid delicacy of the flowers. It is a
wonderful sight, more especially when one stands
among them — rows of wax pink hyacinths, each
perfect and each set in its circle of bright green

18 DUTCH BULBS AND GARDENS

leaves ; behind, the purple brown of the bare hedge ;
beyond, a glimpse of blue flowers, or pale yellow, or
still more dazzling white. A sight wonderful when
one stands among them, but also to be appreciated
afterwards from a distance — preferably from the
windows of the gardener's little house. If the wind
is very cold and den Heer is going to be very long
in conference with the gardener, it is possible that,
after a certain time, one can admire them more
from within over such coffee as the gardener's wife
makes. A cup of such coffee, a footstool filled with
hot charcoal, and a chair in the most shining
kitchen possible to conceive of, are not to be
despised, while den Heer, outside, talks about the
cutting down of the hyacinth flowers.

To us who grow hyacinths in pots or in beds,
where the failure of one is like a missing front
tooth, the cutting down of the flowers seems
almost a ruthless thing. We admit that it must
be necessary, or it would not be done, but we feel
that the men who do it ought to have some com-
punction about it. Though why they should be
expected to feel it more than the mowers who cut
the equally beautiful flowers in the English hay-
fields does not appear. The bulbs in Holland are
grown for their roots as much as are carrots and

ON GETTING THERE 19

potatoes, as much as the grass is grown for hay.
It is the poet, not the mower, who sighs over the
flowers of the grass that perish ; and the poet, if he
happens to own hay-fields, does not hesitate to give
orders for the cutting at the proper time. And
the mower, if he has an eye for beauty, admires the
flowers, even though he says nothing about it, and
cuts them down to order. A boat -load of cut
hyacinth flowers, with their beauty, and their scent,
and their cutting off at highest perfection may
touch the imagination more than a four -ounce
bottle of heavy red - brown oil, which represents
the life and fragrance of half a square mile of
jasmine flowers. But it should not, if the jasmine
was only grown that the oil might be made, the
hyacinths equally are only grown that their roots
may be fine and saleable ; and when their well-
being demands the cutting of the flowers there is
no sacrifice in their going, for to this end they grew
and matured and came to flower.

There is yet one other way of going to see a
bulb garden, for those who are fortunate enough
to know a grower who owns one at a so situated
spot. Den Heer owned one, and on a June
afternoon we went to it, his son, den Heer Karel,
and I. We started from a small quay in Haarlem,

20 DUTCH BULBS AND GARDENS

travelling by boat — a boat not so much bigger
than a barge, which carried a miscellaneous cargo,
and a captain and crew — two souls inclusive.
Captain was clean, crew rather dirty, for a
Dutchman, but both very polite. They raised
their hats on the slightest provocation, — it would
really have saved trouble if they had kept them
off altogether while I was about, and shook hands
most formally with all quayside friends before
casting off. There was one other passenger, an
old peasant woman, with a beautiful head-dress
with spiral gold wires standing out over her ears.
She hugged a small goat all the voyage, as if she
were afraid of its jumping overboard, or eating the
green stuff which was part of her luggage, though,
since she sat on that and she was a voluminous
person, it is difficult to see how it could have
managed to do so. There was not much to sit
on besides one's luggage if one had any, or that
part of the cargo which was smooth enough and
firm enough to provide a seat. It is possible den
Heer Karel did not quite like the expedition. He
had a feeling that it "was singular," and if there
is one thing a Dutchman does not like, it is to
look singular. Maybe it is this clinging to the
conventionalities, which we have rather lost, which

ON GETTING THERE 21

gives one the feeling of having gone back some
decades when one is among them.

But den Heer Karel was goodness itself, and,
without a word of protest, made the expedition.
We steamed down the canal — a narrow canal
lying in the old part of the town, where old purple-
red houses, with green shutters, and tales haunting
their every doorway and steep gable -end, came
down to the water's edge ; where broad brown
craft lay crowded along the water side, and red-
capped men lowered barrels from upper stories, and
wooden -shod women, with their skirts girt high,
clattered down the step, which alone stood between
their back doors and the waterway, to fill empty
pails, or empty full ones. A life and a folk
strangely suggestive, at least to the foreigner, of
those of Haarlem city in the days of the Spanish
occupation.

The boat did not go fast that June day ; indeed,
once afloat in her, it was possible to realise at
what a really superior speed Amsterdam had been
approached on the great canal. It was also now
possible to think of that canal as "great." It was
very great in comparison to this one. But even
at this rate of progress Haarlem was left behind
before very long, and on either side was green

22 DUTCH BULBS AND GARDENS

country. A very straight white road ran by the
canal on one side. It was by this on his bicycle
den Heer Karel would have gone to the bulb
garden had he been alone. A remark on the
subject drew from him the assurance that it was
much cooler to go this way, and that the glaring
white dust of the road often hurt his eyes. The
which, with its dwelling on the one point of the
journey agreeable to him, seems more really
graceful than an assurance of delight in it ; this
even if he had not added, " besides, then I should
not have had company, and now I have, which is
pleasant." There is a certain sincere politeness
among the Dutch, which is attractive in its
simplicity, and at its best recalls the Quakers.

I have been told that the village to which I
went that day is surprisingly wicked. The same
has been told of every village, except one, with
which I have come in contact in England.
Possibly, usually, with some truth, though the
surprise may have lain more in the nature of the
surprisee — it is hard not to think of picturesque
cottages and green fields as Gardens of Eden —
than in the outrageous iniquity of the villagers.
Certainly den Heer Karel was no connoisseur of
wickedness in any of its branches ; he would be

ON GETTING THERE 23

likely to find surprising most varieties that came
to his notice among the village people whom he
individually knew. His uncle, who was the pastor
of the village, was of something the same sort,
though, so the nephew said, he did not know half
the bad things which were done there. The which
was easy to believe when one met the pastor, a
white-haired old man, whose hopeful eyes saw
always the best in human nature, and whose
unconscious saintship inevitably drew out the best,
so that the most unrighteous, from shame or from
sympathy, made efforts to be righteous in his
company.

In the gardens, which were reached at the end
of this leisurely voyage, ranunculi were in bloom
— a flower not often to be met in quantity in
England, where it is not popular. Why, is not
clear, certainly one might have thought it old-
fashioned enough to have returned to favour with
straight-backed chairs and china dogs and cottage
ornaments. The more admired anemones were
nearly over that day, only a few crimson and
purple flowers remained, so wide open that their
black centres were all revealed. They still stood
stiff and straight on their stalks, not bending to
every breeze, like the ranunculi, which were a

24 DUTCH BULBS AND GARDENS

mass of dancing rosettes, scarlet for the most part,
though at the far corner of the field there was a
narrow strip of ivory-white ones, a beautiful colour
contrast.

We were still looking at the flowers when the
pastor found us, and carried us home to the Pastorie
to tea. Tea in handleless cups, brought from China,
long before the ports were open to any but the
sturdy old Dutch traders, and handed down from
mother to daughter without written bequest, but
inalienable as an English coronet. The maid-
servant, I remember, brought in her cup, not a
little handleless one, but a good substantial young
basin, and her mistress filled it from the pot when
we had all been served. She was a rosy-cheeked
bare-armed maid, close relation, one might think, to
Miss Matty's invaluable Martha, or, in appearance,
to Peggotty of greater fame. Like Martha in her
taste for the lads, so her mistress said — a perhaps
excusable fault, seeing that many of the water-
going profession — a class notoriously adept at
love-making — were always coming and going to
the otherwise quiet little village. Like Martha,
too, she was in her unabashed interest in strangers.
It was the most wide-eyed attention she bestowed
on me, and with the most obvious reluctance that

AZALEAS, HET LOO

ON GETTING THERE 25

she left the room, with me in it, when she had got
her tea.

It was rather a dark little room, though it had
two windows ; one, decorously veiled by hand-
netted curtains, looking on to the cheeriness of
the village street ; and one on to . the small
garden, where samples of all the choice bulbs
from the great grower in Haarlem were set, and
usually failed to bloom, for the pastor, unlike
his brother, was a poor gardener. On the other
side of the passage was another room, the pastor's
study it may have been called. There were no
deep-seated leather chairs there — the chairs were
mostly wood, and not inviting to repose ; nor any
richly sombre rows of leather-bound books, there
were only three books, a Bible and two others,
and they were shabbily bound. Rather a bare
room, the white scrubbed floor quite carpetless,
except for a very small island of mat, which
modestly hid itself under the table. The folk
who came to see the pastor on questions of
mutual dispute or individual difficulty, or any
other of the hundred troubles of common
humanity, would seem to have been many. They
were the sort that wear wooden shoes, hard on
carpets and great carriers of dirt, the wife said,

26 DUTCH BULBS AND GARDENS

and she, no doubt, thought they would be happier
if they had not to keep such things in mind —
as her husband certainly was. He was most at
home, good man, dispensing the wisdom of com-
fort in his carpetless room, with his Bible and
tobacco lying together on the deal table, and
the smoke of his pipe and his guests' curling
to the sunny yellow - washed walls. The big
window of this room looked out on to the quay,
and from it the pastor could nod greeting to
half his parishioners of a morning, and see, if
he knew how to look, a good deal of their
doings. Even while we stood there that day,
one of us very conscious of the quiet brightness,
the simple saintliness of the place, the captain
of our lately left boat came up on the deck of
his little vessel. He came to greet a girl — the
fourth he had kissed, with the well - received
amorousness of at least betrothed rights, in my
short acquaintance with him. But the pastor
did not know that, it was not the sort of thing
he knew. He knew how the captain had carried
Johan Vorst's bulbs to Haarlem free that year,
when the poor fellow lost so much in the
floods ; how he brought the widow's firing every
winter, and how he gave a job to Crooked

ON GETTING THERE 27

Jan when he came back from prison, and no
one else (but the pastor) would give him a
helping hand. These were the things the pastor
always knew — Blessings on the folk who always
know the best of us, and expect it, too !

But this is not concerning Dutch bulb fields,
it has floated rather far from the subject, like
the little canal boat. Yet in a way it concerns
them, for to appreciate the flowers, and not
only to see them as so many streaks of colour
or so many acres of blossoming roots, it is
perhaps well to know something of the life
and ways of the people who grow them — a
people who have been the greatest gardeners,
and some of the greatest sea -carriers and col-
lectors of the world for 400 years ; who, with
much that is new, have kept a good deal that
is old, and who are perhaps less like what we are
than what we used to be.

CHAPTER II

CROCUS AND EARLY SPRING FLOWERS

WINTER in the bulb country is not a very
attractive time, at least to the foreigner. The
same possibly may be said of winter in Eng-
land, though few healthy Englishmen, unless
tied very tightly to town, admit it. Winter in
Holland is long, and, more often than not, very
cold. The canals are often frozen for a con-
siderable time, when the easiest way to get
about in the country districts is on skates.
Nearly all Dutchmen are at home on skates ;
comparatively few are clever oarsmen, though
one might have thought they had equal oppor-
tunities. The reason probably is, that one can
go upon one's work or business on skates, and
save rather than lose time thereby ; whereas,
in the average man's circumstances, one can
only row for recreation. In England, of course,

28

THE RETURN OF THE STORKS

CROCUS AND EARLY SPRING FLOWERS 29

such a reason would not operate ; and, given the
Dutch facilities, one can imagine that as many
good sportsmen would assemble to watch inter-
county contests on the frozen or liquid water
(according to season) as now enthusiastically look
on at cricket or football matches. Certainly there
are very marked differences between the nations.

They show among the women not less than
the men. The pride, at least of the more old-
fashioned Dutch housewife, is her stove, the
closed stoves, which heat the room very well
and very cleanly, give little assistance to ventila-
tion, and offer none of the cheer and sympathy
of the open fire. I have only met or heard of
one English housewife who was proud of a
shining stove, and she lived in the Potteries,
and was the wife of a cheerful drunkard. In
summer the majority of the stoves in Dutch
houses are taken down and put away — one
would like to know where. They must require
room to store, and present an interesting sight,
wrapped in winding - sheets of greased paper,
keeping their summer Sabbath, like the dead
kings waiting the summons of Charlemagne's
sword. But the finest and most handsome of
stoves are not taken down, they remain in

30 DUTCH BULBS AND GARDENS

place through the summer, covered when the
weather is damp and when the room they
adorn is not to be occupied ; on no account to
be used for fire — standing as a testimony to
the owner's housewifery and an impressive object
to the visitor. One visitor, at least, was im-
pressed by such a shining steel tower, impressed
with the amount of elbow - grease required to
keep it in order, if nothing else ; though that
same visitor had the bad taste to admire far
more an old stove, exhibited with similar pride,
by the host of a little inn on a remote Swiss
road — a wonderful stone stove, with the date
1700 cut into it, and a history as interesting
as would be the experiment (for the uninitiated)
of lighting a fire there. A stove, that, to burn
compromising papers, to destroy blood - stained
garments and traces of crime, while the storm
thundered without, as it did that day. The
Dutch stoves, no doubt infinitely better fitted
for combustion and real destruction of such
things, or any other, make no such suggestions.
They suggest, besides the pride of housewives and
the pains of maid - servants, merely the useful
heating apparatus of a comfortable home, where,
when the short days draw in and the lamp is

CROCUS AND EARLY SPRING FLOWERS 31

lighted, the family sit about the table and read
and work — do crochet work and study the foreign
classics. Or perhaps examine pollen and plant
parasites with a microscope ; or play very sweetly
on the piano, which not infrequently is adorned
with a blue or crimson worked cover.

There is not much to be done in the bulb gardens
in the winter, at all events during the frosts. The
land is put to bed, most of the bulb fields are
covered with straw or reeds, only those containing
the hardiest sorts, such as Scitta sibirica, Winter
aconite, and a few others, are left bare. This cover-
ing, which is of varying thickness to suit the bulbs
below, is not moved till the frost breaks and the
milder weather sets in. But when this happens
there is a good deal to do, for it has to be shifted in
accordance with the rise and fall of the thermometer :
partially removed if the weather keeps mild, else
the bulbs would develop too fast in the warmth
underneath ; replaced for cold nights, or if sharp
frost is likely. In early spring great attention has
to be given to this, for with sunny mid-days, sharp
night frosts, periods of prolonged soaking rain and
sudden nipping winds, there is much trouble in
suitably protecting and not over - covering the
bulbs.

32 DUTCH BULBS AND GARDENS

In England the flowering of the crocus is looked
upon with a certain amount of joy. It is not, like
the first snowdrop, the solitary blooming of some
brave single flower, which gives hope that the
winter may be going, but the sudden bursting into
bloom of hundreds, which declare that the sun
has power again. A ribbon of yellow on the grass,
battalions of compact mauve figures on the slope,
whole armies, violet and white and gold, delicately
fragrant, alive with humming bees, definitely pro-
claiming the doom of winter. If this is so in Eng-
land, in Holland the flowering of the crocus means
more still ; every flower represents a separate young
crocus, a sound saleable corm, if the grower knows
his business and the ground is good. The bulbs,
blooming in hundreds, stand for a harvest under-
ground, the census of which might be taken from
above, had one time and patience to count the
flowers, for at the base of each flower-shoot that
the parent bulb throws up a little young bulb will
be found when the roots are lifted at the end of
June. So a field of flowering crocuses is more than
a thing of delicate beauty, and more than a sign
that winter is over and past, and the time of
the return of the storks is at hand, it stands for
so many fawn-coloured bulbs — a marketable com-

THE PROMISE OF SPRING

CROCUS AND EARLY SPRING FLOWERS 35

modity, and each in itself a mystery of re-creation
and increase.

Crocuses are not much grown in the immediate
vicinity of Haarlem, the land there is too valuable
to be devoted to the inexpensive bulb. Many
thousands come from Hille, some small growers
there make a speciality of them, and grow little else ;
it is they who supply the big men who supply the
markets. There would seem to be about eighty-
three sorts of crocus now, which is something of an
increase on the six sorts which " Robinio of Paris,
that painful and curious searcher after simples,"
sent to Gerard. By Parkinson's time there appear
to have been thirty -one sorts known; but they
had begun to cultivate bulbs in earnest in his day,
and to them it would have been more a matter
of interest than surprise to see our varieties, all of
which, on the authority of the grower, it is said,
"have been derived from (grown from seed of)
the original Crocus vernus of South and Central
Europe." When this crocus was first introduced
into Holland it is not easy to say. Nor is it easy
to discover " when " (in the words of the same
grower) " cultivators and amateurs began to hybri-
dise the different forms " — nor yet when there first
were different forms of it to hybridise ; certainly it

34 DUTCH BULBS AND GARDENS

happened very long ago. There is a tradition that
the saffron crocus (Crocus sativus} was introduced
into England in 1339. Hakluyt speaks of its being
brought by a pilgrim who, appreciating the
sovereign value of the plant, and " proposing to do
good to his country," carried home a root hidden
in his staff, which had been made hollow " of pur-
pose," though whether for the purpose of carrying
saffron or anything else of value or interest he
could pick up, is not clear. In either case the
proceeding is rather typically English, as also are
Hakluyt's further remarks on saffron growing.
He regrets that it has become a failing industry in
these days, when many sturdy fellows are without
work, and suggests, even as we suggest the revival
of sundry curious things, that it should be revived
for the benefit of the unemployed, who then, as now,
were a cut-and-come-again problem.

It is interesting to notice that the older writers
include all crocuses and colchicums under the name
saffron, not meaning, as we do now, only the
Crocus sativus. This crocus, and other varieties of
autumn-flowering ones, are grown in Holland ; the
delicate flowers, beautifying some few fields when
the rest are, for the most part, bare, give to them
almost a look of spurious spring. It was no doubt

CROCUS AND EARLY SPRING FLOWERS 35

this spring-like look of the autumn flowers which
inspired the legend that they first appeared in fields
where Medea spilt some drops of the magic liquor
she had prepared to restore ^Eson to the vigour of
youth. No doubt also it was this, and the fact that,
reversing the usual order, the seed heads come in
the spring, that gave them their old name, " Sonne-
before-the-father."

The original crocus of all crocuses is now
believed to have been a native of Kashmere, and
to have followed the Aryan migration through the
temperate globe ; brought, no doubt, in the first
instance for its saffron, whereof it would seem these
remote ancestors of the European race thought as
highly as did Hakluyt's pilgrim. In its various wild
forms it is found now in Persia and the Levant, in
the Alps and the Apennines, in Italy and Greece,
and on the lower slopes of the Pyrenees ; and it
has been so long in these countries that it has come
to be reckoned an indigenous flower, and has a
place in many old legends. Ovid tells us that
Proserpine was picking " graceful crocus and white
lilies " when she was carried off. It is he also who
tells of the origin of the flower in Greece. A
youth named Crocus in love with a nymph Smilax :
he, for the impatience of his love, turned into the

36 DUTCH BULBS AND GARDENS

flower ; and she — for no apparent reason, which
seems unfair — turned into, not the delicate green
plant we call by her name, but a yew tree, a some-
what sombre fate for the inamorata of so ephemeral
a trifler as Crocus appears.

In spite of this tale of impatient love there does
not seem to be any record, as one might have
expected, of the use of crocus in the flavouring of
love philtres or charms. The veil of Hymen was
saffron-coloured ; the flower, among others, sprang
up on the ground where Zeus and Hera reclined,
from sheer astonishment, one might imagine, at
seeing the Olympian pair on good terms. We our-
selves have dedicated it to St. Valentine —

" While the crocus hastens to the shrine
Of Primrose love on St. Valentine "-

though the time of its flowering probably has to do
with that. But among the many strange and un-
pleasant things which have been used in the flavour-
ing of love philtres saffron does not appear to have
had a place.

It has been used for many other things. " The
crocus rayed with gold " is among the flowers which
crown Sophocles' " mighty goddess." The Greeks
also, we know, reckoned it among perfumes.
Aristophanes, in The Clouds, has a somewhat

CROCUS AND EARLY SPRING FLOWERS 37

unquotable line on the subject. Among the
Easterns it was held a choice spice : " Spikenard
and saffron, calamus and cinnamon, with all trees
of frankincense ; myrrh and aloes," were the spices
that were to flow out from the garden of the
Beloved in The Song of Solomon. One old
authority held it to be the food of the fairies, and
the humans in his day held it in high esteem. But
now it is fallen from its high estate, and, though
the County Council or some other body might
still prosecute a man for selling adulterated saffron,
it would be disinterested philanthropy, and bear
no resemblance to the burning of offenders at
Nuremberg in the fifteenth century for a similar
offence. In Persia it is still much used as a
condiment ; in a less degree in Spain ; in Holland
one finds it flavouring rice boiled with milk ; here
in England it lingers still in the saffron cakes of
Cornwall, otherwise it plays small part, except as a
food- colouring matter. For that it seems to have
been in use in Shakespeare's time. The clown,
who has so many things to buy for Perdita's
shearing feast, ticks it off among the rest: "I
must have saffron," he says, "to colour the
warden pies." And we, though we have lost the
receipt for warden pies, still use saffron to colour

38 DUTCH BULBS AND GARDENS

our cookery. Especially is this the case in Russia,
where the law holds that all food-colouring must
be vegetable, — a singular law, when one comes to
think that all the alkaloid poisons are of vegetable
origin, and for real nastiness it is hard to beat some
of the dyes of Nature's providing.

But it was as a drug that the saffron crocus was
most greatly prized among the peoples of middle
and western Europe. In the late middle ages it
appears to have been much used as an eye-wash, —
one feels it was fortunate folk did not have to try
their eyes then as now. By Gerard's time it was
in great favour for many things ; he speaks of it
as making "the senses more quicke and lively,
shaking off heavie and drowsie sleep, and making a
man merrie." " It is a herb of the Sun and under
the Lion," writes N. Culpeper, student of physic
and astrology in 1652. " Let not above 10 grains
be given at one time, for if the Sun, which is the
fountain of life, may dazzle the eyes and make
them blinde, a Cordial being taken in an inordinate
quantity may hurt the heart instead of helping it."
This view possibly led to crocus standing in an
early Victorian Language of Flowers for " excess,"
or — in the generous way that one small flower
might then be interpreted to mean a whole phrase —

CROCUS AND EARLY SPRING FLOWERS 39

" beware of excess of love." But it is more than
as a cordial for the heart that N. Culpeper
regards saffron : "It quickens the brain," he
says, " for the Sun is exalted in Aries, as well as
he hath his house in the Dragon head, it helps
the Consumption of the Lungs and difficulty of
breathing, it is an excellent thing in epedemcal
diseases, as Pestillence, Small Pox, and Measles ; it
is an excellent expulsive medicine and a notable
remedy for the Yellow Jaundice." More than this
can hardly be asked of one plant. After it the
humble snowdrop is a mere nobody.

The snowdrop may, with justice, be called
humble, certainly it has a much better right to
the title than the violet. Gerard, by the way,
speaks of it as a "bulbous violet," though there
seems little resemblance between them, except the
ascribed qualities of humility and retirement, which
are entirely undeserved in one case. Violets like
sunshine, a good position, and fat living, and,
though the leaves hide the flowers in some
varieties, it is of those that the scent is strongest
and most betraying. It is not the fault of the
plant if it is suffered to "blush unseen." But
snowdrops really do like retirement and poor
ground. In Holland they decline entirely to

40 DUTCH BULBS AND GARDENS

grow in the open in fields or gardens, and they
cannot thrive, really cannot live, in manure and
all fat soil. All the snowdrop bulbs which are
raised in Holland are grown under hedges or in
orchards, where the roots of the trees impoverish
the ground and take from it what the little bulbs
dislike. Mostly they are grown by the smaller
growers, who sell them to the big ones in their
immediate neighbourhood. It is possibly this
preference for overgrown places and neglected soil
which has made snowdrops flourish and increase
so in the orchards and overgrown gardens of
old monasteries. It has been suggested that it is
because they were planted there in such abundance
in the old days when they were sacred to the
Virgin, and were used to strew her altars on the
Feast of the Purification, — when they, the Fair
Maids of February, as they were called, were the
only maids who had any right within those walls.
But since they flourish equally well in old shrub-
beries and orchards unconnected with monasteries
and monastic history, it looks rather as if soil and
situation has a good deal to do with it too.

They have long been grown in Holland. The
old Dutch name was Somer Sottekens, though
what it means I have not been able to discover.

A CROCUS FIELD

CROCUS AND EARLY SPRING FLOWERS 41

Somer, no doubt, is another form of "Zomer"
(summer), though snowdrops no more then than
now bloomed nor yet were planted in summer ;
Sottekens remains, to me at least, a mystery. The
first snowdrops came from Germany and Hungary,
and the later blooming sort from Constantinople.
In Parkinson's day there was no talk of them
being native to England. They had not been in
the country long enough to have increased and
naturalised themselves, as they have in some
districts now. Undisturbed, in both England and
Holland they increase rapidly, by offsets, according
to the usual bulb habit ; if they like the situation,
often forming clumps twenty or thirty strong, and
continuing to grow in land that has long gone out
of cultivation.

In England the flower is not so much admired
as it used to be, when it —

Chaste snowdrop, venturous harbinger of Spring,
And pensive monitor of fleeting years —

received the tribute of much minor verse. Now
we principally remember in connection with it
that it does not lend itself well to pot culture,
and makes no show as a cut flower ; hence, seeing
its inconspicuousness and the usual state of the
weather at the time of blooming, it is of little use

42 DUTCH BULBS AND GARDENS

as an ornament. And the fact that it either takes
so kindly to its surroundings that it becomes almost
a weed, or else dislikes them and practically declines
to grow at all, is rather against it. But in the days
of our grandmothers it was different, then it was
essentially the young girl's flower, and so was
graced with all the characteristics which were
reckoned to adorn "refined and elegant young
females." Of it, "the Winter's timid child," a
poetess of those days wrote : —

All weak and wan, with head inclined,

Its parent breast the drifted snow,
It trembles, while the ruthless wind
Bends its slim form ; the tempest lowers,
Its emerald eye drops crystal showers
On its cold bed below.

Where'er I find thee, gentle flower,
Thou still art sweet and dear to me !

For I have known the cheerless hour,

Have seen the sunbeams cold and pale,

Have felt the chilling wintry gale,
And wept and shrunk, like thee.

Conceive the delight of the first "elegant
young female " who saw these words inscribed
on the pink-tinted pages of her album, probably
beneath some two or three dried flowers of the
mishandled plant. Well, well, we have changed
all that now ; the elegant females have gone,

CROCUS AND EARLY SPRING FLOWERS 43

though the minor poet is still with us, and no
less minor, though possibly less " refined."

Earlier than crocus, as early as snowdrops,
comes the winter aconite — Eranthis hyemalis.
It is grown in quantity in Holland, but as the
corms are so very small, not more than half an
inch in diameter, one does not see large stretches.
It is said that as many as a thousand good
corms can be raised on two square metres of
land, so naturally it is sold cheap. We prize
it as one of the earliest flowers of the year, and
because it is hardy, and will, if left to itself,
grow anywhere, even under deciduous shrubs.
But to our forbears it had another and greater
importance, for it was reckoned the " counter-
poison monkhood," and its roots were considered
"effectual, not only against the poison of the
poisonful helmet flower and all others of that
kind, but also against the poison of all venomous
beasts," — a large and useful characteristic to be
possessed by any plant.

One of the most beautiful of the early spring
flowers is one practically without history — the
Sdlla sibirica. It is comparatively a newcomer
in Dutch bulb fields, for it was brought to
Europe from Asia Minor, the Happy Land of

44 DUTCH BULBS AND GARDENS

bulb collectors, somewhere about 1800. As yet
there are only three varieties differing from the
original and first discovered kind. These are
pale blue, white, and pinkish pale blue, all
reared from seed, and none, in the opinion of
the uninitiated, to compare with the original blue,
— a colour bluer than anything else that grows,
except perhaps gentians, and though not so deep
and intense, almost more brilliant and striking
than they. Coming into flower almost before
crocus, growing low and close to the ground,
and of this rare and exquisite colour, a field of
them in flower against the pearly paleness of
the cold landscape is a sight not to be for-
gotten. In England, though they are admired,
they are hardly yet grown so much as one
would expect, seeing that they will endure hard
treatment and a poor soil, and, if untouched,
year after year send their blue flowers through
the grass. Immense numbers are grown in
Holland, though not round Haarlem, more in
the direction of Hillegom, where the land is
cheap. The little bulbs increase rapidly, from
offsets which grow around the parent. They can
also be easily raised from seed, and, contrary to the
habit of most bulbs, come to the flowering stage

CROCUS AND EARLY SPRING FLOWERS 45

fairly quickly, seed-grown Scillas being of a sale-
able size in from three to four years after sowing.

It was certainly not this early blooming
member of the Scilla family that Reginald Scott
had in his mind when, in his Discovery of
Witchcraft (1587), he wrote of the countries
"where they hang Scilla (which is either a root
or in this place garlic) in the roof of the house
to keep away witches and spirits." One wonders
a little what he meant, for garlic is not a Scilla,
and it hardly seems likely he was referring to
what Parkinson calls Scilla alba, or the Great
Sea Onion of the Mediterranean. Onions proper,
and many varieties of the Alliums, have, of
course, played some considerable part in the
history of witchcraft. The only two cases of
witchcraft which came under the personal notice
of the present writer were connected with the
homely English onion. In the one case, it was
an old man who accused his neighbour of "over-
looking the onion bed," with dire results ; and
in the other, it was an accredited wizard who
"named an onion for" his enemy, stuck it full
of pins, and hung it to shrivel in the chimney,
in order that the enemy might shrivel as the
onion did, and within the year die in agony.

46 DUTCH BULBS AND GARDENS

As it happened, however, it was the wizard
who died. On his death -bed he sent for the
other, confessed what he had done, and ordered
that the shrivelled onion should be given him,
possibly with the idea of undoing the spell,
which had rebounded on himself. The enemy
is alive to this day, and is as great a man as
the other was little, and better known for good
works than the other was for bad — wherefrom,
obviously, there is a moral.

The Allium family has a long history and
many uses, but as ornamental plants they are
hardly to be recommended. Some of them are
grown in Holland for that purpose, and we
read of them in the catalogues — handsome pale
blue, yellow, and white flowers, and a few rarer
ones pink, very showy, and for the most part
somewhat unsavoury if broken or even slightly
bruised. They are the smart members of a
homely family, and, as is usually the case with
such, though no doubt very admirable in some
ways, not appealing specially to the majority of
people. But Alliums blooming, as they do, in
May, are hardly early spring flowers, and having
by some devious way reached them, the subject
had better be quitted.

CHAPTER III

HYACINTH OR IRIS ?

HYACINTHUS, beloved of Apollo, accidentally met
death at the hands of that god, through the
interposition of jealous Zephyr. Apollo, after
grieving for his favourite, cried to his blood :
"Thou shalt be a new flower inscribed with my
lamentations!" and immediately after, "Behold
the blood shed on the grass ceases to be blood,
and a flower springs forth more beautiful than
Tyrian dye, and takes the same form as the
lily, save that the lily is silvery white and this
is purple. Phoebus himself writes his own
lamentations upon the petals, and Ai ! Ai ! is
written upon the flower."

But it was very long ago when Ovid told
this tale of the childhood of the world, and in
the course of the centuries some names get lost
and some misapplied ; the question is, what flower

47

48 DUTCH BULBS AND GARDENS

is it that sprang from the dead boy's blood ? A
flower that is purple — and the Greek purple,
which included many shades of red — was a colour
in no way related to the French greys and
violet blue that are all our hyacinths can show,
but which is the colour of the common purple
iris. A flower that was like a lily, which our
hyacinth is not, excepting only the lily of the
valley — a solitary and most untypical lily in
its way of blooming ; but which an iris may be
taken to be, seeing its long confusion and
identification with the lilies of France. And
a flower that memorialised the sun -god's grief,
and was inscribed with signs of it : an inscription
on the hyacinth is hard to seek, for though it is
true some learned person has given the common
wood hyacinth the surname Non-scriptus, what
one, especially if one were a grower, would really
like to see, is a hyacinth that is scriptus. The
iris, on the other hand, has well-defined marks
upon it, such as fancy can easily make sign-
writing of sorts ; which, indeed, fancy has so made
in other tales — the tale of their springing from
Ajax's blood and bearing his name upon them,
and the tale of their growing from the grave
of the illiterate saint, and being marked with

HYACINTHS SCATTERED ON THE SAND

M

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f - «T*J

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HYACINTH OR IRIS? 49

Ave Maria, the sole words of prayer he knew.
From all of which it seems one must conclude
that the flower called forth by Phoebus Apollo
when Hyacinthus died was not what we call
hyacinth now.

Not that hyacinths are not of respectable
antiquity, quite as respectable as iris. Very long
ago they must have made the wreaths at festivals
and of bridesmaids in Greece, as they sometimes do
to this day ; very long ago the Persian poet sang
his fancy —

That every Hyacinth the Garden wears
Dropt in her lap from some once lovely head.

Though in the latter case, when one thinks of the
great hyacinths of the bulb growers, one feels them
to be a rather unwieldy decoration for the " lovely
head," and likely rather easily to be dislodged
and fall to the "garden's lap." But the original
Hyacinthus orientalis, parent of all our hyacinths,
whether it came to us from Persia or from the
other side of the Himalayas, as Parkinson's sub-
name zumbul indi rather suggests, was a very
different thing from the hyacinth of to-day. It
was a very small, poor thing, not so good as a
poor specimen of the white Roman hyacinth that
blooms for us at Christmas. Even in Parkinson's

7

50 DUTCH BULBS AND GARDENS

time, when they had been cultivated in Europe for
more than fifty years, they were very far from the
present hyacinth, indeed nearer to the parent's
standard. " They have," he says, "flowers of a fair
bluish purple colour, and all standing many times
on one side the stalk and many times on both."
A hyacinth now that is not flowered equally all
round is an unheard-of failure. And in number of
florets, too, things are considerably altered; a writer
at the end of the eighteenth century speaks of a
fine hyacinth truss having from twenty to thirty
bells ; now the average is from fifty to sixty, and
one specimen of the variety Jacques, bloomed in
Haarlem, had one hundred and ten. All this, of
course, is the consequence of careful selection and
cultivation, selection and cultivation, and selection
again, an art in which the Dutch growers excel,
and which is more successfully manifested in the
development of the hyacinth than in anything else.
Of all bulbs, hyacinths perhaps are the most
typically Dutch ; tulips may have the greater
name, but other western nations have an interest in
them and a tradition of them. We find them in
our old memoirs and tales ; we see them on the
embroidered waistcoats of the beaux of Queen
Anne's court, and among the enamelled toys of the

HYACINTH OR IRIS? 51

late days of the French monarchy ; they are figured
in the prim paintings of our great-grandmothers and
on the cups of Dresden and Lowestoft china ; they
even occur on the porcelain fragments that are
discovered on the far-off African coast, though
probably there they are of Dutch or Chino-Dutch
origin. But a hyacinth, a big, full hyacinth, is
essentially and entirely Dutch ; its very type and
standard of beauty is almost national, and nowhere
else in the world can the bulb be produced in per-
fection. In Ghent and near Berlin, in the sandy
Spree plain, it has been tried, but never with real
success; the production of the true, fine, and perfect
hyacinth bulb belongs to the Dutch growers alone.
The bulb, even now after all these years of
cultivation, is no trifle to produce, no untended
child of a summer's growth. It takes four years,
and care and understanding, to raise a market-
able hyacinth bulb ; four years, or in some very
propitious soils and circumstances, possibly three.
There are two methods open to the grower who is
producing hyacinths : either he slightly hollows the
base of the bulb from which he wants increase, or
else he cross-cuts it in several directions with cuts
nearly half an inch deep. If he follows the latter
course, he must bury the bulb after cutting for a

52 DUTCH BULBS AND GARDENS

week, so that the cuts may open and remain open.
After that he will treat it as a hollowed bulb is
treated, that is, leave it alone in the dry warmth of
the barn, and in time there will appear between the
layers innumerable young bulblets, of sizes varying
from a grain of rice to a pea. One may sometimes
see on the shelves of bulb barns the swollen and
distorted parent bulbs, the young bulbs distending
all their coats, waiting in the warmth for the time
of planting. The parent, whether cut or hollowed,
is planted whole in this state, when a proportion of
the young bulbs take individual root and establish
a separate existence. When in July the bulbs are
taken out of the ground the young ones are found
to be nice little bulbs of quite moderate propor-
tions. Not yet, of course, of saleable size nor of the
blooming age ; they want more years of planting
and lifting at the proper seasons before they are the
substantial bulbs of commerce. They flower before
that time, sometimes in the first but more often
in the second year, but they have not come to per-
fection, and it is not till they are four years old that
there may be expected the perfect, big, trussed
flower.

Seeing the labour in production one wonders,
not that hyacinths are " so dear," but rather that

HYACINTH OR IRIS? 53

they are so cheap; also one feels that they are
hardly treated with the respect they deserve in
England. " They," so it is often complained here,
" do so little good the second year, arid the offset
bulbs, when there are any, are so very poor." But
why not ? Why should not the offsets be poor ?
If under the hands of those who give time, and
experience, and understanding, they are only good
after so much labour, why should they be good
without any trouble or labour at all ? And for
doing well a second year, a hyacinth is as other
plants, it has its time of maturity, its gradual
approach to it, and its decline : it takes four years
to reach its finest under this treatment ; afterwards
it usually declines from it. The rate and style of
the decline will vary, but it is not likely to be
delayed by the treatment of the English amateur
or in the English flower-bed. "It is," so an old
grower once said, " as you may call the flower of
one year, but what a flower 1 tt requires four
years to make it, then there is the Flower ; after
that — it is nothing, usually I would not say thank
you for it. Ah, but when it is there, it is indeed
a Flower ! One can respect that ! "

In England hyacinths are not respected ; the
average English gardener now wants something

54 DUTCH BULBS AND GARDENS

by the hundred for the border, he does not want
individuality. The old ladies who used to grow
hyacinths in tall blue and green glasses treated
them with more respect. Hyacinth glasses are not
beautiful, yet one feels tenderly towards them for
old sake's sake, — the memories of drowsy hours
spent stumbling over Easy Reading for the Young,
in a room where the glasses stood on the window-
sill when spring had dethroned the red sausage-
shaped draught excluder, and the canary that hung
between chirped as he peeped first at the white
flower in the blue glass and then at the pink flower
in the green, and possibly (at least in the stumbling
reader's mind) speculated as to whether the ghostly
roots to be seen through the glass were a rare and
horrible specimen of worm. Those hyacinths were
appreciated, the first opening of the flowers noted,
the number of bells counted, the scent enjoyed
with neighbours not similarly blessed with bulbs.
Now we do not grow hyacinths in glasses. We,
some people, grow them in pans, where they look
very like a small flower-bed moved into the house.
Six or eight " miniature hyacinths " (these are the
immature offset bulbs of one or two years' growth)
crammed in together, where, one would think,
they must be very uncomfortable, though it does

HYACINTH OR IRIS? 55

not prevent them from each producing a truss of
flowers, smaller and looser certainly than that of
a mature hyacinth, but giving satisfaction to the
uninitiated. Some people grow hyacinths singly
in pots, and stand them hi rows on conservatory
shelves or about then- rooms, where they look well
if the rooms are solidly Victorian, or furnished with
beautiful specimens of cabinet-work in satin wood
and tulipwood. Your hyacinth is no modern, no
ornament for the furniture and rooms of nouveawc
arts or culture, and it sorts very ill with half-toned
aesthetics or the expensive pseudo-simple. Possibly
that may account for its being rather out of
fashion in England just now, where few people
have a taste for the solidly Victorian, and fewer still
the money for the old satin wood of the eighteenth
century, or the exquisite tulipwood of France.
Long ago it was different; seventeenth -century
England admired hyacinths greatly, obtaining,
then as now, all the really good ones from Holland,
where already they were extensively cultivated.
The price fetched by choice bulbs then was high,
though never quite equal to that of tulips at the
zenith of their fame. Report speaks of £200 being
paid for a single hyacinth bulb hi the middle of
the seventeenth century ; but by the end of the

56 DUTCH BULBS AND GARDENS

eighteenth £25 was thought extravagant, even for
a choice florist's variety. According to a writer in
1796, the price of ordinary bulbs then varied from
3d. apiece to, in rare cases, as much as £10. A
fairly wide range, and one that is not so very dis-
similar from that of the present time, though it is
probable we now have a greater selection at 3d. and
a smaller at £10.

Hyacinths in the bulb gardens of Holland are
planted in September in very heavily manured
ground. In the winter they have to be protected
by a thick covering of straw, more, indeed, than is
given to any bulbs except some of the lily family,
usually from four to five inches in thickness. This
is taken off in spring, when the crowns appear ; it
is essential that they should not be kept covered
too long or too closely in mild weather, or the pre-
maturely developed shoots will be too tender to
stand the night frosts of early spring. Hyacinths
are subject to some few diseases ; one of them
necessitates the removal of a suspected bulb from
among its neighbours. Sometimes one may see a
procession of men going forth to the hyacinth fields,
each armed with a long narrow tool, in shape a
little like the instrument used for cutting asparagus
in Belgium ; and also, if the weather is sunny, each

" IN EMERALD TUFTS, FLOWERS PURPLE, BLUE, AND
WHITE, LIKE SAPPHIRE, PEARL, AND RICH EM-
BROIDERY."

HYACINTH OR IRIS? 57

carrying an umbrella, an article much more used
in Holland than in England. The procession, to
which the umbrellas give something of dignity if
not solemnity, moves slowly along a field, each man
taking a row and examining the hyacinths one by
one for signs of the disease. With his umbrella he
shields the sun from his head and neck, the weather
usually seems to be hot on these occasions ; with
his tool he neatly and cleanly lifts the suspected
bulb from among its fellows.

Hyacinth flowers are cut off before their beauty
is quite spent, so that they shall not come to seed.
Generally speaking, no bulb of any sort is allowed
to come to seed, unless of course that particular
seed is wanted for the raising of new varieties ; to
produce seed greatly exhausts the bulb. Hyacinth
flowers are cut close down to the leaves ; some-
times the cut blooms are scattered over the ground,
where other sorts of bulbs, as yet not showing
shoots, are growing, this to prevent the light sandy
soil from being blown away, leaving the bulbs
beneath bare. Some few of the flowers are sold ;
some, I have heard it said, are used for manure ;
but the great bulk of them seem just a waste pro-
duct. As yet nothing has been done with regard
to extracting the scent from them, though one

58 DUTCH BULBS AND GARDENS

would almost have thought it had been worth
while. Of course there would be difficulties in the
way, the flowers have too much moisture to allow
of their being steam-distilled, like roses and some
other scent-providing flowers, and to pomade them,
as violets are pomaded, would be rather a costly
process.

The hyacinth Hyadnthus orientalis, though
certainly the great man of the family, as parent of
all that are commonly called hyacinths, is, after all,
only one of a group. Parkinson gives forty-eight
" iacinths," as he spells them. Some of them, it is
true, would seem to be only varieties of the same
kind, and some are things placed in other classes by
modern florists. Still, even without these, a good
many remain, and some at least are grown in the
bulb gardens of Holland to-day. Grape hyacinths
(Muscari, because they were supposed to smell of
musk) are of these. They are a good deal grown
in Holland, and are coming into much favour in
England, no one knows why. Hyadnthus candi-
cans is also grown in Holland. This, of course, is
a newcomer from the Cape, unknown to Parkinson ;
its tall stalks and far-scattered white bells give it
little resemblance in appearance to the rest of its
relations. The wood hyacinth, Nutans, is also raised,

HYACINTH OR IRIS? 59

but is usually to be found under the heading
" Squills " in a grower's list. Parkinson classes it
with his iacinths, where one would have thought it
belonged, calling it Hyacinthus anglicus belgiciis.
He also classes with them what he calls Scilla alba —
the common squill of the Mediterranean — the
great and important squill of old medicine, which,
according to the herbalists, must have been good
for everything, epidemic, accidental, and chronic,
from worms to toothache, though most especially
for consumptive diseases. "The Apothecaries
prepare thereof both Wine, Vinegar and Oxymel
or Syrupe, which is singular to exterminate and
expectorate tough flegm, which is a cause of much
disquiet to the body, and an hinderer of concoction,
or digestion in the stomach, besides divers other
wayes, wherein the scales of the roots being dried,
are used. And Galen hath sufficiently explained
the qualities and properties thereof, in his eight
book of Simples." Pliny, doubtless, explained some-
thing of the same, for he, too, wrote of squills. So
did that magnificent Dutchman, Clusius, who
reports that when, in the true spirit of inquiry, he
was about to make personal test of the Scilla rubra,
he was stopped by the Spaniards, who assured him
it was a most strong and potent poison. It is to

60 DUTCH BULBS AND GARDENS

be regretted that the Dutchmen of to-day do not
grow the Scilla rubra, though perhaps it is not
unreasonable, for, according to all accounts, it was
not much to look at.

Among the flowers much more grown in
Holland to-day than in former times iris stands
well first. The iris, of course, is an old flower,
even though it may have lost its first Greek name,
and taken another after that rather overworked
personage, the cutter of life's threads and rain-
bringer, Juno's rainbow-winged messenger. Under
various names the iris, whether tuberous or
bulbous, has figured a good deal in history and
legend. There has even been controversy about
it, whether Shakespeare meant an iris or a lily
when he spoke of fleur-de-lys in another than
heraldic sense, and whether Chaucer did.

It is quite clear the old masters of medicine
understood "flower-de-luce" as iris, whether they
spoke of " the bulbous blue kind " or the tuber-
ous "flaggy kind," the white flag of Florence,
from which they, as we, derived orris root, and
the common yellow flag from which they derived
other things which we do not. Their descriptions
and receipts for mingling the extract with honey
to mitigate the sharpness of its attack upon the

HYACINTH OR IRIS? 61

stomach (!) have come down to us to convince us
that they knew the iris ; also that they, such of
them as survived, were stouter men inside than
their decadent descendants.

Of late years iris, dethroned from an honourable
place in medicine, has come much into fashion
as a garden flower. Not without reason, many
sorts are easy for the amateur to cultivate, and
all are very effective. The variety among them is
enormous ; not only are there in the hands of
growers many comparatively new discoveries from
North Africa, Central Asia, Asia Minor, and South
Europe, but the improving and altering of all
the families, new and old, has made the varie-
ties wonderful both in number and beauty now.
Large quantities of iris are grown in Holland,
some of the rarer sorts and still more of the cheap
and well-known kinds. In June one may see fields
of Spanish Iris (Iris xiphion], exquisite, delicately-
tinted flowers, quivering at the top of their grey-
green stalks. Blooming, as they do, when most
of the other bulb flowers are over, and when, in
the early days of the industry, most of the fields
must have been rather bare, they have a separate
and special attraction. They are very nearly hardy
bulbs, and withstand the winter's cold with little

62 DUTCH BULBS AND GARDENS

protection. They are little trouble in the growing,
and are lifted at the end of July, when the greater
number of other bulbs are already harvested. They
increase fairly well, and the young ones have the
further advantage of coming to maturity in a
comparatively short time. New varieties, as is
almost invariably the case with bulbs, are obtained
from seed. One may often see small patches of
new sorts, of which the grower has hope, flowering
beside large quantities of the established kind, this
for the sake of comparison, and to determine if
the new is really new, and has anything worthy of
preservation. The original bulb of Spain is said
to have been blue flowered, the yellow influence
coming from Portugal ; but the crossing and
blending of the two, whether started by art or
nature, was begun too far back to be recorded. It
is impossible to trace the history of many of the
innumerable and beautiful shades and blends that
exist now.

Iris anglica is another striking feature of the
bulb gardens in early summer, coming into flower
just when the Spanish are over, and presenting a
more gorgeous and striking effect. It is a native
of the Pyrenees, and no relation in root or any-
thing else to the tuberous -rooted flag -irises of

HYACINTH OR IRIS? 63

England. The Dutch growers had it, in the first
instance, from English sailors or merchants, and
either mistook its place of origin or named it
after the nation from whom they received it.
The flowers, with the extraordinary variety they
show, their somewhat stiff method of growth and
great development, are decidedly more typical of
the nation of gardeners than of the nation whose
name they bear.

Among the irises, both bulbous and tuberous,
now grown in Holland I regret to say I have not
been able to identify the iris of Clusius — " Clusius
his first great Flowerdeluce." "This Flowerdeluce
hath divers long and broad leaves, not stiff like all
the others, but soft and greenish on the upper side,
and whitish underneath." The flower was "of a
fair blue, a pale sky colour in most," and showed
in the six lower petals a tendency to turn up at
the edges, the three smaller and upper of these
parting at the lip and standing up " like unto two
small ears." The description of the flower reads a
little like a Spanish Iris, and the native place was
clearly Spain ; but the leaves sound quite different
to those of the Spanish as we know it, also the
time of blooming is placed too early. The flower
is described as very sweet of scent, and " the root

64 DUTCH BULBS AND GARDENS

is reasonable great." Doubtless, towards the close
of the sixteenth century it was to have been seen
blooming in the famous garden at Leyden ; per-
haps some descendants are still to be found in
that city, yearly honouring the great man who
named them, and helped to make the city famous.
But in none of the gardens round Haarlem have
I seen it, and in no grower's catalogue does it
figure, at all events under its original name.

Irises, besides being among the latest of the bulb
flowers, are almost among the earliest. In early
March one may see Iris reticulata, Bakeriana,
tdstroides, and a few other delicate - looking
specimens blooming in surroundings which look
singularly unsuitable to them. But these, as yet,
are very little grown, are somewhat costly, and
still in appearance something reminiscent of their
Asiatic homes. None of them are recorded to be
natives of Europe, although I myself have seen
irises surprisingly like Iris reticulata, which were
found by their present owner growing wild in
Spain. They were, when I saw them, blooming
under a north wall in a garden not far from the
Scottish border, this in a March blizzard, and they
had done so for some four years in succession. In
colour, shape, and scent they were exactly like

SPANISH IRISES

HYACINTH OR IRIS? 65

reticulata, but whether or no they were truly so I
cannot say.

Among the more striking of the flowers to
be seen in Holland now, Iris susiana certainly
deserves mention. It is not a bulb iris but a
spreading rhizome, in growth more like the Iris
germanica, though in appearance quite unlike.
It was introduced into Holland somewhere
about 1570, and has been grown there practically
without development or variation ever since,
but the days of its market popularity are com-
paratively recent. Twenty years ago it is
doubtful if there were fifty of the strange
flowers (they look rather as if they were made
of Japanese newspaper) to be found outside the
Dutch gardens. Certainly in England they were
then very little known. And yet Parkinson,
writing in 1629, gives them an important place
among the then known irises. There can be
no doubt whatever that the Iris susiana of
to-day is what he calls the Great Turkey
Flowerdeluce, "the roots whereof," he tells us,
"have been sent out of Turkey divers times
among other things, and it would seem that
they have had their original from about Sufis,
a chief city of Persia." His description of the

66 DUTCH BULBS AND GARDENS

flower tallies exactly, and he notes the peculiarity
that the petals "being laid in water will colour
the water into a violet colour, but if a little
Allome be put therein, and then wrung or
pressed, and the juice of these leaves dryed in
the shadow, they will give a colour almost as
deep as Indigo, and may be used for shadows
in limning excellent well." The flower of the
Iris susiana, if left in water or even allowed to
rot in the ordinary way, produces a very strongly-
coloured juice of a bluish violet tint. There
really is no room to doubt that the two irises
are the same, though how it happened that the
then and now valued flower went so out of
English cultivation, almost out of English know-
ledge, it is difficult to say. One imagines that
there came a time when no one appreciated its
"singularity and rarity" — the only charms it
has to offer — and it was allowed to die out.
Without care, of course, it would not thrive or
increase. It seldom bears seeds in these colder
countries, and the very few that are occasionally
borne never ripen. And it would hardly have
increased by spreading, — as a rhizome if left un-
disturbed for long it would always die in the
centre of every clump it formed, only living at

HYACINTH OR IRIS? 67

the edges, and in an unpropitious climate and
circumstances it would speedily dwindle away.
Anyhow, it would seem to have happened, the
Great Turkey Flowerdeluce left us, to return
Iris susiana many years later, when the tide
of taste, which has changed many things and
relegated the formerly admired hyacinth to a
secondary place, has put all irises into fashion,
and exalted this neglected flower to favour and
admiration. Such a fate has occurred before
this to flowers and books and men ; to the
books it matters little, they have time to ripen ;
to the men — post cineras gloria sera venit.

CHAPTER IV

SOME OLD FAVOURITES AND NEW

EXACTLY what influences favour in flowers, or
indeed in most other things, it is hard to say;
no Dutch bulb-grower ever attempts to do so.
It may interest the leisurely student of mankind
to discover the causes and trends of fashion,
but the grower asks little or nothing about it,
he merely accepts the evidence of his carefully-
kept books, and the character of the attention
given to some certain flower or groups of
flowers at the shows, and sets himself to supply
the demand that has arisen, or is about to arise.
He may regret, if he is an old man with old-
fashioned tastes, that popular liking has deserted
Ranunculus asiaticus. He may, if he is a young
man, himself sharing the general taste, prefer
the dark-eyed Anemone cor on aria to the resetted
flowers of earlier favour. But he will certainly

A BULB FARM NEAR OVERVEEN

SOME OLD FAVOURITES AND NEW 69

give greater space to the latter now. Both of
these two are grown in Holland, and both in
something the same manner, though ranunculi
want a heavier and moister soil than anemones.
There is one kind of ranunculus, the Turban
ranunculus, which is planted in December and
covered rather thickly to protect it from frost,
but the asiaticus is treated just as anemones
are. Both are set in early spring, both har-
vested in August ; both are strikingly beautiful
when in flower, making very gorgeous stripes of
colour in the garden where they are. Both are
old flowers in Holland, they were certainly there
by the middle of the sixteenth century ; we in
England had anemones from thence somewhere
about 1596, ranunculi probably not much later.
Both have been much cultivated and varied ; but
the one, Ranunculus asiaticus, is curiously out
of favour, especially in England. Fifty or sixty
years ago there were as many as eight or nine
hundred varieties catalogued, now there are not
as many dozen. In England we know that
the early Victorians approved the ranunculus ;
indeed, in the old Language of Mowers the
scentless rosette blossoms are given an honourable
place. An admirer giving a bunch (we do not

70 DUTCH BULBS AND GARDENS

conceive of anyone giving them now, unless it
is one grower to another similarly interested) —
an admirer giving them in 1840 could convey
the compliment, " You are radiant with charms."
In the opinion of those times "the dazzling
Ranunculus adorns our gardens with its brilliant
flowers, glowing with a thousand colours, resplen-
dent with a thousand charms. Scarcely any plant
affords so rich a view." Now we think quite
otherwise.

Anemones at that same time stood for the
melancholy word " Forsaken " ; this probably on
account of the Greek legend of their origin, — a
legend of the order not unfamiliar in Greek
mythology, the loves of the gods, the jealousies of
the goddesses, the metamorphosis of the object, and
the desertion of the lover. In this case Zephyr,
who abandoned the nymph, thus transformed by
Flora, to the rude caresses of Boreas, who, unable
to gain her love, shakes her afresh every spring.
This legend probably belonged, in the first instance,
to the earlier blooming Star Anemones and
Hepaticas, those flowers at whose opening old
gardeners used to say, "the earth is in love, now
is the time to sow." These, too, are grown in
Holland, and have been since the day when

SOME OLD FAVOURITES AND NEW 71

Clusius first brought there the yellow anemone
he found at the "foot of St. Bernard's Hill near
unto the Canton of the Switzers." Since the days,
too, when the old herbalists used the leaves of some
sorts in " the ointment called Marciatum, which is
composed of many other hot herbes, and is used in
cold griefs, to warme and comfort the parts." And
even if they and the Anemone coronaria do not
now fetch the high prices they did when they were
among the collector's fancies, they are still a good
deal in demand.

Among the flowers grown in the bulb gardens
of to-day which favour has treated somewhat
strangely the Fritillaria family should certainly
be mentioned. The Crown Imperial, king and
chief of the Fritillarias, is grown now as it was
in the early days of the bulb industry ; the big
lily-like bulbs are treated in much the same way,
and the old varieties are there with comparatively
few new ones added to them. In the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries Crown Imperials ranked
high among flowers. Parkinson gives them the
place of honour in his Garden of Pleasant
Flowers, and, in the pretty way of the old writers
speaking of a loved or admired object, lifts them
from the neuter to the gendered class : " The

72 DUTCH BULBS AND GARDENS

Crowne Imperial for his stately beaut if ulness,
deserveth the first place in this our garden of
delights." And judging from some of the legends
that have gathered about the flower, one imagines
it was cultivated and admired even earlier. But
during the nineteenth century it went out of
favour, for some reason the " refined and elegant "
ceased to admire it and gardeners to cultivate it,
other flowers filling the place in popular favour.

No gorgeous flowers the meek Reseda grace,
Yet sip, with eager trunk, yon busy race

Her simple cup, nor heed the dazzling gem
That beam in Fritillaria's diadem —

wrote a drawing-room poet of the early nineteenth
century ; and though the beautifully banal — also
botanically and every other way incorrect — lines
must not be regarded as exactly expressing the
minds of his compeers, yet the fact that they were
written and quoted shows favour was not then for
the Crown Imperial. It is coming back to the
present generation ; possibly, in England at least,
because a certain number of the old bulbs were
preserved in cottage gardens, and so acquired the
reputation of simplicity and old-fashionedness, now
so frequently a passport to favour.

But though the Crown Imperial is being grown

"THEY SPRING, THEY BUD, THEY BLOSSOME FRESH
AND FAIRE, AND DECKLE THE ^ WORLD WITH
THEIR RICH POMPOUS SHOWES "

SOME OLD FAVOURITES AND NEW 73

in Holland and coming again into favour in
England, it is the smaller members of the Fritillaria
family that are more really popular, — the little
Snake's-head Fritillary, which in some of its duller
colours is native to Oxfordshire, the red Recurva,
the golden yellow Aurea, and other expensive
varieties of the somewhat insignificant flower.
They may all be seen in Holland, and are regarded
with considerable admiration, even by some of
the old and conservative growers. I remember to
have seen one dear old man kneeling before a
Fritillaria aurea gently dusting off the sand
which had blown upon its fluffy inside.

Among the new favourites begonias should
perhaps be mentioned, although they are not
grown in Holland to anything like the extent
they are in Belgium, where they are raised
literally by the million ; or in England, where the
great florists, Laing and Veitch, have done so
much to popularise and improve them. They
were introduced into Europe about 1776, from
Jamaica in the first instance, though subsequently
from other places too ; but they do not appear to
have been much cultivated and developed until
comparatively lately. Certainly it was not until

quite recently they were to be seen in the bulb

10

74 DUTCH BULBS AND GARDENS

fields of Holland ; now they are, and they make
very gorgeous patches of colour in the middle and
late summer, when there are few other flowers to
be seen. The treatment they require is unlike
that of the Dutch bulb proper. To begin with,
they are tubers not bulbs ; to go on with, they are
not planted out till May ; and to conclude, they
must be stored in dry and frost -proof houses
during the winter months. New varieties are
raised from seed, and in Holland time and atten-
tion is being bestowed on them, so that it is pos-
sible they, too, may rank among important Dutch
flowers, though at present they can hardly be said
to do so, popular as they are in this country.

But perhaps of all bulbs grown in Holland the
ones which have least felt the variation of favour
for the past three hundred years are Narcissi.
Doubtless they have not always been grown in
quite such quantity as they are now, but they have
for very long been grown to a considerable extent.
They have never had the immense vogue that tulips
and hyacinths had at one time, but they have
always been well appreciated. It is true that in
Holland to-day amateurs, though they think well
of them, do not as a rule specialise in them, as do
many English ; one has to go to England to find

SOME OLD FAVOURITES AND NEW 75

discriminating appreciation of a finely -formed
flower among amateurs. But the growers in
Holland know their business, as they have for
very many years, and splendid Narcissi are raised
there for the English market.

Early in the seventeenth century we hear of the
" Men of the Lowe Countries " growing "iohnquills"
and calling them "trompetts." Even before that
the still popular Narcissus maximus was a favourite
flower in Dutch gardens, and we know that the
great botanists of the late sixteenth and early
seventeenth centuries were eager in their search for
and raising of new varieties. We have record of
" the Lady Mattenesse Daffodil " named of Clusius,
the first gallant Low Countryman to name a new
variety after a lady. This flower would seem to have
borne more resemblance to some of the ordinary
yellow sorts than to the choice N. Clusii, which
later generations have named in honour of the great
man himself. There are records, too, of that which
was first had from Vincent Sion, native of Flanders,
" an industrious and worthy lover of fair flowers,"
who, however, did not name his flower after him-
self or a lady, but grew it and at some time gave
offsets to "Mr. George Wilmer of Stratford Bowe,
Esquire, who would need appropriate it to himself,

76 DUTCH BULBS AND GARDENS

as if he were the first founder thereof, and call it by
his own name, Wilmer's double daffodil," — a pro-
ceeding justly condemned by the botanists and
avenged by time ; for whereas to-day one looks in
vain for JPilmer in the ordinary catalogue, Fan-
Sion, whether or no named after the " industrious
lover of fair flowers," is a household word with
daffodil growers.

In seventeenth-century England, as well as Hol-
land, they would seem to have been interested in
the raising of Narcissi and the varying of the sorts.
We have Gerrartfs Daffodil, and Parkinson's
Daffodil, and the Great Rose Daffodil of one John
Tradecant. It should be remembered that nar-
cissus and daffodil were synonymous terms with
the old writers, the one being regarded as the Latin,
the other as the English name of the family. It
must also be admitted that they classed as Narcissi
things that we do not reckon as such, for instance,
the Strange Sea Daffodil of Parkinson's list, a
plant which, from picture and description, one is
inclined to identify as a dark-coloured Agapanthus.
Also the White Sea Bastard Daffodil, which Clusius
tells us is so poisonous that it was " deadly to him
that did but cut his meat with that knife which had
immediately before cut this root." Another nar-

SOME OLD FAVOURITES AND NEW 77

cissus unknown to us now is the red flower, native
to the West Indies, mentioned by Parkinson. It
is true he classes it reluctantly in accordance with
the then taste for classifying rather than with his
own conviction, and with the remark, "Even so
until some other can direct his place more fitly, I
shall require you to accept of him in this, with this
description which followeth." And the description
certainly does not apply to our idea of a red nar-
cissus, that desideratum of all modern growers.
The growers of the past do not seem to have been
so anxious to produce a red variety, but to-day it is
the ambition of all professionals and many amateurs.
So far one cannot say they have been successful,
the variety Will Scarlet, a short-crowned flower
belonging to the incomparabiUs section, is the
nearest, but it is not satisfactory, and is of a very
poor shape.

In Holland Narcissi are put in the ground just
as summer turns to autumn. In the fields they
are set from three to four inches deep, and during
the severe weather protected by a straw covering
some three inches thick. At least that is found
sufficient for the hardier roots, the more delicate
polyanthus varieties want more, many of them re-
quiring as heavy a covering as is given to hyacinths.

78 DUTCH BULBS AND GARDENS

They begin flowering about the middle of March.
Some English daffodil enthusiasts maintain one can
have them in bloom out of doors from February to
October, but personally I have never seen any at
either extreme date. In Holland, certainly, they
do not reckon to have flowers in the open much
before the middle of March, when the earliest sorts,
Henry Irving., Golden Spur, etc., begin lo show
colour. The majority are in perfection in April,
and the latest sorts, such as Poeticus and Grandee,
carry us on well into May ; but by the end of that
month Narcissi are over in the bulb gardens. In
the middle of April the sight is truly magnificent,
sheets of golden flowers in every shade of yellow ;
one feels a miser's wish to keep the living gold and
put off the inevitable time of cutting. The flowers,
when they are cut, are taken at the top, much as
tulips are, the stalks and leaves being left to gradu-
ally wither, till in July when the bulbs are lifted
they are quite dead ; a sad and rather desolate sight.
Narcissi are very various in their rate of increase,
some free-growing sorts, such as Emperor and
Empress, Sir Watkin and Barri increase well ; but
others much more scantily and slowly. The poly-
anthus narcissi (N. Tazetta) do not in the main
increase so well as most of the other kinds. The

BULB TIME, HAARLEM

SOME OLD FAVOURITES AND NEW 79

reason of this may be that they are none of them
native to Western Europe, though they have been
long grown and much improved there ; their
original home is South Europe and Western Asia,
from whence it is thought they spread at some
almost prehistoric time to Northern India, China,
and Japan. One rather insignificant species has
of recent years been introduced to Europe from
Japan, and for the moment made a sensation
among amateurs out of all proportion to its merits.
There is a small kind very plentiful in Greece
to-day; from its plentifulness some folk have
decided it was the original flower of the Greek
legend, but the consensus of opinion is in favour of
a single-flowered one of the Poeticus family — also
still to be found in abundance in Greece. Ovid's
description certainly best fits the latter, as will be
seen from the following translation of his account
of the flower and the metamorphosis of the boy. —
He was but sixteen, according to Ovid, so his flight
from the overtures of Echo and his subsequent
astonishment at and passion for his own newly-
discovered beauty are perhaps forgivable; at all
events more forgivable than the admiration of
many a subsequent poet Narcissus for himself and
all his works.

80 DUTCH BULBS AND GARDENS

Soon the rosy flush has left his cheek, and all his goodly
strength is gone, and the very form that Echo once had
loved. He lays his weary head on the green grass, and
darkness covers his longing eyes. And now he has entered
the halls of the dead, and in the Stygian wave still gazes on
his own image. The Naiads, his sisters, with tresses torn,
weep for their brother, the Dryads wail aloud, while Echo
wails again. And now they make ready the pyre and the
funeral torches and the bier. But in vain they seek the
dead ; they find but a flower of golden (croceum) hue, its
heart enringed by (set round with) white leaves.1

It is interesting to quote, in comparison with
this, the rendering that the poet Gay gives of the
old tale of the transformation : —

His spreading fingers shoot in verdant leaves :
Through his pale veins green sap now gently flows ;
And in a short-lived flower his beauty blows.
Let vain Narcissus warn each female breast
That beauty's but a transient gift at best ;
Like flowers it withers with th' advancing year,
And age, like winter, robs the blooming fair.

Slightly suggestive of the boy in Struwwelpeter
who took root and grew sprouts because he would
not move when he was told, but eminently moral.

But whether or no the flower of " vain
Narcissus " fame was a polyanthus or a Poeticus,
this is certain, varieties of both kinds grow in
Greece, and apparently have grown there as far

1 I am indebted to Miss Camilla Jebb for this translation.

SOME OLD FAVOURITES AND NEW 81

back as anything did. Over and over again
Narcissi occur in classic literature, often with the
qualifications purpled or croceum, which suggests
the dark centred Poeticus. Sometimes they are
spoken of as the flower of death, the treacherous
sweet-scented blossoms, beguiling in sweetness and
stupefying in effect. Plutarch definitely says they
derived their name from narce = numbness, because
of this effect. No such effect is known now ;
narcotics in plenty we have, and most of them of
vegetable origin, but none obtained from narcissus.
Still, evidently there is some such tradition in con-
nection with them, for more than one old writer
has regarded them as the flower of death. Milton
possibly had some such tradition in his mind when
in Lycidas, his In Memoriam, he says :

daffodillies fill their cups with tears,
To strew the laureate hearse where Lycid lies.

This reference is, of course, to the English wild
Narcissus, the little yellow daffodil of woods and
meadows, no doubt more plentiful in his day than
in ours.

Then, one hopes, there had not begun the
reprehensible custom (described at the close of the

eighteenth century) whereby, " In the counties

11

82 DUTCH BULBS AND GARDENS

round London the herb- folks bring prodigious
quantities in the spring of the year, when in
bloom, root and all, and sell them about the
streets." Still, in spite of the efforts of the " herb-
folk " and others, there are wild daffodils yet to be
found in parts of England and Holland. And, on
good authority it is stated, all the uniflowered
varieties of to-day are sprung from it ; and of
those varieties one may say, as Parkinson did of
the Bastard Daffodils of Divers Kinds, " There is
much variety in this kind ; . . . but it is needless
to spend a great deal of time and labour upon such
. . . flowers, except that in the beholding of
them, we may therein admire the work of the
Creator, who can frame such diversity in one
thing. But this is beside the text, yet not
impertinent."

CHAPTER V

THE ARISTOCRAT OF THE BULB GARDENS

THE Tulip is the aristocrat of bulbs, the one
with whose name is connected squandered fortunes,
romantic tales, long history, and other attributes
of traditional aristocracy. It is also the one
which, more than any, has made Holland famous.
To go to see the bulb gardens usually means
to go to Haarlem towards the latter part of
April, when the tulips are at their best and
there are literally acres of flowers. A patch of
seven hundred square metres of scarlet tulips, and
beyond perhaps as much of yellow or white, and
beyond, with nothing but a hedge between, others,
yet others, everywhere. — It is a wonderful sight.
Red tulips and purple tulips, rose colour, buff
colour, yellow and white and streaked. Though
it must be said the streaked tulips are less than
they were, for they are somewhat out of fashion

83

84 DUTCH BULBS AND GARDENS

now ; it is the plain-coloured varieties which are
most in favour, more especially the late " cottage "
sorts. In earlier days, in the time of the tulip
mania — at its height about 1634 to 1637 — the
fashion was for variegated tulips, and the enormous
prices that were given were for streaked and
pencilled, late blooming, single flowers ; and the
more they were striped, violet and rose on a
pure white ground, the more was paid for them.
The following description of what a tulip should
be was written between 1790 and 1797 ; the prices
by then had dropped to comparative moderation,
but the standard of beauty was much the same :
"The colours in greatest estimation in variegated
tulips are the blacks, golden yellow, purple violets,
and rose, and vermilion, each of which being varie-
gated various ways; and such as are striped in
three different colours distinct and unmixed, with
strong regular streaks, but with little or no tinge of
the breeder, may be called the most perfect tulip."
Some of the varieties famous in the early days are
still grown in Holland, Louis the XVI. and the
notorious Semper Augustus, one bulb of which is
said, at the height of the madness, to have been
sold for as much as 13,000 florins, though the price
dropped to fifty when a paternal government

TULIPS IN THEIR PRIME

THE ARISTOCRAT OF THE BULB GARDENS 85

stepped in and put an end to the gamble. Now,
though these two historic names are still known
and the bulbs still grown, neither flower is of great
repute for beauty, and, generally speaking, neither
would be so much admired as the self-coloured
sorts — the scarlet Gesneriana spathulata, with its
intense blue-black centre, the snow-white Dora, or
even the insignificant little red flower, for a single
bulb of which eight guineas was asked in London
not many years ago. Asked and readily paid too ;
from which, one may conclude, the real tulip
mania is not quite dead, though, of course, the
price is a mere trifle compared to those paid in
the early eighteenth century, or even as late as
the beginning of the nineteenth, when, it is re-
ported, a florist of Amsterdam paid £640 for the
bulb of a new species, The Citadel of Antwerp.
This last man must have been either a cultivator
or a collector buying for the sake of having the
bulb, for by then the gamble, which largely made
the great mania what it was, had long passed away.
When the mania was at its height men obviously
did not buy for that reason. The madness, which
then inexplicably affected so large a part of the
steady Dutch nation, was more nearly related to
a Stock Exchange gamble than a collector's craze ;

86 DUTCH BULBS AND GARDENS

though one cannot help thinking that, without
the real existence of the latter the former would
not have been possible, at least not in that
manifestation.

There are still many tales told of that time,
some supported with sufficient evidence, some rest-
ing on report, all equally remarkable. To the first
class belongs that which can be found in the
registers of the city of Alkmaar, where in 1637
there is an entry of the sale of tulips for the
benefit of the Orphan Hospital, when 120 bulbs
were sold for 9000 florins — a florin then about
represented a bushel of wheat, so the approximate
equivalent of that sum in modern money is rather
startling even for gambling prices. To the latter
class of tales belongs that of the man who believed
himself to be the possessor of a unique tulip, and,
hearing that there was another like it in Haarlem,
repaired to that city, bought the bulb at great cost
and crushed it with his foot, so that his tulip
should really be unique. There is the other tale
of the sailor, who, having been given a raw herring
at the kitchen door of a rich merchant and a
tulip fancier, picked up some roots which were
lying outside, cooked them with it, and ate them,
thinking them to be onions, and unaware that they

THE ARISTOCRAT OF THE BULB GARDENS 87

were priceless tulips. Which last story is some-
what hard to believe, for if the rich merchant and
tulip fancier was anything like the Dutchmen of
to-day, he would not have left his priceless bulbs
lying about, either by his kitchen door or any-
where else. And if the sailor was so really foolish
as, at that time when tulips were the things of
moment, to mistake an uncooked one for an
onion, he would have been better informed about
a cooked one. He would not, as according to
the tale he did, have needed enlightening by the
merchant, who is narrated to have exclaimed, after
the event : " Inconsiderate man ! Thou hast ruined
me with thy breakfast ! I could have regaled a
king with it ! " If the king had been so regaled,
at least with cooked tulips, it is possible the royal
pleasure would not have been great, for tulips,
according to those who have tried them, are very
poor eating. Parkinson, certainly, says they are
pleasant, though truth compels him to qualify the
statement by adding, "at least, not unpleasant."
He, by his own account, tried them preserved in
sugar, and apparently did not persevere with his
experiment, as he ascribes no medicinal value to
them.

It is the custom to say that the romance of

88 DUTCH BULBS AND GARDENS

tulip-growing has gone ; it is wonderful how often
Romance is announced as dead and gone, a many-
lived thing one must think it to need so many
death-knells. Tulip-growing now, it is said, is a
mere commercial enterprise, a growing without
interest of hundreds of thousands of the cheapest
sorts and selling them for the best price obtainable ;
no longer any interest or individuality in it, no one
thinking or caring for new sorts or history, or any-
thing but price per hundred. It may be ; romance
is a strange thing; whether the term is applied
to flower or adventure, callings or institutions, it
does not really refer to the concerned actors and
doers, but to the sentiments and opinions of the
unconcerned lookers-on. These unconcerned at
one time had a craze for tulips, — then tulips were
romantic ; now they are not, and romance is gone.
Now these folk merely order, or let their gardeners
order, so many red and so many white, so many
double, single, striped, or plain. There is no more
romance now to them in tulip producing and buy-
ing than in grocery producing and buying : that
is to say, they talk little more about the one than
the other, their horticultural conversation is now
centred on hybrid teas and herbaceous borders.
It was not so a hundred years ago, tulips were

HERE ARE TULIPS FOR YOU WHITE, FOR THE

BRIDAL OR THE BURIAL "

THE ARISTOCRAT OF THE BULB GARDENS 89

then in fashion. In an old miscellany of that
time there is a delightful conversation on the
tulip subject, the writer purporting to have over-
heard a talk between two people he could not see
on the behaviour and condition of persons of
importance. Very strange behaviour it sounded —
how a crowned head was feeling the weather, how a
favourite general was doing well, seeing his situation,
and, finally, how one speaker would show the other
a Painted Lady and a Chimney Sweep in the same
bed. The writer describes himself as hastening
after to share the sight, and as being delighted to
find the conversation referred to nothing scandalous,
but to " the beautiful vegetables " then in fashion.
He may have been delighted, we can give him the
benefit of the doubt — possibly he did not frequent
country houses and large suburban villas. He
could hardly have done so, else the talk would
not have had the charm of novelty for him, for
wheresoever two or three glove -gardeners are
gathered together — or even where there is only
one — the specific names of varieties of the flower
then in fashion fall like rain on the interested and
uninterested alike.

Not that the Dutch grower has any quarrel
with the glove -gardeners, he has none at all ; if

12

90 DUTCH BULBS AND GARDENS

the trend of fashion prevents them from buying
expensive and choice tulips, it also prevents them
from caring for the ones they do buy, and so
necessitates the frequent replenishing of their
stock. They are the grower's chief purchasers,
and though he feels a little hurt when they,
ignoring his plain directions for cultivation, and
getting poor results in consequence, complain of
the quality of his bulbs, he never gainsays their
taste in varieties. On the contrary, he compiles
his catalogue to what he thinks is their fancy,
and grows by the acre whatever they and their
gardeners ordain to be beautiful. But the real
interest and life of bulb-growing did not begin
with the enthusiasm of folk of this kind, nor did it
die when that died. The true grower still feels a
holy joy over a new streak of colour, a new shape
of petal ; he still has his collectors over the world
looking for novelties ; he still sows and hybridises,
and patiently and intelligently works, and feels the
connoisseur's satisfaction in success, his own or
another's.

Tulips are grown in Holland to-day much as
they were two hundred years ago. The land is
very deeply worked in winter, so that the frost
may penetrate and kill mice and other vermin ;

THE ARISTOCRAT OF THE BULB GARDENS 91

also if, as is not often the case round Haarlem, the
ground is stiff to soften it fit for the bulbs. In
the spring it is manured : for tulips there is not
such heavy manuring as for hyacinths, these last
are by far the fattest liking of all the bulbs. It
is possible, in fact it is often advisable, to grow
tulips one year on the ground which was used for
hyacinths the year before, this without any further
enriching. After the spring manuring many of
the bulb fields are let to market men, who grow
vegetables there, but with the understanding that
all must be removed and the ground cleared in
August, for, though tulips are not put in until the
end of September, some other bulbs are planted
earlier, so the rule is usually made to apply to all
fields. The tulip bulbs are set by hand, four or five
inches apart and four inches below the surface, and
left untouched until it is time to cover them with
straw for the winter. The covering in their case
is very light, not more than half an inch thick, for
tulips are perfectly hardy, and need no protection
from the cold ; but the sandy soil is so light that,
unless something were put on it, it would be blown
away in the high winds and the bulbs left bare.
The flowering time covers a good while, beginning
in mild springs with Due van Tholl in the early

92 DUTCH BULBS AND GARDENS

days of March, and ending with the late-blooming
May varieties well on in that month. There is
one rare specimen of tulip from Central Asia,
Tulipa kaufmanniana, which flowers in Holland
in February, but as yet this is not widely grown.
It is, unfortunately, necessary to cut off the flower
heads of all varieties, excepting such as are being
saved for seed, before their beauty is quite spent.
Happily, however, the cutting does not have to be
done too soon after the opening, unless the weather
is very rainy. Wet engenders some disease in the
flower, which goes downwards and infects the roots
unless the blooms are cut off in time. They are
usually cut stalkless, really beheaded ; rows of
them so treated are rather a woful sight, although
the delicate colour of their broad leaves makes the
gardens where they are still beautiful. In June
they are taken out of the ground. The new
young bulbs are found to be developed from
within the old, which gradually shrivel away to
give room to the young; in the end there is
nothing of the parent left but a few hard scales,
which can be removed by hand.

New varieties are usually raised from seed,
though some are sports ; there is at Haarlem one
such now, a fine yellow tulip, which, a few years

THE ARISTOCRAT OF THE BULB GARDENS 93

ago, " sported " from a well-known red variety ; the
man who owns it found it when the bulbs were in
bloom. It is not a "rogue" but a true bulb, in
leaf and flower representing the old red type, only
in colour yellow instead of red.

The ways of seedling tulips are rather strange ;
when they first flower, which is sometimes not
till they are as much as seven years old, they are
usually self-coloured. But in a few years' time
they "break," that is, the flowers are no longer
self-coloured but variegated. When this will
happen it is not possible to foretell, sometimes,
most usually, within two or three years of first
blooming ; sometimes, though not often, not till
after five-and-twenty or thirty years. The reason
of this remarkable peculiarity does not seem to
be clearly understood. Parkinson, it is true, offers
one : " All such flowers not having their originall
in that manner (for some that have such or the
like marks from the beginning, that is, from the
first and second years flowering, are constant, and
doe not change), but as I said, were of one colour
at the first, do show the weakness and decay of
the roots, and this extraordinary beauty in the
flower, is but as the brightness of a light, upon
the very extinguishing thereof, and doeth plainly

94 DUTCH BULBS AND GARDENS

declare that it can doe his master no more service,
and therefore with this jollity doth bid him good-
night." Unfortunately modern experience proves
this to be incorrect, for the variegation when
produced usually continues without reversion to
the self-coloured original for an indefinite length
of time. There are certain distinct types in the
variegations. Robinson describes them as follows :
" A feathered tulip has the colour finely pencilled
round the margin of the petals, the base of the
flowers being pure ; in a " Flamed " flower stripes
of colour descend from the top of the petals
towards the base. In the Bizarres the colours are
red, brownish-red, chestnut and maroon, the base
being clear yellow ; in the Bybloomens the colours
are black and various shades of purple, the base
being white ; and in the Roses, rose of various
shades, and also deep red or scarlet, the base being
white again." Most of which variegations, though
still much appreciated by some people, have not
the place in popular admiration they had two
hundred years ago, or even as recently as one
hundred, some of the authors of which period give
simple directions for the helping of nature in
"effecting the marvellous work of breaking the
breeding tulip into diversified colours."

"WHOSE LEAVES WITH THEIR CRIMSON GLOW

HIDE THE HEART THAT LIES BURNING AND BLACK
BELOW "

THE ARISTOCRAT OF THE BULB GARDENS 95

Seeing the admiration of these connoisseurs of
the past for streaked tulips it is surprising we hear
little or nothing of the Parrot (Tulipa turcica).
In some form it must have been in existence
at the time of the mania, for Parkinson, writ-
ing earlier, mentions among his "mean flowering
tulips" something which appears to be it. It is
classed as a subdivision of the "Yellow Fool's
Coat " tulip, and is described as "of a paler or
yellowish green passed with yellow and called the
Parret, with white edges."

Striped or streaky flowers appear always to
have been the florist's ambition. Nature, in the
general way, is not much addicted to the unaided
production thereof ; probably it is for that reason
that growers have always regarded them as choice.
As far back as Shakespeare's time pied or striped
flowers would seem to have been the choicest ;
"the favourite flowers o' the season," Perdita
says, "are our carnations and streaked gilly'vors."
The taste of the general public on the subject
may vary — a Perdita of to-day would not feel
it necessary, as Shakespeare's Perdita did, to
apologise for not growing the admired streaked
gillyflowers; but the taste of the florist is more
faithful, he knows the art of the thing. It is

96 DUTCH BULBS AND GARDENS

he, also, who truly appreciates the double flower.
Nature of herself does not very often double
flowers, man invariably doubles every kind he can
so soon as he takes it into cultivation. Tulips
have been doubled very long, and were at one time
much admired, though they are thought less of
now. In England, at all events, they meet with
comparatively little patronage, excepting a few
dwarf sorts used for forcing and for carpet-bedding,
and some large white ones which, when wide open,
find a place in bouquets and floral trophies, where
they look rather like peonies.

The history of the origin of the tulip as we
have it is somewhat lost in mist. Robinson says
Tulipa suaveolens from South Russia is now
regarded as the type of the numerous early flower-
ing tulips (Due van Tholl, etc.), but the finer, later
forms, which open in May, have all come from
Tulipa Gesneriana. Some of the Dutch growers,
on the other hand, regard the Gesneriana as the
parent of all the garden forms ; which also seems to
be the opinion of some of the eighteenth-century
English writers, who give Cappadocia as the home
of the bulb. Various native lands have been
ascribed to it : Turkey, South Russia, Asia Minor,
and what is called " the Levant " — in bulb history

THE ARISTOCRAT OF THE BULB GARDENS 97

a wide and vague locality — have all been suggested
as the source from which we derived it. But
from wherever it came to us, it seems likely that
the original home of the bulb was Persia ; from
whence probably it spread to all the above
countries, if not before historic times, at least
very long ago. Tulips have long been known and
admired in Persia; they were clearly as much a
commonplace of poetry in the time of Omar
Khayyam as the nightingale and the rose —

the Tulip for her wonted sup
Of Heavenly Vintage lifts her chalice up —

he writes, or we presume he writes, since the lines
with very little variation appear in all editions of
the Quatrains.

The tulip is said in the East to be regarded
as a symbol of declared love. The writer of my
grandmother's Language of Flowers is less agree-
able in his symbolism. " On account of the
elegance of its form," he says, "the beauty of its
colours, but its want of fragrance and other useful
qualities, this flower has been considered as an
appropriate symbol of a female who possesses no
other recommendation than personal charms."
Which is rather severe, and inclines one to suggest

13

98 DUTCH BULBS AND GARDENS

that the good man, if he really felt that a flower
should possess useful qualities, might have tried
this one, as was recommended in the early seven-
teenth century, for "cricke in the neck." The
eastern lover more poetically symbolised the con-
dition of his love-inflamed face and burning heart
by the gift to his adored of the flower :

Whose leaves with their crimson glow

Hide the heart that lies burning and black below.

From the description it is clear that the Persian
tulip was self-coloured and red, possibly something
like the Gesneriana spathulata.

The date of its coming to Western Europe is
not much more certain than the actual place from
whence it came. The introduction has been
ascribed to Busbecq, ambassador from the Emperor
Maximilian to the Porte — it is astonishing how
many flowers that enterprising man is accredited
with introducing to his own and other western
countries. He is reported to have seen tulips
in bloom on the road between Adrianople and
Constantinople in mid-winter, and, struck with
their beauty, brought some home with him. Then
there is the story of a bulb being brought to
England by a sailor and given by him to an

THE ARISTOCRAT OF THE BULB GARDENS 99

apothecary's wife, as a token of his gratitude for
her kindness to him in sickness. According to this
story, the bulb first bloomed in 1557, but according
to some authorities tulips were not seen here at all
until 1577. The sailor story, when told in detail,
offers several other difficulties. It rather presupposes
that the man thought the bulb of value, which he
might or might not have done. And it certainly
demands that the recipient of it should have been
a good gardener and woman of business, for she is
narrated to have at once grown and multiplied her
tulip and sold the offsets for a guinea apiece — a
large price in Elizabethan England for a new and
as yet unfashionable flower, introduced merely by
a country apothecary's wife. It also puts the date
of the first flowering in England as 1559, the date
when, it is said, Conrad Gesner, the Swiss botanist
and name-father to the Gesneriana, brought the
tulip from Constantinople to Augsburg. There
is another story which ascribes the first intro-
duction of the tulip into England to Sir Philip
Sidney, who is reputed to have brought it from the
Continent. Personally I prefer that account ; it is
in keeping with the character of the great Eliza-
bethan, also it offers less difficulties. Sidney, we
know, was on a diplomatic mission to the German

100 DUTCH BULBS AND GARDENS

court, where he made a friend of William of
Orange ; this in 1 577, by which time tulips,
whether first introduced by Gesner to Augsburg
or by Busbecq to Maximilian, would have had
time to grow and increase in Germany and the
Low Countries, and might well have attracted
the attention of the widely interested and
cultivated Sidney.

But how they came and when they came does
not greatly matter now. Come they did, both to
Holland and to England, and early find their
way to favour and to cultivation and variation.
The date of the earliest varieties is as unknown
as the date of introduction, but some are cer-
tainly very old, many late single kinds, Darwin
tulips among them, have been found by Dutch
growers in old Flemish gardens with long his-
tories, other sorts seem to be quite as old. The
tulip, like the dog, appears to have taken very
kindly to domestication and variation for the
pleasure of man.

There are, of course, wild tulips in some
countries, the Sylvestris of Italy, for instance,
though none are native to Holland. They are
accredited to England, and said to be indigenous
in Gloucestershire, but the thing is very doubtful,

DARWIN TULIPS

THE ARISTOCRAT OF THE BULB GARDENS 101

much more likely have they been introduced — as
rabbits to Australia — and taken to the West
Country. There is a garden in Devonshire where
they multiply wonderfully, and where, to a certain
extent, a record of their multiplication is kept.
Incorporated in the lease of the house is a clause
to the effect that the lessee, when he leaves, shall,
besides the usual " habitable condition," etc., leave
so many hundred of a special kind of red tulip in the
garden. The which is rather a pleasing clause to
read in these days, when no one may put a window
in his woodshed without the permission of the
Urban District Council. It is pleasing to realise
that a man, though dead, has that much right
over his own property, and can perpetuate his
fancy for red tulips, or (as is the case of an
east county estate) ordain that the garden he
loved shall continue to be as it has been
since the days of Anne Boleyn — that, not
only shall no Council say him nay, but no
Englishman would ever wish it, on the contrary
they all, privately, think it a very right and
proper thing.

Perhaps it will be permitted to close these
desultory remarks on tulips past and present,
English and Dutch, with a few lines from two

102 DUTCH BULBS AND GARDENS

early Victorian poets. The early Victorians loved
the tulip, and, as usual when they loved a flower,
they enshrined it "in poesy," a rather doubtful
compliment : —

And sure more lovely to behold

Might nothing meet the wistful eye,

Than crimson fading into gold
In streaks of fairest symmetry.

This sounds like the old original Due van Tholl,
which is almost ugly enough to deserve such a
fate ; at least in some people's opinion, although an
old grower, once contemplating it in admiration,
exclaimed, " It is a grand flower — grand ! But the
English amateurs now have no taste. They no
longer know what a tulip should be ! This, this
I tell you, this is a Tulip 1 "

One other quotation, this from Montgomery,
admired of our grandmothers. He would seem to
have been planting a tulip bulb, evidently one of
the streaked florist's variety, and the thought of
the flower to come moved him to utterance worthy
of the " Elegant Album " :—

Two shapely leaves will first unfold ;

Then, on a smooth, elastic stem,
The verdant bud shall turn to gold,

And open in a diadem.

THE ARISTOCRAT OF THE BULB GARDENS 103

Not one of Flora's brilliant race

A form more perfect can display ;
Art could not feign more simple grace,

Nor Nature take a line away.

Yet, rich as morn, of many a hue,

When flushing clouds through darkness strike,

The Tulip's petals shine in dew,
All beautiful, but none alike.

CHAPTER VI

BULB BARNS, NAMES, AND GROWERS

THERE is, without doubt, a certain charm in bulb
barns ; not perhaps quite the charm of an old
English barn, wherein there is ever a brown twi-
light and never a straight line, and it is still possible
to think of the Good People coming to shelter on
wet nights. Dutch barns, even the least well kept
of them, are too orderly for that. They are rather
too foursquare and deficient in the unexpected
annexes and the mysterious doors leading to
nowhere and anywhere which are part of the
true fascination of barns. Nevertheless they have
attractions ; they are warm -coloured, lofty, silent,
and full of a pleasant dry smell ; they are essen-
tially not people's houses though, especially at some
seasons of the year, they are houses of quiet, stored
life.

Every grower must have a barn ; the big men,

104

A BULB HOUSE

BULB BARNS, NAMES, AND GROWERS 105

of course, more than one, the number and size vary-
ing in proportion to the gardens. Those of the
little men are sometimes rather makeshift places,
wherein, at other times of the year, other things
are kept and the true character of a bulb barn some-
what lost. The true character is, pre-eminently,
orderliness; seen at perfection a bulb barn is, in
its own way, as typically Dutch as a hyacinth, it is
the perfection of order and system, and yet some-
how cosily human too. Round the sides of the
great barns there are shelves with upturned edges ;
down the centre is a stand, or two stands with an
aisle between, if the barn is very large, and these,
too, are all shelves or trays, tray upon tray nearly
to the roof. Against the walls there are light
ladders, easy to move when the upper trays have to
be reached. In the corners are heavier and longer
ladders leading to the stories above — when there
are any, as there often are in the bigger barns.
Here the bulbs are brought, sorted according to
kind and size and quality ; here they accumulate
from early June, when the snowdrops and aconites
are brought in, on through the summer months till
all are harvested and the barns are full, wonderful
quiet stores of waiting life.

Many of the bulb barns have windows, herein

14

106 DUTCH BULBS AND GARDENS

also differing from the true English barn, where the
primitive fashion of lighting by the open door still
maintains, and is all that is necessary. In Holland
it is necessary to have at least some barns with
windows, and windows that open, for they have to
be left open when the tulips are first brought in, so
that the bulbs may dry and get ready to be cleaned.
The cleaning of all bulbs, which consists in remov-
ing the old outer husk and presenting the bulb dry
and shining as we see it, is usually done by women
in a big barn not far from the grower's office. The
work is not hard, though the hours are long, and the
wages, seeing that it is unskilled labour, rather low.
The principal objection to it is the skin irritation
that it causes, though one hopes that those daily
employed get hardened to that. One sees quite
old women at the work, grandmothers sitting on
benches or upturned baskets, their brown wrinkled
faces bending over the bulbs, their long gold ear-
rings, possibly the only treasure left of some
inherited store, dangling, And beside them young
girls, with round rosy cheeks and demure eyes,
which do not — at least openly — seek those of the
men who pass to and fro carrying the deep baskets
full of bulbs. One seldom or never sees any of the
typical peasant head-dresses among the women who

BULB BARNS, NAMES, AND GROWERS 107

work at the bulb-cleaning, presumably the workers
are not drawn from the class who still wear them.
But one does see a beautiful neatness — a general
impression of cleanness, of blue cotton, neat
straight hair, and wooden shoes ; an appearance a
good deal more neat and picturesque than the aver-
age of poorer women-workers in England ; unless,
perhaps, one excepts those who are employed in
one branch of pottery-work, where the necessary
uniform is print sun-bonnets and overalls. There is
no flirting in the barn, practically no intercourse
between the men and women, the men simply
carry in the basketsful of freshly-lifted bulbs to
be cleaned, and carry out those that are done. No
doubt when work ceases or dinner-hour comes some
young people find each other out. It would be
clear waste and much to be regretted if they
did not.

The men employed in the bulb gardens work
from about six in the morning till seven at night in
the summer ; in the winter, of course, when the
daylight is short and the work less, not so long.
The thing which strikes one most about them is
how much cleaner they are than any English
workers on the land. But it is not fair to ascribe
this entirely to native characteristics and ideals ;

108 DUTCH BULBS AND GARDENS

the soil and conditions of the bulb district are
entirely different from those of any agricultural
part of England. It has been said of the men
employed in the bulb fields that they do not care
about flowers, merely regarding them as daily work
and having no more aesthetic appreciation of them
than of turnips. Of course it may be so, but per-
sonally I rather doubt it ; although, as has been
urged, they certainly do not grow flowers for them-
selves. In the bulb district, one never sees bloom-
ing cottage gardens as in England, but then land
there is so valuable that comparatively few people
can afford to have gardens at all ; and those that
do are both so poor and so thrifty that they can-
not keep them for pleasure only, but must turn
their wee patch to the best food-producing account.
In the bulb district there is no waste land ; no broad
margins — " God's gardens," — beside the road ; no
tangle of leeks and roses beside a tumbling-down
cottage door; no grass -grown marigold -studded
stretch of brickwork surrounding the common
pump. There is no waste, no weeds, no margins,
and, alas ! but little beauty about the dwellings of
the work-people. Yet none the less it seems they
love flowers, often they are to be seen carrying
them home, and seldom one passes houses with no

FLOWER-MARKET, HAARLEM

BULB BARNS, NAMES, AND GROWERS 109

vase of them in the window in blooming time.
And this, surely, argues a real love of flowers, when
one comes to think that they are in themselves
neither rare nor valuable here, many of the cut
blooms thrown away almost as much as the poppies
in our English corn-fields. Of course a certain
number of the flowers are sold in Dutch towns — as
in the towns of other countries, some few growers
even may grow a small quantity for that special
purpose. But, again, in the purchasing of them, the
charge that the working-classes have no aesthetic
love of flowers would seem to be negated, for,
though the prices of cut flowers, considering the
quantity grown, are relatively high, many of the
purchasers are workmen. One sees them on pay-
day carrying home their purchases with the same
evident care and admiration that one sees similarly
bestowed by the better class of English mechanics
and workmen, when on Saturdays they carry home
the bunches of wallflower and violets that they
buy in the streets.

There are in Holland, besides the workmen and
the great growers, others concerned in the bulb
industry, a whole lot of very small growers, simple
folk, who for the most part live in the numerous
little villages around Haarlem, Alkmaar, and

110 DUTCH BULBS AND GARDENS

Leyden. They own but one field, or perhaps two,
and combine with bulb-raising vegetable growing
or cow-keeping. They, with their families, do all
the cultivation themselves, planting and lifting the
bulbs, the old folk or the children cleaning them,
working in the patriarchal co-operative way.
These men may be seen in Haarlem on Mondays
in the bulb season (August to October) ; they
come to offer their bulbs to the exporters, who
cannot for themselves grow enough of some of the
sorts in most demand, or who do not find it worth
their while to give up their land to producing the
cheaper varieties. Later on the bulbs themselves
will come to Haarlem, by canal boat — if the canal
is handy, or perhaps on the back of the man who
raised them, or perhaps brought by the good-wife,
who may come barefoot along the sandy road, only
donning her shoes on the outskirts of the town.
The authorities of Haarlem will have no bare feet
in their streets, their sense of delicacy forbids ;
even the fishwives of Zandvoort, who walk better
than almost any other western women, have to put
on the wooden shoes they carry, in addition to
their burden of fish, when they have crossed the
sand dunes and near the city.

But, of course, not all the less-important growers

BULB BARNS, NAMES, AND GROWERS 111

are in such a small way ; some of them are sub-
stantial well-to-do men cultivating quite a con-
siderable quantity of land. Certain of them grow
almost exclusively for one or another special
exporter, so that they seem to the uninitiated to be
his men, though in reality they are not at all. It
is these men who may sometimes be seen during
the bulb season in the exporter's office, or sitting
with him in the veranda of his house, talking of
the weather and the condition of trade over a glass
of schiedam and a Dutch cigar, in the old-fashioned
leisurely way that still maintains in parts of
Holland. Cheery, comfortable folk these, speak-
ing neither English, French, nor German ; Dutch
of the Dutch, and not easily to be known by the
foreigner.

In the ordinary bulb barns there are two things
to be guarded against, mice and fire. Against the
latter there is insurance, and one would think there
should not be much danger of it in those barns
where there is a rule forbidding the workmen to
smoke while within. There are some barns, how-
ever, where there is no such rule ; where the master
feels that justice demands he should allow his men
the liberty which he, with the true Dutch love of
tobacco, cannot do without himself. There is one

112 DUTCH BULBS AND GARDENS

dear old man who usually smokes at meals and
very often in bed, to the danger of his bed-
curtains ; I do not think that he, even if cruel fate
compelled him to refrain himself, could find it
in his heart to forbid his workmen the well-loved
pipe ; certainly they all smoke everywhere in his
barns, but, .so far as I have heard, he has never
suffered loss by fire.

Mice can give much trouble to bulb growers ;
they are very partial to some kinds of bulbs ; they
eat them in the ground unless they are driven out
by deep digging and laying the earth open to
the frost beforehand. In the barns they naturally
assume that the grower has kindly put up a good
store for them. But by traps and cats and poison
and wonderful Dutch orderliness they are kept
under. In a bulb barn at night one hears few of
the mysterious rustlings and patterings that make
an English barn suggestive of hid but active life.

There is one other thing to be guarded against
in some few barns, that is frost. Not in the
generality, of course, the ones where are accumu-
lated the ordinary bulbs of the trade ; but in the
ones where there are stored things for spring
planting, such as gladioli, begonias, hemerocallis,
dahlias, and other and choicer bulbs and tubers,

HYACINTH FLOWERS GOING TO MARKET

BULB BARNS, NAMES, AND GROWERS 113

the frost is a very important consideration. Some
barns are very carefully protected against frost ;
some I know are carefully and systematically
warmed during the winter months, and never,
winter and summer, is the range of buildings
empty. Standing in one of these, a curious
thought comes ; one realises, as one looks at the
crowded shelves and remembers those of other
barns beyond, that, could some cataclysm destroy
the ornamental flora of the world, but leave un-
touched this range of barns with their contents (as
Noah's ark in the Deluge), there would still be a
good start for repeopling the world with flowers.
Representatives from all quarters of the globe
are to be found in those barns, bulbs proper, and
corms, and tubers, and all the variously named
houses of stored plant life. Besides the hyacinth
and tulip of historic fame, and the humbler crocus
and snowdrop, there are calochortus of California,
tigridias of Mexico, begonias of Jamaica, tuberoses
of Persia, gloxinias and achimenes, cannas and
crinums, amaryllis and arums — flowers native to
all parts of the world, brought in the first instance
by indefatigable collectors, who often have faced real
enough perils in their work — the cold in Siberia, the
heat in Africa, hunger and thirst, the ever prob-

15

114 DUTCH BULBS AND GARDENS

able risk of robbery and violence of the Kurds
in Central Asia, the happy hunting-ground par
excellence of collectors. No romance in the bulb
industry now ? Why, it is full of romance !
And not the smallest of it, at least in the eyes
of some, is the patient work, the ceaseless, never-
beaten perseverance and experiment by which the
adventurously brought plants are acclimatised to
the chilly western countries, and cultivated and
varied to the manifold forms in which we find
them now grown in garden and green-house, and
catalogued under various names.

The names are something of a trouble to
growers, at least some that I know. " Why,"
asked one who, be it remembered, regarded his
work with seriousness and veneration, " Why will
your English people call the flowers by such
foolish names? For an instance, * Torch Lilies!'
Where is the torch ? Where the lily ? It is no
lily, see the root, see the flower. And for torch,
or for * flame flower,' as you sometimes also call it,
there is no resemblance ; there is even none of
the waywardness, the unsteadiness or quivering of
flames ; these things, I grant you, are in some
flowers, as the pampas grass, but not in this, it is
a stiff, a formal flower. Yes, more like to a red-

BULB BARNS, NAMES, AND GROWERS 115

hot poker, as also you call it. If you must have
some other name than Kniphofia (though I do
not myself perceive that it is necessary or the one
easier than the other), if you must, I say, well
then, it is perhaps best you have * red-hot poker,'
it is at worst but childish and shows no mistake
in classification. But you would far sooner have it
a lily, I know ; all things must be called ' lily ' now,
I cannot tell why — Gladiolus, 'the Sword Lily,'
Vallota, ' the Scarborough Lily,' — the Scarborough
Lily ! One can almost as well have called it the
Margate Potato I

" It is the one thing I have against the English
amateurs — not all, of course, but many — they will
not call a plant by its name, they will have what
they call a 'simple' or perhaps 'old-fashioned'
name. But it is ridiculous. If a flower has long
had a simple name, as the primrose, the foxglove,
well and good ; if it has had it in the common
language so long or longer than it has another of
the botanists, why then one has no quarrel with
a man for using it. But if it is a flower of late
days, and there has come to it first the name of
the botanist — the man who makes it some other
' simple ' name, which is also quite erroneous, and
seems to class it as lily or as some other when it

116 DUTCH BULBS AND GARDENS

is almost as soon a cabbage — is nothing less than
a child. Nevertheless for these we must dis-
figure our catalogue with such names as Torch
Lilies and the like."

And certainly he and other growers do so
" disfigure " their catalogues, for a grower is a man
of business. A rather curious mixture of the
commercial and the connoisseur ; a practical man
of business and a gardener, but, above all things,
one who loves his work. With the Dutch grower,
at least those of the older school, and I think the
modern too, work stands first. There is no hasten-
ing through with it, so as to devote time and
energies to sports and hobbies ; sport does not
play a large part in the Dutch grower's life, and
other hobbies are made tributary to the one great
interest. There was one old man who was at
heart an artist, in his far-off youth it is possible
he cherished dreams ; but when necessity and
circumstance made him a grower he put the
dreams away, though he kept his paint-box. On
a Saturday sometimes, locked safely in his office,
he still took out the little box of somewhat dried
paints ; he could no longer draw, his hands, steady
enough for any delicate operations of his work,
had long lost their skill. But still he sometimes

A BULB-GROWER S GARDEN

BULB BARNS, NAMES, AND GROWERS 117

carefully coloured the illustrations in his catalogues,
the real flower standing in a glass before him, and
the names of the paints he employed set down, so
that he might more fitly describe the true colours
of the flower in the next catalogue compiled. They
were not always beautiful results he produced, but
there was something quaintly beautiful and withal
pathetic about them and him.

Other growers there are whose tastes are
scientific, or perhaps for photography or the
microscope. These, too, are turned to account ;
exquisite photographs of flowers illustrate the
bulb lists ; patient examination of pollen and plant
parasites, careful and systematic experiments with
soils and fertilisers, give help and enlightenment
in the growing and varying of the bulbs. Others
there may be who have had some thought of
another profession before family circumstances
gave them to this life, but they are not the worse
growers on that account. They would not enlarge
leisure to practise arms if their tastes were military,
or to read theology if their leaning was towards the
ministry ; but they would be content to do their
duty truly and honestly, serve God and love their
neighbour, and give to the work they had under-
taken the whole of themselves.

118 DUTCH BULBS AND GARDENS

This, then, above all things strikes one, a grower
is a man steeped in his work ; he lives in the midst
of it, he rises with it, and goes to bed with it. On
his few holidays he goes to see the achievements of
others in it, or, better still, the working of nature.
He goes to see other things too, no doubt, he has
other interests — pictures, or music, or literature, or
languages — he is no narrow uncultivated man ; but
his work stands first, a long, long way first, he and
it are curiously and indissolubly one. So for this
reason I say at the last, as I said at the first,
those who would see and know the bulb gardens
of Holland should also know the men who for
generations have grown the bulbs, and loved and
understood them.

APPENDICES

. . . dans leur sympathie, Us m'ont du garder place,
Car Us ne savent pas donner a moitie,
On conserve longtemps un beau fruit dans la glace,
Les gens de climat froid sont de chaude amitk'-.

Et puisque vous avez cette aimable pensee
De vouloir que mes vers vous presentent la-bas,
Dites bien tout d'abord a la foule empressee
Que mon coeur se souvient des nobles Pays-Bas,

Du pays gene'reux qui ne salt pas proscrire,
Qui s'ouvre a tout martyr, a tout persecute
Ou chaque citoyen des 1'enfance respire
Avec le vent marin, 1'air de la liberte.

Enfin de ce pays que 1'art et la pensee
Plus que tous ses tresors, rendent iUustre et grand,
Et que vous voit passer dans sa gloire passee
Esprit de Spinoza, palette de Rembrandt !

FRANCOIS COPP£E.

I

HYACINTH CULTURE AT HAARLEM IN THE
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

CHAPTER I. — INTRODUCTION

SAINT-SIMON, writing in the year 1768, declares there were at
that time in Haarlem nearly two thousand named varieties
of the hyacinth, and we may suppose they had already been
about forty years in cultivation on a soil which seemed
particularly adapted for the purpose, — a fine upper stratum
of grey sand, superposed by the action of the sea on a thin
subsoil of peat, so that Nature prepared, it seems, many
thousand years in advance to produce the delicately-tinted
and exquisitely-scented flower, which rises as if by magic
out of the cold earth in a few weeks1 space.

One well-named variety, " Sceptre of David," reminds
one of the long moral preparation of one people chosen out
of the nations of the earth (a stiff soil to work), before the
long-desired of the hills should come, when there should
come a rod out of the root of Jesse, and a flower should
rise up out of his root.

If there are " correspondences " in the material and
spiritual worlds, the flower that cometh up in a day has
its root in the ages.

The hyacinth is one of the most perfect results of man's
121 16

122 DUTCH BULBS AND GARDENS

Art — Art, for Saint-Simon is persuaded that the hyacinth
has become what it is principally through cultivation, and
without human patience and perseverance — if nature had
been left entirely alone — a much less pleasing and exquisite
flower would have appeared.

Every year new varieties are developed, and hope springs
eternal in the breast of the cultivator. Haarlem, the
Paradise of Flowers, may be especially described as the
home of the hyacinth.

Upon his arrival at Haarlem, the stranger is so dazzled
with the spectacle of the wonderful and brilliantly coloured
carpet spread before his eyes, that he does not at first
realise there is yet further joy to be found in the singular
beauty of certain species and varieties taken individually.

There he sees acres of hyacinths, double and single, in
uninterrupted ranges of pure colour; the only intervals
between the rows being the little grey sand paths, to
enable the cultivator to reach the flowers.

It is difficult for the imagination to picture a piece of
earth so brilliantly enamelled with flowers, and yet such
variety and beauty in detail. The rarest and finest speci-
mens are put apart from the rest in chosen spots, and these
again are arranged in symmetrical order, with such taste
and so unsullied and trim, that one can hardly believe
Nature has been allowed any hand at all in the arrangement.
The florist's art seems to have triumphed almost too com-
pletely. Well, one may say the florists of Haarlem have
played the predominant part, and their long experience,
aided by the succours of reason, have shown them how to
assist Nature by seconding her efforts, and thus to raise
her to a stage beyond herself. In any case, the flowers
they cultivate seldom reach such a high state of develop-
ment elsewhere. However active and industrious they may
be, no amateur, with all his talents, has ever reached to

HYACINTH CULTURE AT HAARLEM 123

such surprising perfection — in strength and form of stem
and blossoms ; or to such brilliancy of colouring, though
many possessing both talent and experience have spared
neither trouble nor expense in their endeavours to produce
the same result. They are inclined to attribute their want
of success to the nature of their climate and the soil, and
like to regard Haarlem as a place especially privileged in
these respects.

If amateurs had any idea of the spirit of emulation
rife among the Haarlem growers, and the way their whole
attention is absorbed, — how unceasingly they labour and
continually verify their experiments, always reflecting and
improving upon them and making fresh combinations, — they
would then know the work is not impossible, and they need
only be endowed with the indomitable qualities of the
Dutchman, and they might produce the same results.

There is no doubt that there exists, even in Haarlem,
a sensible difference between growers of the first class and
the more second-rate cultivators; for, although all are
imbued more or less with the same spirit, and enjoy the
same advantages of soil, climate, etc., yet some, through
learning and experience, rise superior to the rest in this line.

If in other countries amateur growers kept more in touch
with one another, and co-operated as do the Haarlem
cultivators, there would be less occasion for despair. For
a good deal of their success comes from their united efforts
and experiments, so that among them all they have many
ways of knowing how to preserve bulbs, to propagate them,
and guard them from destructive accidents.

Nobody knows exactly where hyacinths come from
originally — the name of the hyacinth called " Orientalis,"
whose origin can be traced back till it is lost in the obscurity
of ages — seems to imply that this flower originated in the
East, and there has been much discussion about the fact

124 DUTCH BULBS AND GARDENS

that Moses in the book of Exodus speaks of the colour
of the hyacinth — but whether he refers to it only as a
colour, or as a flower, or as a precious stone, it is impossible
to say — for it has been differently translated in various
languages. Saint-Simon tells us that Dioscorides, in the
time of Vespasian, describes a flower he calls " Hyacinthos "
in these words : " L'Hyacinthe a les feuilles des plantes
bulbeuses et la tige dodrantale (c'est-a-dire de trois
paulmes, pans ou empans de haut, on n'est pas d'accord
sur cette mesure non plus), faible, et plus mince que le
petit doigt, de couleur verte, dont le haut s'incline sous le
poids d'une tete chargee de fleurs purpurescentes.11 People
have argued indefinitely on the precise shade of " purple,11
and to this day they have not decided if it should be more
red than blue or more blue than red. The general opinion
seems to be that the original hyacinth was the colour of the
natural wild hyacinth (which is a Scilla ?) which grows in
the woods, where the red variety is not nearly as commonly
found as the blue.

On the other hand, the first species may have been red,
for in old fables it seems the hyacinth was thought to be
red. Ovid relates how a flower sprang from the blood of
the young Hyacinthus,1 whom Apollo slew by accident with
a quoit. Others, like Pliny and Pausanias, say the blood of
Ajax, slain near Salamis, was changed into this flower.

Whatever its original colour, and whatever country it
came from, it is certain that many species have been pro-
duced by the florists of Haarlem, and have entirely originated
in their gardens. Yet it is to be remembered that all came
from the old original stock, however different they have now
become. Their natural simplicity has been lost to a certain
extent.

Florists divide hyacinths into four classes :
JUnless blue blood was spilt.

HYACINTH CULTURE AT HAARLEM 125

1. The Single Hyacinth — the corolla divided into six segments.

2. Semi -Double — only slightly double, with a few petals

irregularly disposed behind the single.

3. Double — the outer petals lined with an equal number of

other petals in regular order.

4. Full Hyacinth — which has a heart as full of petals as it

can hold.

These four classes furnish a great number of varieties.
We cannot define further without going into their distin-
guishing features and numerous subdivisions.

The Full Hyacinth possesses the greater number and
best varieties. It is important a hyacinth should belong to
the best (one of full) varieties — but this is not sufficient to
constitute a good flower. The petals should grow in very
regular order — especially those within the heart of the
flower, and the petals should as well be curved back very
evenly at their tip. They should also be of a beautiful
clear and decided colour, and this is a great charm in a
hyacinth. As well as being as perfect and decided as
possible, the colour of the inner should harmonise agreeably
with the colour of the outer petals.

In this respect there is nothing to be found to surpass the
Gloria Florum Suprema l — the blossoms being perfectly dis-
posed the full length of the stem, which rises tall and very
straight, but is, unfortunately a little too thin to support
the weight of the flowers. The petals are very pure white,
and their tips fold back with the greatest regularity, forming
a perfectly symmetrical bud (or button). Colours such as
blue and black, red and white are satisfactory combinations.
White hyacinths, as a rule, are the most delicately shaded,
but each variety has a beauty entirely its own.

Of every colour there are kinds which obtain high prices,
but the beauty or merit of a flower is not exactly determined
1 No longer in existence.

126 DUTCH BULBS AND GARDENS

by the monetary value — for people pay for novelty ; the
rarity it is which enhances the value. However, they must,
besides, have other essential qualities. Gloria Mundi and
Francois 1st, and other blues, which used to be the only ones
which could at all compete with Gloria Florum Suprema,
have at last found their rival among the white varieties.
"Og Roi de Basan," "Le Comte de Provence," etc., lose
nothing by comparison. Some of the reds, Rex Rubrorum
and Mine d'Or have as many points in their favour. There
are now hyacinths of almost every shade. But only at
Haarlem are thousands of varieties and shades to be seen
together, and there one can feast one's eyes to one's heart's
content. When a new kind is raised from seed it causes a
great sensation.

Saint-Simon, after expatiating at length on the endurance
of the hyacinth through centuries of growth, ever reproduc-
ing itself with renewed vigour, — showing no sign of exhaust-
ing the stock, says : " Cependant cet oignon si merveilleux,
eternel, pour ainsi dire, dans 1'imagination et present aux
yeux pendant tant de siecles, ne dure effectivement que
quatre a cinq ans."

The hyacinth is propagated by its offshoots or young
bulbs. It also reproduces itself from seed. From the seed
new varieties are produced. Hyacinth bulbs will bloom in
any direction they are placed, even upside down — the flower
will grow downwards in a vase of water.

If you take the bulb at the moment of planting, that
is, when it is beginning to show the tender green point of its
shoot, the first thing to do is to examine if it is healthy. It
should be round and full, and not shrivelled ; though each
variety differs slightly in form, yet all should be properly
rounded in appearance, because this shows the bulb is in
good condition, nor should it be too light in weight for its
size. If it is, it shows it is drying up inside and is deficient

HYACINTH CULTURE AT HAARLEM 127

in sap. But to be small in size does not matter, for some of
the beautiful red varieties have very small bulbs, and very
often single hyacinths have larger bulbs than the double.

There is a kind of double hyacinth, white with a red heart,
which is known by its outer tunic, which is always wrinkled
and defective. In spite of its appearance, by its weight and
form one may judge if it is in good condition. The roots
often grow like a crown round the base of the bulb, and the
space in the centre is called the " eye " of the roots. This
space is covered with a membrane ; and in choosing bulbs,
this is the part you must first examine carefully to see if
there are any signs of decay. There should be no marks of
damp or of mildew in the eye at the base of the bulb.

When the time draws near for planting, the bulb should
show little swollen white points at the base where the roots
are to come.

The tunics or suberous leaves (what is called skin on an
ordinary onion) are always covered over with a thin, dry,
reddish skin, which falls off after a time, but is at first
useful in protecting the other tunics when the bulb is in the
earth, for it is planted in the dampest season of the year.
No tunic entirely embraces the circumference of the bulb,
but only about two-thirds of it. The tunics are really an
extension (in the bulb) of the long green leaves, only the
part of these leaves which show green above ground fall off'
in the end of the year, and the base of them, which remain
within the bulb as tunics, spread and increase till, when they
are pushed by each year's growth from the centre to the
outside of the bulb (by the growth of new stem and leaves
within), they get weaker and thinner, until at last they turn
into the dry, red, outside skin, which finally decays and
falls off.

The tunics are of the same substance as the rest of the
bulb (which is composed of fleshy scales), and the difference

128 DUTCH BULBS AND GARDENS

is so gradual that it is impossible to see where the fleshy
substance of the bulb begins to change into the suberous
quality of the leaves, and yet there is a very marked differ-
ence between the bulb and its leafy scales ; they are, however,
an undetachable whole, and you cannot pull off the inner
tunic leaves of the hyacinth from the base, as you can pull off
the leaves of an artichoke.

As soon as the bulb is taken from the ground it begins to
grow and increases rapidly during the three months it lies on
the shelf, and all this time it lives on the sap-nourishment
accumulated by it when in the earth. The sap concentrated
in the bulb can preserve it for a great length of time, but it
is not quite sufficient to enable the bulb to finish all the
work it has to do, and if it flowers it will not have strength
enough to bring its seeds to maturity. (Saint-Simon here
observes that this is not attributable to the bulb having no
roots, but to its inward indisposition.)

Some people imagine that a bulb which has been kept
from flowering can reserve itself for the following year.
Many such experiments have been made, and bulbs have
been kept back on the shelves and have not been allowed
to flower; they have invariably perished, and, growers say,
scarcely a year passes that they have not tried the experi-
ment,— they have lost every bulb which was not put into
the ground. As a rule the sap in a bulb will be sufficient
nourishment during its ordinary growth till January or
February, but after that it will begin to grow mouldy and
go bad. The moment it is put in earth or over water, in the
proper season, the bulb, which is just beginning to be ex-
hausted, pumps up sap so vigorously that it begins at once
to throw out roots from almost the first day, and growers
dare not move them again, even a few hours after they have
been put in, to send them away, however carefully packed,
even a short distance, for fear the fresh moisture thev have

"WHEN SPRING UNLOCKS THE FLOWERS TO PAINT
THE LAUGHING SOIL"

HYACINTH CULTURE AT HAARLEM 129

sucked up so quickly should cause them to rot, and they
even consider it a dangerous process to change them from
one place to another, in the same bed, if they have been but
half an hour in the ground. The roots, which are in such a
hurry to show themselves when first the bulbs are planted,
perish as quickly as they grow. They stop growing before
the flower is in full bloom, and are always quite dried up
before the seed begins to ripen. While the root is perishing
the flower continues, the stem grows, and all the flowers
expand completely. When the flower is quite over and the
seed is left to ripen, the sap goes into the leaves, which
lengthen considerably, then these die in their turn, till they
separate from the bulb of themselves.

CHAPTER II. — BULBS

It has already been shown what sort of appearance the outer
tunics present, and it has been explained how the tunics in
general are formed. We are now going to push our examina-
tion further. After divesting the bulb of seven or eight
tunics (or fans), one comes (A) upon a little thin flattened
thread of crimson colour, like a line. It is, as it were,
embedded in one of the tunics ; it starts from the base of
the bulb and rises to the extreme top.

Continuing to take away again the same number of
tunics, one comes upon a second thread (B) like the first, Ay
only that it is less red and thicker ; then, for the third time,
taking off another seven or eight tunics, one meets with a
third line or fillet (C), very like the two first, with this
difference, it is quite white and much thicker. Under the
last fillet are the new leaves (or fans), beginning to bud,
about seven or eight in number, and in the centre of them is
the stem, which is going to flower in a few months.

17

130 DUTCH BULBS AND GARDENS

Now all the tunics are supposed to be taken off, and only
the three fillets or threads which we spoke of are left
(A, B, Q. Fillet A is all that is left (within the bulb) of
the stem which flowered eighteen months ago.

Fillet C is the remains of the stem of the last flower borne
by the bulb, six months before.

Fillet D is the stem which is about to flower in six
months1 time (the flower buds are already sufficiently formed
to be seen), and E contains the stem and tunic leaves, which
are to come into bud in another eighteen months.

If, when the bulb is in full flower, you divest it of all its
tunics, till you come to the flower stem, — you will find at the
base of it a very tiny bud ; if you take away the stem, which
easily breaks off, you will find the bud remains firmly
attached to the base of the bulb. If you open the bud with
a penknife, you will see it is composed of six or seven little
leaves (or fans), and inside a tiny stem, furnished with buds,
which has begun to grow already, and from the moment
the bulb is laid on the shelves it increases till the time
comes for putting it again in the earth. We have been
speaking all this time of the double hyacinth. The
single hyacinth is somewhat differently constructed, for
it usually throws out several shoots from the sides as well as
from the centre. The single bulb does not appear to last so
long, for its fillets are fewer, but the number of flowering
stems it produces, and the irregularity of their growth, makes
it difficult to follow it in its various stages of development as
exactly as one can the double. By dint of observing, year
after year, bulbs, both those in a good state of preservation
and some partially decomposed, it has been discovered that
the bulb always loses the same number of outer tunics as it
gains interiorly new ones. When once a bulb has acquired
the regulation number of tunics, it will always keep to the
same number year by year, and nevertheless every year it is

HYACINTH CULTURE AT HAARLEM 131

putting forth seven or eight from its centre. The outer
tunics, which we call "red skin,1' regularly shrivel and decay
in the earth, and thus they disappear.

The central (fans) or young tunics, when they turn into
leaves, do the work of an air-pump ; they are the lungs by
which the plant lives ; they dilate in heat and contract in
cold. When dilated they take in the air, with all with
which it is impregnated, and they give it out again with the
regularity that an animal breathes through its lungs.

Plants do not like the shade of trees ; they need open air
and sunshine, and they like places where they catch the dew
and rain and mist ; the moisture thus obtained through their
leaves is better for them than water poured upon them from
a watering-pot.

Planted in hot-houses or under glass they do without
much water, because the hot air produces vapour by the
sun's rays from above or from the fire beneath, and it is
necessary to introduce a little air in order to let it evaporate
(but the plants must not be chilled by cold seizing them in
the process). Hyacinths which are protected by planks
sometimes do better than those under glass.

The planks are lifted and the plants find themselves
exposed to the open air, this is only done when the air is
not likely to injure them. To be kept constantly under
glass or in a room sometimes affects their colour and shape.
It also spoils their colour to be exposed to heavy rain or
a very hot sun, which exhausts them. The leaves (as the
leaves of a tree) turn on their pedicels one side to the
earth, for one surface of the leaf sucks in moisture and the
other gives it out. What they receive through the upper
surface by day they give out through their under surface at
night by a process of evaporation.

When the bulbs are planted the leaves (or fans) are
already pushing forth a green shoot. The gardener does

132 DUTCH BULBS AND GARDENS

not feel particularly uneasy if the frost touches the tip of
the shoot, but they are very much afraid of (the frost) its
reaching the flower-buds within the shoot, for if their tops
are nipped by the frost, the hyacinths will be disfigured. If
any one or two of the leaf sheaths get yellow or diseased
they can be cut away without injuring the bud, and neither
will the bulb itself suffer, as in any case the leaves drop off
in the end of the year.

It is evident now that Nature works in the bulb from the
interior to the exterior, and this principle must be well borne
in mind by the cultivator.

CHAPTER III. — YOUNG BULBS

Having thoroughly examined roots, leaves, and tunics,
we now come to the organs of reproduction, and as the young
bulbs form them themselves very oddly and irregularly at
the base of the old bulb, it is very difficult even for a
connoisseur to judge whether any little bulbs are coming,
and still less can he foretell how many he may hope for.
Sometimes they are numerous, and on single hyacinths
twenty-four have been known to develop on one bulb, but
on single hyacinths they develop very irregularly, while on
the double they are more regular in their growth ; growing
from the centre ; though, as the central stem with all its
leaves grows, the new little bulbs are pushed more and
more to the sides — sometimes they push through to the
outside of the bulb, sometimes between the tunics, wherever
they can get air.

Each baby bulb contains the same number of (fans) leaves
as the parent shoot, and develops in the same way — only that
the first flower of the new bulb is very thin and small. The
tunics partake of the same bulbous substance which forms
the base of the bulb until it grows to the height (or point)

HYACINTH CULTURE AT HAARLEM 133

when it begins to take the suberous quality which distin-
guishes the leaves from the bulb substance, and so the tunics,
as far upwards as they partake of the bulb substance, possess
the same capacity of producing young bulbs, which grow
from them in the same manner as from the base.

Some gardeners, in order to multiply their bulbs more
rapidly, perform the following operation : with the point
of a penknife they cut into the base of the bulb (the point
turned upwards and inwards), turning the knife round inside
the bulb, the base is cut out (with crown and centre) in the
shape of a cone — the upper portion forming a concave,
exactly fitting the convex of the base (which is the interior
which has been separated by the knife).

The separated base forms no stem the first year, and the
inner tunic leaves (fans) are little and poor, and seem hardly
to have strength to grow, but they form themselves into
tunics quite well, and are grown enough by the following
year to cover the stem, which, however, is not quite developed
as it should be till the third year — then it is as good as any
other of its species. The inferior or lower part scarcely ever
produces young bulbs after it is cut from the rest.

The two parts of the bulb should be carefully put into
very dry sand, covering them about two inches — they must be
left some little while exposed to the sun, which would burn
them if not well covered with sand : they must then be put
in a window or in some place where they are well preserved
from damp ; they are thus left for four or five weeks — the
superior part turned top upwards — the under part anyhow,
it is a matter of indifference how it is placed. In four
or five weeks1 time the upper portion has developed such
a number of young bulbs that they are injuring one another.

The baby bulbs are by this time perfectly formed, and
one can count their leaves or tunic leaves (fans), six or more,
and each possesses its stem.

134 DUTCH BULBS AND GARDENS

The upper part (of the bulb operated upon), consisting of
tunics without base or crown, which is thus able to produce
so many young bulbs, can also manage to nourish them
during their early growth (though without roots).

This operation will sometimes save a bulb when it is
beginning to decay at the base, and it will thus produce
bulbs when the decayed part has been cut away. The bulb
called " TEveque " has a way of bringing forth young bulbs
like buds at the base of the flower-stalk — one or two young
bulbs will be found adhering to it an inch or so above
ground. These little bulbs are as well formed as if they had
come from the base and had been nurtured in the earth.
Perfect bulbs can be raised from them by cutting the stem
an inch above and an inch below the part to which the
young bulbs are attached ; they are then put by in earth,
and treated in the same way as those which had the conic
operation performed on them ; and just as those were grown
and nurtured, simply fed by the tunics — so these obtain their
sap for the first year entirely at the expense of the stem,
and without starting any roots on their own account. Never
more than two bulbs grow thus upon a stem, while very
often nearly thirty appear on the upper part of the bulb,
which has been separated from the lower part (cone shape).
The bulbs grown on the stem take a longer time in coming
to perfection than those that start from the base, as a rule
in their first year they seem to reach to the same stage as a
three-year-old bulb which has been raised from seed — and
follow the same gradual course of development, not producing
a perfect stem in the beginning.

It is a well-known method with gardeners to cut their
bulbs in order to give air and outlet to the young bulbs
that are coming. They are simply sliced across (not very
deeply) underneath, at their base ; sometimes they are slit
crosswise, good care being taken the knife does not cut into

HYACINTH CULTURE AT HAARLEM 135

the growing flower stem in the centre (the centre of the
cross-cuts meeting a little to one side to avoid the central
stem). By this means this year's shoot is preserved, and
when the bulb bursts asunder (along the lines cut for it,
through the strength of the young bulb -shoots pushing
their way through) a principal bulb forms itself in the
centre, which by the second year is as perfect as any.

There is no part of a bulb which can be pointed out
as exclusively serving for the production of young bulbs.
They come sometimes from the centre, sometimes from the
stem — bursting open the bulb and becoming so like it in
form that gardeners have some difficulty in distinguishing
the parent bulb from the new. It seems inconceivable that
Nature should put such strength into such a delicate pro-
duction as the young bulb ; when once it finds space to
develop itself there is no part of the old bulb it will not
force to let it through. The angular form of the young
bulb comes from the kind of resistance it meets and
moulded by the space in which it is free to expand. If it
grows on the outside of the bulb, it is concave on the side
which joins the round side of the bulb, while on its outer
side it is round.

After the first year the young bulb becomes its normal
shape, like those which are raised from seed. It is difficult
to ascertain if a bulb is going to produce young ones or
not, — it is easy to be mistaken, though the conic operation
will show clearly in a few weeks if young bulbs are going
to develop. It seems scarcely possible that those which
develop more naturally can force their way through the
tunics without aid, and do their work in the space of one
year.

It has been found that when young bulbs have not
strength sufficient in their first year to burst the tunics, their
-development is much assisted by the bulb being cut. The

136 DUTCH BULBS AND GARDENS

different experiments which have been made prove con-
vincingly that a bulb can bear many amputations safely,
and if at any time a sickly bulb has to be cut, one may be
pretty certain to get young bulbs from it by taking care
to keep the wound made by the cut quite dry.

There are some bulbs, such as Francois 1st, which may
exist years without producing a single young bulb, while
others produce at so great a rate that one only wishes they
would stop. This shows that young bulbs are plentiful, and
may grow in all parts of a bulb, — only that in some they
find more resistance than in others, — and the difficulty they
find in working their way through the harder sorts causes
the slight difference in the forms of the bulbs in the different
species. Though all look very much alike to the casual
observer, there are nevertheless differences between them.
There are some famous growers, such as George Voorhelm,
who seldom makes a mistake though he owns 1200 sorts.
Each sort has its own regular and distinctive method of
reproduction, and peculiarities which mark one species never
become accidental in another ; each kind keeps to its own
manners and customs.

Nature being ever obedient to laws, certain knowledge of
her ways is the more easy to acquire — the law of species will
be the same in a thousand years as it is to-day. Culture
has certainly improved species, and finished what Nature
could not by herself complete. Some accidents have become
thus a second nature, remaining permanent if another
accident does not again occur to disturb the existing order.

CHAPTER IV. — SEEDS

Although there is a way of propagating hyacinths by seed,
like other plants, yet it should be known to all that it is
seldom that a double hyacinth produces seed, and such a

HYACINTH CULTURE AT HAARLEM 137

thing has not been known as a seed (from either double or
single hyacinth) ever producing a species at all resembling
the hyacinth from which the seed is taken. " La Perruque
quarree," a red hyacinth, has produced " La Comete " — a very
fine sort, and a splendid red, but it has no resemblance to
" La Perruque quarree," and yet they are about the nearest
in likeness that have been produced. There is no visible
difference between the seeds of double and single hyacinths.
Gardeners are more hopeful of raising double flowers from
the seeds of single hyacinths than of raising double from
the seeds of double. They have not yet found any principle
to go upon in the choice of seeds, however many experi-
ments have been made. Some have thought a well-formed
hyacinth in its seventh year, being then in its prime, is more
likely to produce double flowers from its seed than it would
be if ten or fifteen years older. It is supposed that the seed
of a full hyacinth, which has its petals redoubled to the
centre of the flower, possesses an advantage over others, or
double may be raised from its seed, but it very rarely pro-
duces seed at all ; when it does, success is still very uncertain.
Some like to try semi-double ; some follow one method,
some another, few obtain the same result twice over. Some
amateurs, once upon a time, longing to obtain a new sort
of flower, sowed the seeds of a single yellow hyacinth, very
pale in colour, and of quite a small and common sort ; they
were lucky enough to obtain splendid flowers of a very good
white, the centre a perfect yellow, stems and blossoms all
superb,—" Saturne," " Heroine," " Flavo Superbe." " Og Roi
de Basan " also derives its origin from the stock raised from
this seed.

Countless experiments have been made, and all tend to
show that flowers produced from seed never resemble the
flower from which the seed was taken. As a rule they
differ in every point, shape, colour, and height. Nature

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138 DUTCH BULBS AND GARDENS

insists so much on variety that even seeds taken from the
same seed-vessel do not produce flowers alike. Some may be
red, others blue or white, large or small, as the case may be,
sometimes they are fortunate enough to get several double
varieties from the seed of the single hyacinth. It must be
confessed, added to other difficulties there is this : it is four
years before the seed produces its flower — that is, in an
ordinary way, for sometimes it is more advanced by one or
two years. As during the course of four years the bulbs are
taken up three times out of the ground, it may sometimes
happen that the experiment has failed through negligence,
but there has never been any doubt at all about the fact
of a seed never producing the same kind of hyacinth as the
parent stock.

One should not cut the hyacinth stalk, or separate it from
the bulb, if seeds are to be taken from it, until the ovaries
are yellow and beginning to open and show their seeds,
which should be already black. Then they can be cut and
put in a place where they are protected from sun and rain,
and when the ovaries are quite dry the seed can be taken
from them and very carefully kept (not wrapped up or
covered) until the time for sowing them, about the middle
of October. Growers who have no interest in preserving
the seed believe it is a bad thing to exhaust their bulbs by
leaving the seed to ripen on the plant. The earth that the
seeds are thrown upon should be well prepared (I shall
describe its composition presently).

The seed is visible enough to be spread about without
the necessity of mixing it with sand, as is sometimes done
with vegetable garden seeds. They must not be sown too
thick, and about an inch deep. When it is beginning to
turn cold they must be protected from the frost by a covering
of manure, leaves, or tan. The seed, which begins soon to
germinate, is very sensitive to heat and cold. The parts of

HYACINTH CULTURE AT HAARLEM 139

the seed are not unlike a fruit. It is first covered by a strong
black skin, and under this a fleshy substance. This contains
an almond, within which is enclosed the germ ; this develops
in the same manner as in the seeds of all plants that are called
by botanists " one lobed " or " monocotyledon." During
growth this almond part of the seed detaches itself from its
wraps.

When the grain is put into the ground in the month of
October it swells, and the germ, piercing through the pericarp
or fleshy part of the seed, begins to develop itself. The
little leafy shoot which pushes upward is the part that
botanists call the plumule, and the part which pushes from
the central axis (or plantule) is called the radicle or little
root. During the first year the little root is always tuberous
or knotted. It does not yet draw sap from the earth. It is
generally agreed among botanists that the plumule and
radicle (the plant and little root) at this stage draw their
nourishment from the cotyledon or seed-lobe, to which they
are still joined. This lobe goes on nourishing the plant till
the bulb has already taken form, and takes in nourishment
from the earth (through its base).

The thin round leaf-shoot which comes up remains bent
a whole year before it has gained sufficient strength to rise
straight. The first year the root is only a thin thread;
sometimes it grows very long and is full of knots, then it is
organically diseased, and the bulb will be very weak and
worthless. They often die when the root is thus deformed.
To make a well-formed bulb the root should have only one
knot at the place where it comes from the seed ; upon this
the bulb forms itself. At first it is composed of a single tunic,
and this tunic is joined and completely closed on all sides.

At the end of one year (after sowing the seed), if the
bulb were taken up, one would find this tunic lined with two
other tunics exactly like it.

140 DUTCH BULBS AND GARDENS

The bulbs being still very small, they exhaust the soil
very little, so that the first year growers do not take the
trouble to take them up. But an amateur, who raised a
great many from seed, used to say he thought taking them
up every year certainly assisted their growth.

After it has been eighteen months in the ground the bulb
has gained a certain consistency ; it is now composed of four
tunics, each of which encloses it entirely, the outside tunic
appearing brown and dry (as if the drying process had begun,
for this outer one has to shrivel away in the earth next
year). The leaf-shoot still looks thin and round like a rush,
but it holds itself straight, and has gathered strength since
last year. The second year (about the time it has to be
taken up) it has lost its outside tunic, but has still three left,
completely surrounding it, but within the inmost envelope
the base of the leaf-shoot or fan (which now shows a double
shoot) is already spreading and forming in the centre of the
bulb a tunic, like the tunics of the proper (grown) bulb ;
that is to say, it wraps it only two-thirds of the way round
its circumference. The roots have now strengthened. The
following year they are yet stronger. The bulb casts off all
its binders, the early tunics which enveloped it completely
(like a bandage). After this it enters into its mature state,
the leaves, instead of clinging together like a round rush,
separate, slowly detaching themselves and taking the shape
they are to preserve to the end, though every year they
increase considerably.

From the time the bulb loses its first closed tunics it is
able to produce its flower, which it never can do while it
remains with closed tunics. The first flower has a long
feeble stem, which bears one, two, or three small blossoms,
but these are enough to show the sort of flower it is going to
be. If it is single it will remain a single always, neither
will its colour vary again, and it can be classed among the

HYACINTH CULTURE AT HAARLEM 141

red, blue, or white of its kind, but it will grow more perfect
and improve in height, size, and colour. If the flower turns
out to be double, the growers are delighted, and then they
will spare no pains in developing its beauty, for they know
not what degree of perfection it may yet attain.

When the bulb is three years old (having a treble shoot,
and having lost its last completely enveloping tunic) it
possesses only the ordinary tunics, which are formed by the
expansion at the base of the leaves (these envelop only two-
thirds of the bulb).

The bulb, when four years old (having developed more
perfect leaves and begun to produce flowers), is composed of
about twenty tunics.

If the flower, during the fifth year, continues to develop
and shows to advantage in colour, form, etc., the growers'
hopes rise higher still, but they cannot tell even yet if the
flower will fulfil its great promise.

A bulb which has grown too rapidly will sometimes throw
out young bulbs (or offshoots) at four or five years old, but
never before it has once, during the course of its life, put
forth a flower. This fact is important to remember in regard to
observations to be made later on, on the subject of vegetation.

In the ordinary course of nature the bulb does not arrive
at its final state of perfection until its seventh year. The
grower delights to note its yearly growth in grace and
beauty, till at length it becomes prfaieuse, then he is fully
repaid his care, and the kind is for ever fixed, and will never
vary again, and it will produce young bulbs which will, in
their turn, produce again, and all will perfectly resemble
their first parent bulb (though it has happened very seldom
indeed that flowers have changed in colour, but this will be
explained).

Growers call the flowers they obtain by raising from seed
"Conquests.1" They share and exchange among themselves

142 DUTCH BULBS AND GARDENS

these seeds of promise, and sell to each other the third
quarter or half of the bulb productions, which, however,
should not be parted with unless there are a certain number
of young bulbs to be divided. The prices they pay for these in-
valuable seedlings would astonish an amateur. They enhance
the value of the bulb, for which the fixed price is some-
times above 1000 florins. Some are worth as much again.
Growers usually keep notes of the origin and date of bulbs.

Some hundred years ago double hyacinths were thought
little of; they were almost unknown. Swertius, in 1620,
gives a list of about forty kinds of hyacinths ; none of them
were double. The gardens of George Voorhelm belonged
also to his grandfather, who had already tried raising
hyacinths from seed, and whenever he made a Conquest,
Pierre Voorhelm would reject any which seemed out of the
ordinary, or out of proportion to the rest of his flowers, for
in those days they took a pride in the formal and regular
arrangements of their flower-beds. He took care, especially,
to destroy double hyacinths when they appeared, without
waiting to see what they might become if they were
allowed to develop. He was only anxious to keep flowers
which promised seed. It is certain that double flowers have
not a seed-bearing quality ; they are not formed for maturing
the seed enclosed in the ovary, so that any flower without
this particular good quality did not fail to be rejected. No
one took the least pleasure in the idea of a double hyacinth ;
it was rather regarded as a monster (or freak of nature), just
as at the present day nobody cares for a double tulip.

Pierre Voorhelm fell ill, and being quite unable to visit
or attend to his plants until the hyacinth season was nearly
over, he happened then to see a double hyacinth (the kind
is now lost) which had been forgotten, and had not been
thrown away as usual ; it was very small, and he only liked
it because it seemed to match very well with the single ones

HYACINTH CULTURE AT HAARLEM 143

he cultivated it with the rest and obtained bulbs from
it. He found it was much admired by amateurs, who were
ready to pay a good price for it. So he took to cultivating
the double as well as the single, and soon began to be as
anxious to find them among " Conquests " as before he was
to get rid of them.

Of the double species the first known was named " Marie,"
this and the two kinds that followed are now lost. " Le Roi
de la grande Bretagne " existed only seventy years — this was
rare and much sought after, and the price rose to many
thousand florins. This bulb, imported to hot climates, grew
infinitely better than in Haarlem ; for it soon died in cold
or damp spots. From this time great attention began to be
paid to the cultivation of hyacinths raised from seed.

The number of " Conquests " has now become immense,
and many more grow bulbs than in former days, and every
grower makes his own catalogue, in which his " Conquests "
are known under names which are kept in all the lists which
are re-written every year. In this list there may be flowers
of different colour bearing the same name — such as " Gloria
Mundi," which is classed with the blues ; the same name
re-occurs classed with reds and whites. Frequently double-
flowering bulbs of different colour have the same name —
so that it is as well, when ordering a particular bulb, to
specify and enter into details when writing the order.
Then mistakes will be prevented, which are as distasteful
to the grower as to the dissatisfied purchaser. Growers do
not all agree in classing their bulbs, some for example
classing among reds a hyacinth which another would call
white with red heart, and which a third might call pink and
white, or flesh colour. Besides which the exact shade or
nuance differs perhaps in every garden — and it is not so easy
to class hyacinths in a way to satisfy everyone, any more than
it is easy to produce a completely satisfactory Method of

144 DUTCH BULBS AND GARDENS

Botany. Seasons are variable, and colours of flowers are much
affected by changes of weather. 1767 was a very disastrous
season by reason of the cold north wind which prevailed
in the early part of the year. Red hyacinths were infinitely
poorer than the preceding year, which was a particularly
favourable one to bulb growers.

One must make allowances for seasons and accidents, and
one ought not to expect the bulbs sent off annually by the
growers to be always equally good, for in some years they
are more successful than in others — also the same bulb
which flowers splendidly, as a rule, may take it into its head
to yield a very poor flower, though it may be planted in the
same soil — between two others which are doing their best ;
one can see no cause why they should be so uncertain,
except perhaps they pump in sap more vigorously at one
time than another. It can be accounted for sometimes by
the fact that the bulb itself is feeling disposed to throw
out young bulbs, and the sap is being drawn away from the
flower-stalk — or it may have suffered from a cold draught,
when it was lying on the shelf in the winter — or it may be
it is feeling the damp.

CHAPTER V. — ORGANS OF REPRODUCTION

The various species of hyacinths, though apparently
different and distinct, are essentially alike. Bulbs of one
sort differ very little from those of another — the leaves are
always alike, their stalks grow in the same way — their
blossoms, though infinitely varied, are arranged in the same
regular order — each connected with the stem by a little
thread, called the pedicel.1 The double scarcely differs from

1 The calyx or flower-cup, being coloured or petaloid in its nature,

is now called the corolla, but the old-fashioned word is here used the

pedicel is the little stalk which attaches the flower to the stem (or
peduncle).

A BOATLOAD OF FRAGRANCE

HYACINTH CULTURE AT HAARLEM 145

the single, except in the blossom. We have already followed
the gradual course of the growth of the bulb, and described
its general composition. We will now go back to the single
hyacinth, for in explaining its work of reproduction it is
easier and more convenient to dissect than the double
flower.

The calyx or corolla forms at the base (through its shape)
a chamber or room in which the " ovary " is found, but
detached from it. At the point where the calyx is narrowed
in at the entrance of the ovary chamber are the stamens.
The parts of the corolla (or divided sections which curl
back in the hyacinth) are called petals.

The stamens are attached to the interior of the calyx, and
from the base of the stamen to the pedicel (or little
connecting stalk) runs a fine fibre (which takes the place of
the filament which is detached in other flowers), and this is
seen from the outside as a line of colour a little darker than
the rest of the flower.

The ovary (in the chamber at the bottom of the calyx)
is surmounted by the pistil, the narrow body of the pistil
is called the stylus, and the head is the stigma.

The stamens of the hyacinth have no filaments, they are
sessile within the calyx, and the anthers are also attached at
their base (though there is the fine thread of darker colour
to be seen running through the calyx extending from the
stamen to the pedicel).

The stamen is covered, when ripe, with a yellow dust
called pollen, this looks like little black grains when under a
microscope — they are little bags full of a kind of clear juice,
these, when the stamens bend over and shed (as pollen),
are caught by the stigma at the head of the pistil. This
stigma, when seen under a microscope, is seen to be composed
of very fine valvular cells, which can hold the seminal juice —
the juice passes through the narrow channel of the stylus (or

19

146 DUTCH BULBS AND GARDENS

body of the pistil) into the centre of the ovary, which has an
aperture so arranged as to let it in till it is full, when it
closes again so completely that the seminal juice is held
within till the time comes when the ovary is forced open by
the ripening seed.

Before the flowers expand, and while they are still
enveloped like a wheat ear in leafy bandages, the ovary is
already furnished with eggs ; but the seminal juice has not
yet been deposited, the pistil not being formed enough to
open its cells, but even while the flower is still in bud,
the anthers let fall their pollen, and the pistil opens its cells,
and no one seems to know exactly when it happens that
the pollen explodes its little capsules of liquor or vapour or
breath, which form the seminal juice.

Saint-Simon has a theory that the bees flying to and fro
constantly over the flowers disturb the pollen, often carrying
with them some of the pollen (containing seminal juice) from
one flower to another, where it is deposited and received
through the pistil into the ovary, and he suggests that this
is the cause why "Conquests" (i.e. hyacinths raised from
seed) never bear any resemblance to the flower their seed
is derived from. But this does not seem entirely to
account for their infinite variety. The invariability of
this rule (that no hyacinth has been known to produce its
like by seed) seems to prove that variation is not subject
entirely to accidents of this kind, for surely sometimes by
accident there would come up the same flower as that from
which the seed was taken. Some growers may have taken
seed from hyacinths grown in hothouses, where the flower
has been protected from bees and butterflies, and thus un-
disturbed the flower should have had seed which reproduced
its own kind — and why should this occur as an invariable
rule among hyacinths, when other flowers more frequently
reproduce their own kind than not, with them the varia-

HYACINTH CULTURE AT HAARLEM 147

tion (when their seed has been crossed by insects) is an
accident.1

Curious experiments have been made with hyacinths.

Two different bulbs are to be chosen, blue and white, for
instance. Cut them perpendicularly down nearly through
the middle, but being careful to avoid cutting into their
central shoots (i.e. the future flower-stalk), then join together
the two larger halves containing the flower -shoot, thus
making one bulb of them, so that the two flowers should
appear as arising from one bulb. Then, with a little moss
wound round the closed joins, the made-up bulb may be
put into the earth like any other. This usually results in
producing two stems stuck together back to back, with one
skin around them both apparently ; and on one side comes
out white flowers, on the other red or blue. Sometimes the
colours get mixed, the colour of one flower shaded with that
of the other, very rarely do the stems grow separate.

None of these experiments seem to explain how it is that
a single hyacinth can produce a double (by seed raising),
though perhaps in ten thousand seeds only two or three will
come up double flowered ; nor how it is that the double can
be redoubled (through seed), and that once redoubled, the
bulb is constant in giving off young bulbs with double flowers,
which never again degenerate into single ; nor will a single,
in its offshoots, ever become a double hyacinth.

1 One feels disinclined to believe Saint-Simon is quite accurate in his
theory, that the variations in kind and colour of hyacinths raised by
seed are entirely due to the interference of insects, for in the case of
bees, it has been observed by certain men of science that bees invariably
prefer to visit flowers, not-only of one kind but of one colour during the
course of one journey. That thus a bee, beginning on a certain white
flower, will choose out these white flowers, leaving out every coloured
one of that or of another species, until, laden with honey, it returns to
the hive. (It may be, bees lose their heads when it is a question of
hyacinths.)

148 DUTCH BULBS AND GARDENS

CHAPTER VI. — GENERAL

In the cultivation of hyacinths it is impossible to keep to
any fixed rule. Not only must every country and climate
make its own, but every hyacinth has its own ways and
customs, its own special qualities and characteristics. The
most distinguished of their species exact a great deal of
attention, care, and management.

" Francois 1st " finds great difficulty in producing offshoots,
and great care has to be taken of the young bulb, but when
once arrived at full growth it is not as subject to disease
of various kinds as are other bulbs, and it does not die
easily. It is the only bulb that still continued to command
a high price twenty-five years after its first appearance ; 100
florins were paid for a single bulb.

" Rien ne me Surpasse " is one of the most perfect blue,
but it has such wretched, weak, faded, even crumpled leaves,
one would think the poor thing was ill, but notwithstanding
it produces a handsome, healthy-looking flower.

" Passe non plus ultra " also looks very deplorable as to
its leaves, they seem hardly able to hold up, and remain
lying flat upon the ground, though quite green and well.

On the other hand, " Og Roi de Basan " shoots up its leaves
so straight and tall, and so large, that they seem quite out
of proportion to others, and the flower is an extraordinary
height, overtopping all the rest. The " Theatre-Italien " is
a good red, but it grows very short, and comes out before
its leaves, so that its head may be nipped by the frost.

" Marquise de Bonnac " is a very delicate colour, but it
gives way in the stem before the flower is fully out. The
stems seems to fade and dry up, and the flower falls on its
face, and this is a very tiresome habit. But it does not seem
to damage the bulb, which flowers regularly every year,
notwithstanding these little accidents. A famous florist told

HYACINTH CULTURE AT HAARLEM 149

me it was because it had a bad circulation, and the sap
hung on the sides of the bulb, instead of running up the
stalk. " Alcibiades " and " Beau-regard " are also subject to
such accidents ; but they can be prevented by planting the
bulbs in November, that is, a month later than other sorts.
These kinds give off a number of young bulbs. The bulbs
which multiply very little and slowly have generally better
constitutions, and do not perish so easily. White, with red,
purple, or violet hearts are very subject to decay. " Gloria
Florum Suprema " perishes easily, and its offshoots perish
with it, and this is peculiar to this hyacinth, for most of
those that perish easily also multiply quickly. The kind
that multiply fast are generally furnished with more roots
than the others.

Growers are mostly agreed that bulbs succeed infinitely
better if taken up from the ground every year (though it
does seem contrary to nature). It often happens that a
bulb, if left in the ground, does admirably the first and
second years, and sometimes a third year it does well, but
after this period it usually catches some disease which turns
into an epidemic, killing all the bulbs in its neighbourhood ;
it is too late then to find a remedy, and if lifted it will
only rot on the shelves, as it would have done in the
earth. One knows insects are more numerous one year than
another, and thus they too may cause epidemics.

Lifting the bulb is also a method of preserving the young
bulb, which otherwise would perish and decay from damp if
left all the year round — or, as they are sometimes a foot or
more below ground, they effort they make to force their
shoots through that depth of earth is too much for them.

It has been observed that when the sap does not circulate
freely in the bulb it is drawn up into the stem, and this is
sometimes occasioned by overheating the room or green-
house,— then it grows tall and weakly, the flowers are thin

150 DUTCH BULBS AND GARDENS

and deformed. The more the channels through which the
sap runs into the stem are dilated by too much heat, the
tighter they close again when the sap has finished its action,
and the bulb becomes thinner than it should be, and it
is exhausted for the next year's growth and appears very
languishing. One can see very well how this comes to pass
when it is remembered that the next year's flower is actually
contained in the base of this year's stem, therefore what
weakens one weakens the other. If the bulb is very deep in
the earth and the ground is hard, it cannot spread and
enlarge itself with comfort, so the health of the bulb requires
it to be lifted every year. Besides the necessity of
separating and preserving the young bulbs which have
to be replanted, there is yet another advantage to be gained
in lifting, for then there is an opportunity of taking away
decayed bulbs before the disease is able to spread further
through contact with others.

Having given some ideas on the cultivation of hyacinths
in general, perhaps it is as well to give in some detail an
account of the particular (or individual) care and attention
bestowed upon their bulbs by the Haarlem growers, and
perhaps some hyacinth lovers may feel drawn to imitate
their spirit. Haply if they meet with the same difficulties
they may benefit by their experience and observations, and
thus obstacles may be surmounted that stand in the way of
the development of the ideal flower. These obstacles are
often the result of soil, climate, and inexperience.

As a general rule, hyacinths require a light soil, which
easily lets the water run through, but at the same time
such a soil is soon washed out, and it thus in a short time
loses its good qualities and richness. The sulphurous and oily
qualities in the soil, that the hyacinth delights abundantly
to suck out of the earth, would be washed away or evaporate
speedily in such soil, even if the bulb itself did not actually

HYACINTH CULTURE AT HAARLEM 151

exhaust the spot where it has grown, this is the chief reason
why growers change their bulbs year by year. Damp is death
to bulbs. In a damp soil bulbs can never be preserved for
any length of time. The two general rules, — Choice of light
soil, Avoidance of damp., are the very foundations of bulb
culture. The " couches " or " beds " made by florists for their
finest hyacinths are remade every year, they are also protected
by caisses and layers of manure from the cold in winter, and
they are shaded from the hot sun in spring by canvas
awnings. The old soil (taken from the hyacinth beds) is
carried to the garden borders, where other flowers are grown,
such as tulips, lilies, Fritillaries, etc. The following year
hyacinths are replaced in these borders, and succeed therein
marvellously, — thus year by year the same earth bears
alternately hyacinths and other flowers. If the reader's
patience is not exhausted entirely I must ask him to bear
out a little longer, for I cannot without entering into very
minute details give any intelligible idea of the qualities
necessary to provide the sap with the kind of nourishment
it seeks in the soil after the bulb is put into the ground.

In Haarlem they take two years to prepare the compost,
or composed soil, which suits hyacinths so well. The first
year a store of leaves are gathered together and laid in
considerable heaps, so large that while they are rotting and
becoming fit for use the sun cannot penetrate, for if they
were spread about the sun would cause the salts and oils
contained in the decayed leaves to evaporate, for this reason
the heaps are not to be in places where they are exposed to
the sun, nor in a damp place where water can sink in or
stagnate. Growers do not gather in all kinds of leaves,
they have observed that oak, chestnut, beech, and the leaves
of the plane tree (which is now becoming common in
Holland), and others of like nature, do not dissolve easily
into earth ; while the leaves of elm, wych-elm and birch, etc.,

152 DUTCH BULBS AND GARDENS

are chosen because their loose and fibrous tissue dissolve
more readily into soil.

In the same manner they lay up a heap of cow-manure,
which is left to ferment en masse. Every country has its
customs, and the Dutch customs make a real difference in
the quality of the materials employed. All over Holland
cows are kept in stalls from November to May only, and
during this time they do not eat grass. All the summer
they remain in the open, night and day, in the fields, so that
manure is not kept or taken up in the summer months. In
the winter, when the cows are fed on nothing but dry food,
the manure is of quite another quality from the summer
manure, when cows have grass. This may be useful to note
for those who live in countries where manure is kept all
the year round. Cows are tethered in stalls in so narrow a
compass that one can hardly conceive how they can exist
like this. They stand on a kind of platform between
two trenches, before and behind them ; in the front trench
their food is put, which they can only get at by pushing
their heads between boards, which also prevent them from
reaching too far and pulling out the food, where it would
be trampled under their feet. The second trench, which is
deeper, is behind them to receive the manure, which is taken
away and heaped up in a dry place, where it can easily
drain and where the rain can also run off, for no water or
wet is allowed to settle in or near the heap. As no straw
whatever enters into the composition of this manure, it is
not at all like the kind collected in other countries. I do
not know if this is the reason, or why it is that in England,
especially round London, hyacinth growers avoid using cow-
manure as much as possible, the soil there being so stiff and
rich that it suits them better to make it a little poorer,
with an admixture of sand, than to heat it even with cow-
manure, which is the lightest kind of manure there is. First

HYACINTH CULTURE AT HAARLEM 153

a heap of leaf-manure, a second heap of cow-manure, and a
third heap of sand is now made of sand brought from the
dunes, or it can be dug out of the very ground beneath to
the depth of some feet. Though all the soil about Haarlem
and its neighbourhood is mainly sand, especially near the
dunes, where most of the bulb fields are, yet they prefer to
fetch sand from a distance rather than take any from the
surface of their own ground. This sand should be as care-
fully examined as is the manure, so that, now that I think of
it, I must enter into further details, which will be thought
unnecessary by some people, but others will be glad to follow
the spirit of our inquiry.

The nature of the soil in Holland proves that the country
has undergone great geological changes, apart from the
continual encroachments of the sea.

It seems that at a very distant period, perhaps before or
after the Deluge, the country must have been covered
over with forests, as were Germany and Gaul in later
times.

Either in the great Deluge of Sacred Writ, or during one
of the partial deluges that men of science speak of (but of
which no one seems to have any positive knowledge), these
trees must have been thrown down and laid on the ground
in the direction of east to west, in such a manner that where
they fell they form strata (or layers), which time has reduced
to a thickness of six or eight inches at the most.

It may be that this layer of trees was at first exposed to
the air, or (as is more likely) was for some time covered by
the sea, which, depositing sand, pressed and consolidated it
into the mass which we now see, and which is found in all
parts of Holland and Zealand, and is known under the name
of Darry or Deny.

It is very easy to perceive that it is old wood decayed
into the earth and reduced to the loose consistency of a sort

20

154 DUTCH BULBS AND GARDENS

of brown charred coal. In some parts bits of the wood have
been preserved whole and unchanged.

In the Bailey of Amstelveen, near Amsterdam, bits of
wood are often disinterred which has still " heart " enough to
be used as ordinary wood. Between Alphen and Leyden are
to be found in several places whole tree trunks, ten or twelve
feet long. The derry matter is very substantial, and it is
very inflammable ; it also holds water, so that it does not run
through from the surface of the peat to the water in the soil
below it. In Zealand, where it is easily taken up, it is
forbidden under penalty of death l to carry away the peat,
because the water underneath, which it retains, would do
considerable damage in the island.

As we now know that piles and blocks of wood can last
2000 years in the earth without rotting, so we may conclude
that these trees (which now compose the derry or turf) must
have been much longer undergoing the various operations
of nature which resulted in producing this change. No
tree roots can penetrate this derry, and wherever sand does
not cover it over a certain depth, no vegetation can grow.
Water falling on the peat is held there, having no means of
escape, and the sand on the top is, therefore, always moist
and fresh in proportion as it is near the derry. If one digs
a little hole in this ground, the water which " fattens " the
sand collects in a moment and fills up the hole which has
been made, and this becomes a running spring. These sort
of springs exist all over Holland, and they generally go by
the name of sand-wells. They are kept supplied only by
rain, or by the water which filters down through the sand
from the dunes, and this often to a great distance.

If bulb roots were to reach down to within a foot of this
layer of peat they would be spoilt, and the bulbs would
perish. The depth of the sand-layer over the peat is
1 Two hundred years ago.

HYACINTH CULTURE AT HAARLEM 155

unequal and different in parts. By measuring it they test
the value of the ground, and not less is the value measured
by the length of time the sea has withdrawn from the surface.
There is no doubt this sand is from the sea-bottom, whether
it was the sea's action that brought it, or whether it has been
blown and driven by the wind. The dunes have so often
shifted that a knowledge of the variations due to the shifting
of the sand in the dunes is enough to account for sand-
layers, for it can be driven very far indeed by wind from
the sea.

A little while ago the village of Sheveling, near the
Hague, was surrounded by the dunes, which were at that
time some distance from the church, now it is much nearer, —
the church cannot have moved. On the same coast the
mouth of the Rhine has been choked with sand, and the sea
now covers the castle of Bret, facing Catwick-sur-Mer. The
castle can still be seen at certain seasons at low tide. The
sea has remade other dunes, half a league farther inland.
All along the coast near Haarlem, beyond the canal which
connects Haarlem with Leyden, the main road cuts through
these dunes in several places. In the island of Walcheren,
in Zealand, at very low tide can be seen vestiges of the
ancient town of Domburg, where they fish up statues of
Nehellenia, a heathen goddess, and also early Roman
inscriptions.

In the present day dunes 100 feet high separate the new
Domburg from the one invaded by the sea, and the Zea-
landers, through their marvellous and inventive industry,
have succeeded not only in fortifying themselves against
encroachments from the sea, but have made very extra-
ordinary dykes, like the one at West Cappel, which
you cannot see when you are standing upon it, as it is
nothing but a very long sloping bank or glacis of timber-
work, but the slope is so gradual that the only resistance

156 DUTCH BULBS AND GARDENS

the water meets with is the long journey it has to go to
reach to the summit of the dyke, which, at its level, is much
higher than the sea.1 But besides this they covered miles of
the sea-shore with platted straw matting, which they plat on
the shore itself, — this is to prevent the sea from carrying the
sand away from its own shores. These mats have to be
renewed almost yearly.

The sands of Haarlem are all more or less of this nature,
and contain saline and sulphurous particles of matter ; the
under stratum of peat or derry prevent these from being
absorbed into the ground. The sand also contains particles
which collect in some places and form a very thin stratum of
hard black matter, like that with which some minerals are
coated, and this is not less injurious to vegetation than is
the derry.

The great success the Dutch growers have had in culti-
vating bulbs which cannot be successfully propagated
elsewhere is very much due to the presence of this sand,
deposited by the sea on a matter which, fortunately, water
cannot penetrate.

To return to the three heaps, — sand, cow-manure, and leaf-
mould, — the sand is placed in large heaps to " ripen," rather
perhaps to lose some of the moisture. The growers from
the three compose one general mass, which they arrange in
the following order : First., they make a layer of sand ;
second, of manure; and third, of leaf-mould eight or ten
inches deep ; they then begin again making more layers in
the same order, until their mass is six to seven feet high.
The last layer is manure, but as this is apt to harden in the
sun, they throw a little sand on the top. When this compound
has fermented, six months, sometimes rather longer, it is
mixed up and another heap is made, which is, however, again
unmade and thoroughly remixed. When this soil has
1 Two hundred years ago.

HYACINTH CULTURE AT HAARLEM 157

remained a few weeks to settle, it is carried to the beds,
where it is laid to the depth of something like three feet.

George Voorhelm, in his book upon hyacinth culture, says
that this manure should be composed of three-sixths of cow-
manure, two-thirds of sand, and one-sixth of leaf-mould or
of tan, and he for his part preferred fresh manure to that
which had been kept a year (to ferment ? ). He especially
warns amateurs against using horse, mule, pig, or sheep
manures ; also he cautions them against using mud or cold
earth drawn from wells, or basins where the standing water
and mud have to be occasionally cleaned out ; also against
any powdered stuff or manures picked up with dust from the
street. He quotes persons who compose their soil of tan
(which has already been in use and nearly lost its heat) with
cow-manure and leaf-mould, using no sand at all.

When the soil is brought to the flower-beds they put the
said quantity beneath the bulbs, making the earth quite
flat and even, without pressure, and placing the bulbs upon
the earth, not embedding them. Then they are looked over
to see that the bulbs are arranged in the proper order or
according to diagrams marked out for them. When their
places have been fixed, more soil is brought to put over
them, great care being taken to let the earth fall lightly on
the bulbs, not to disturb their position. The last addition
of earth is generally not more than three to four inches
deep. In cases where the bulb has to be brought forward
in its growth, or else kept back — and is therefore put at a
greater or lesser depth in the earth — the gardener, in the
latter case, places more soil under the bulb to raise it higher,
and this is a much better method of putting in bulbs than
making a hole with a dibble, or, as some do, thrusting the
bulb itself into the earth with no tool and raking some
earth over it, for this plan, besides hardening the earth all
round the bulb (the hole forming a sort of gutter which

158 DUTCH BULBS AND GARDENS

holds water !) also runs a risk of bursting the bulb, which
may be already showing roots, or young bulbs hidden within
might be knocked off without its being perceived. The
same method is used in planting bulbs in garden borders.
The surface of the earth is taken off and laid on one side,
the bulbs are placed in rows, and are very carefully re-covered
with the soil which was laid upon the side.

The frames used over show flower-beds should be raised
not more than a foot above the earth, and not less than half
a foot. If too high, the air dries the roots ; if too low, the
damp (from the vapour) may reach them. The back of the
frame should be buried rather deep, so that when it is
necessary to cover the flowers with planks, the frame will be
able to support them, or planks must be put at the back and
sides, fitting into each other, upon which those which form
the roof over the flowers can rest. The frames should be
slanting from the back downwards to the front, to let the
rain run off and prevent it from dripping into the bed. If
the cold is very intense, the planks may be covered with
manure to prevent the frost from penetrating beneath. If
the season is a fair one, the flowers may be given a little air ;
but in cold seasons it is a risky thing to do, because the
early bedding plants are exceedingly tender, and the heat
of the manure, or whatever is provided to shelter them from
cold air, causes a damp vapour to rise inside the frames, and
as this cannot evaporate it falls back upon the flowers,
covering them with a little dew, which, if the cold air were
admitted, would freeze directly. It only takes an instant
for young buds to freeze, then the flowers come out, looking
dried up, with burnt tips. When the cold weather is past
the manure is taken off, and air is admitted to the beds for
a few hours in the daytime, care being taken to cover up
again at nightfall. The manure which serves to protect the
bulbs from frost also brings forward young shoots, so that

HYACINTH CULTURE AT HAARLEM 159

they begin to show earlier in hot -beds than in garden
borders. The slowest and latest sorts begin the earliest to
sprout. They are therefore purposely not planted so deep
in the ground, that they may get more quickly warmed by
sun and air, so it is quite natural that their buds should
pierce through earlier — but the difficulty the sap has in
penetrating and circulating through the very compact
structure of these bulbs makes it very difficult to get them
to flower in good time with other sorts. Growers have to
use their skill not only in guarding flowers which are
beginning to show from frost, but also from strong winds,
damp, and everything that can do them injury. One year
rats carried away and stored by hundreds in their holes the
bulbs in the gardens of Van Zomped at Overween, — although
they had a stream to cross to get at them. Growers must
be au fait with every possible eventuality, and must foresee
and prevent every possible mischief. They must know
exactly the time by night or day when it is proper to cover
or uncover their flower-beds. Their chosen blooms are
covered with tents of canvas, beneath which they can con-
veniently walk.

Besides these tents, over the most delicately-complexioned
flowers little parasols are arranged. These are mounted on
little rods, which stick in the ground, and quite protect the
flowers, which last several days longer with growers who give
them this protection, and keep their colour better. When
the flowers first begin to expand, our florists (who work on
the principle of never watering) protect them from rain as
carefully as they do auriculas. When they begin to make
a show of blossoms they powder the sand-beds with a light
mould, in order to make the colours look more brilliant
against the dark brown background. They tie the stalks to
little wire rods, painted green, leaving the ties loose, so that
none of the blossoms are caught and broken when the flower

160 DUTCH BULBS AND GARDENS

pushes up in its growth. The pedicel is very delicate before
the blossom is formed, so that the slightest thing can easily
break it. When the single hyacinths are in bloom the
florists open their gardens to the public. A wonderful sight
presents itself on first entering the gardens, vistas of alleys
with flowers of every variety, and kind, and colour, cut by
borders and beds which contain each one kind of flower
only. Hyacinths are in the greatest number. Early tulips,
narcissi, anemones, and others are laid out in successive
order. The effect is surprising. Never, when they are once
selected and placed in position, does a grower ever touch his
bulbs again, he dare not disturb them once they are planted,
but if a bulb dies or refuses to grow they may possibly
embed a flower in a pot in its place ; it is even permitted to
put a flower like it in a glass vase close to the leaves of the
lost blossom, but they never attempt to take out a weak
or unsuccessful bulb in order to substitute another. The
flowers should be arranged according to gradation, that is,
the tall specimens behind ; the short in front ; the colours as
varied and as brilliant as possible.

The beds have a much more brilliant effect if two flowers
of the same colour are put together, in pairs ; some plant
each kind thus, double, throughout the bed. The chief
thing in arranging flower-beds is to manage that all the
flowers should be out in full flower at the same time. It is a
very difficult art, but the Haarlem bulb growers are able to
accomplish it. Every bulb has its own particular habit of
growth, one will flower early and another late, there may be
the difference of a whole month between them.

People come miles to see these gardens, which are in
bloom all April and part of May. Single hyacinths begin
flowering towards the end of March, and last in flower for
about twenty days, if the season be favourable. Single
hyacinth beds are usually placed alternately with double,

A DUTCH GARDEN IN SPRING

HYACINTH CULTURE AT HAARLEM 161

and the effect is more brilliant. Single hyacinths grow
more thickly, there are sometimes fifty blossoms on one
stalk, and very often several stalks on each plant. The red-
single are a more brilliant red than are the red-double, and
single blues have much the most delicate shade of colour.

About the 20th of April the hyacinths begin to be at
their best, the 25th and 26th are ordinarily the days when
they are in perfection and in their full glory. By the 4th
or 5th of May they are going over, and the later sorts
are beginning.

In Haarlem they are too carefully attended to to
suffer much from the weather, their cultivators being very
industrious, and watch over them, arranging for the pro-
tection even of the most ordinary kinds, for none are
neglected.

When a new piece of land is taken for cultivation, they
begin by trenching it six feet deep, and if they come across a
bed or layer of derry, they do not fail to take it away. In
gardens which have been a long time under cultivation peat
or derry is not found, for it is injurious to vegetation. Pure
sand is usually found to some depth, but they try to dig
down below the sand to the earth and dig up about a foot of
it to mix with the soil. The sand corrects the effect of the
cow-manure which is put in, a layer of seven or eight inches
deep (without straw), over the entire surface of the ground,
which is then worked in with a spade. They mix up the
manure as much as possible, so that when well worked in it
is to be found to a depth of one foot below the surface.

It is not a good thing to plant hyacinths the first year
in the newly manured soil ; they usually leave an interval
of one year before they put in hyacinths again, and
in the intermediate years they cultivate tulips, jonquils,
narcissi, lilies, crocuses, fritillaries, crown imperials, martagon
or mountain lilies, irises, and other tuberous plants or bulbs

21

162 DUTCH BULBS AND GARDENS

which they keep in quantities ; they take care to work the
ground well every year, this brings the earth which was
below, at the roots of the last year's plants, to the surface.

The earth dug, trenched, and enriched (for it must be
borne in mind it is nearly entirely sand) remains for five or six
years without need of manure. After this space of time it
has to be worked all over again, dug as deeply as before
and manured, if possible adding more pure sand, which is
found by digging a very deep way down. In winter the
beds are covered with tan or manure in proportion to the
strength of the cold. Growers like the frost to penetrate
as far as within an inch of the bulbs. If it goes farther, it
freezes the cluster of buds ; and if it reaches the roots, the
bulb is lost beyond redemption. But such a misfortune
seldom occurs, for growers know how to protect them by
increasing the thickness of manure or tan covering. Some
heap up the fallen snow over the beds, believing it is good
for bulbs, as it is for nearly all other plants, especially for
corn and oats ; while others take away the snow rather than
add to it. Each has good reasons, and much depends on the
time of year, for if it is late snow and the hyacinths are
beginning to put out leaves, a quantity of snow may be
hurtful and cause a fermentation of the sap, which may cause
the bulb to decay.

After the cold weather is over the hyacinth buds begin
to pierce through the manure, and then it can be taken off,
and there is nothing more to be done after that but just to
pull up any weeds that make their appearance. Growers
either leave the flowers to fade or else cut them off, they
believe it makes no difference which they do. Some, when the
stalks are left uncut, strip off the blossoms with their ripening
seed-vessels, thinking it preserves the sap within the bulb ;
others cut the leaves half-way down, for they grow very long
and lengthy when the flower is dead. Both these methods

HYACINTH CULTURE AT HAARLEM 163

are clean contrary to the principles of the art of cultiva-
tion. Still, stripping the blossoms does little harm in com-
parison with the harm done by cutting the leaves, which have
a most important function to perform, for they now take on
themselves the work of the dried-up roots and feed the bulb,
and they breathe in through their leaves the particles of air
most suited for the plant's nourishment. The leaves are
then entirely maintaining the plant and keeping the sap in
circulation. When the fans or long leaves begin to fade
and dry, the bulb is then pulled up out of the earth — with
the hand, as much as possible, for fear the spade or fork
should injure the young offshoots. The leaves are then cut
off altogether, and the bulb is replaced in the earth on its
side, being covered up again with an inch or two of very
light soil, such as we described — the bulbs are left about a
month or two in this state. When the time comes for them
to be finally taken up, a fine dry day is chosen. - The bulbs
are then left out in the open air for a few hours. (If the sun
is too hot, it will make them " boil," as the gardeners say, and
the sun can kill them as surely as the frost.) They are then
placed on sieves, where they are lightly shaken to separate from
them the earth which sticks to them, the roots are carefully
removed — carefully, for the sake of the young bulbs (or
offshoots) — and put away on the bulb-house shelves.

All growers proceed very much in the same way, but
those who do not follow merely mechanically the trade
methods, know that every bulb likes a separate treatment, and
they do not take up all the bulbs in one bed on the same
day — they leave the lazy ones, which are slow to ripen,
longer in the ground, and they don't cut the leaves of the
quickly growing ones quite so soon. When taking up their
bulbs, they judge the quantity of sand to be left to cover
them (in the drying process), according to the need of each
one. Experience having taught that a slow bulb which

164 DUTCH BULBS AND GARDENS

takes long to develop gains warmth (and the fermentation
of the sap is hastened) by letting it " cook,"" as they say, in
the sun. On the contrary, if it is a quickly ripening variety,
they keep it much less time in the oven (that is, under sand
in the sun). These have a little more sand over them, and
are stored a little sooner in the bulb house. One grower
said he had for fourteen years planted a Francois 1st and
taken it out every year exactly in the same state as he had
put it in, it had not changed in form or size, nor had it
given a single offshoot. Another said he kept a Due de
Bourgogne thirty years in the same way. G. Voorhelm
said he had known a bulb look the same for fifty years,
but he did not mention whether it had ever given offshoots
or not.

In the end of June, or about that time, bulbs are put away
into bulb houses. The houses should be perfectly dry, inside
and out, for damp is very injurious — the houses should be
thoroughly well ventilated, the wind allowed to blow
through. It is better if the bulb house be made to open on
three sides. When the bulbs have been sometime stored
on the shelves, they are cleaned; they then go through a
medical examination, and if there are any weak or sickly,
they are separated from the others. The evil, if it exists,
can be detected by cutting the bulb at the place where the
fans or leaves come off. If the circle of tunics looks quite
healthy, with no stains or spots upon them, there is no fear
of disease — there is none if there is no outward mark of decay
anywhere to be seen ; l but if there is the smallest spot or
mark, the knife must cut down to the root of the evil.
Amputation does not kill the bulb, and it is the surest
remedy. As some of these diseases are contagious, they can
be communicated to others even in the ground, where they
are not so closely packed as they are upon the shelves,
1 Except new disease.

HYACINTH CULTURE AT HAARLEM 165

therefore it is necessary to take care to examine them
thoroughly in order to prevent contagion. The nature of
these diseases and their cause is not yet known. The best
remedy is amputation of the diseased parts, and many growers
remove everything that has the least appearance of decay.
The great art (and experience alone can teach this) is to
know how to dry the cut wound without exhausting the
sap in the bulb, and to know just the time to put it back in
earth, — the earlier it is done and the more carefully the
operation is performed the more likely the bulb will be
saved. The most common disease is an outlet of sap
between the tunics. Another is produced by small green-
flies, which are probably deposited as eggs. Green-fly and
centipedes are the most commonly to be seen. Bulbs left
for a long time in the same place are sure to contract
diseases — this is one of the chief reasons why growers are
for ever changing them (even the common sorts), and are
always renewing the soil or putting the flowers in different
places alternately with others. When the growers are ready
to replant their bulbs, they clean them again, taking away
the outer red skin or tunics, which are now dried up, and
keeping those adhering to the bulb, for it would be harmful
to a degree to take them away. They put aside the young
bulbs which are strong enough to be separated from the
parent bulb. The method of planting again has been
described. I must add that show-beds should be chosen in
sunny spots. Hyacinths cannot bear to be in the shade, and
they must not be put under trees ; but as they also suffer
from wind, it is a good thing to have trees not far off
to break the wind.

In conclusion, it would be a good thing if amateurs
were not quite so prodigal with their bulbs. They
grow them in pots or in glass during the winter,
and it is usually their custom, when the flowers are dead,

166 DUTCH BULBS AND GARDENS

to throw the bulbs away, supposing them to be good for
nothing when they have blossomed once. Instead of that,
they should be left in the glass jar or flower-pot till the
leaves are likewise dead, then they can be put for half a
day in moderately hot sun to dry, and afterwards placed in
earth on their sides, as is done with other bulbs, covering
them lightly with sandy earth, and taking them up in the
same way ; when in the autumn they are planted there will
be no difference between them and the other bulbs. If they
are round and full of sap when they are taken up, they can
be used again in glass or pots in the house a second year, if not,
it is better to leave them in the open ground. But as it is
sometimes frosty weather when the bulbs are taken from the
jars, it is better to put them away at once in the green-house,
covered with a little sand, and wait till fine weather comes
to put them outside for a month or five weeks in the earth,
preparatory to taking them to the bulb-house shelves — to
plant before the rest.

Hyacinths can be also grown in pots filled with moss,
well pressed down and kept sufficiently moist. If grown in
water, rain-water is best.

Bulbs increase so rapidly that a grower who takes a little
trouble to cultivate, let us say about 300, will find himself
in a few years possessor of several thousand, which he does
not care to keep. He will also have the satisfaction of
making Conquests with seeds he has himself sown, and by
exchanging these seedlings he can procure for himself rare and
costly kinds, which he cannot buy ; he is thus able to amuse
himself with a collection which affords him much pleasure,
and he is also able to bestow some upon his friends. He
may never have been in the neighbourhood of Haarlem, he
may never have learnt so many details as are here put forth,
in the hope that they may prove useful to many a lover
of flowers.

HYACINTH CULTURE AT HAARLEM 167

George Voorhelm, in the preface to his treatise on
hyacinth culture, encourages men of other nations to
cultivate the hyacinth, and to sow seeds, and, in his opinion,
it would be better that the Dutch should meet with rivals
of other nationalities, for if all produced good flowers, they
would be able to supply each other reciprocally. He thinks
it a pity no other nation should have attempted to second
the Dutch in a work which reveals so wonderfully the many
mysteries of nature as that of the culture of the hyacinth.

Maximilien Henri, Marquis de Saint-Simon, wrote Des
Jacinthes, de leur anatomie, reproduction, et culture ; also
Histoire de la guerre des Alpes, ou Campagne de 174-4'-,
Histoire de la guerre des Bataves et des Romains.

Saint -Simon, born 1720; died 1799 at Utrecht. This
Marquis de Saint-Simon was uncle to Claude Henri, Comte
de Saint-Simon, founder of the sect called Saint-Simoniennes.
I think the Marquis was nephew of the Due de Saint-
Simon, author of the Memoires of Louis XIV.

II

THE TULIP TRADE

From De Koning's History of Haarlem (1635) •

MANY, no doubt, have heard of the extraordinary mania for
tulips in Holland in the seventeenth century. Dutchmen of
all classes, highest to lowest, forsook their ordinary occupa-
tions and business, in order to engage in the tulip trade.

It is said the mania began first in France in the year
1635, and thence spread to the Netherlands. Enormous
prices were paid, and even houses and land given in exchange
for one bulb.

In Haarlem there stands a house, at one time in possession
of the Widow de Lange and Van Ek — it is numbered W. 3,
No. 575. It used to be two separate buildings, and one of
them was known as the Tulip House, because it was sold for
one single tulip. When the last alterations were made to
this house in 1858 there was still to be seen a stone set in
the gable, upon which was carved a tulip, and below the
following inscription : —

1637.

This stone was kept as a remembrance of the famous tulip
trade of the year 1637, "when one fool hatched from
another, the people were rich without substance, and wise
without knowledge."

168

THE TULIP TRADE 169

Since that famous year, according to tradition, the road
that led to the country beyond the Groot Poort and to
the surrounding neighbourhood, where most of the best
Haarlemers grew tulips, was called, in remembrance of all
the money lost, "The moneyless path." The rage for
tulips became intense, and every one was caught by the
craze, and positively some were driven mad by it. Though
a few made a great deal of money, the majority of the new
bulb growers and buyers lost everything they possessed !
There is a saying in Dutch, "It is not good to come to
black seed, for then comes poverty." (Canaries are fond of
eating their white seed first, and then have nothing left but
the black.)

Whoever had a plot of ground planted tulips therein.
Rich and poor alike — house-painters, cobblers, tailors, weavers ;
in a word, nearly everyone either grew or speculated in
tulips — some sold all their tools and instruments to buy
bulbs. And indeed they might well look forward to great
profits, seeing that the bulbs, which in the beginning cost
but a few guldens, had now risen to hundreds and thousands.
The most coveted and rare kinds it had now become im-
possible to buy. For one single bulb 12 acres of land in
the Schermer were offered. The Semper Augustus must have
been the rarest and most costly of any, the fabulous price of
13,000 florins was once paid for it, and soon after three of
these bulbs were again sold for 30,000 florins.

The price of land and the hiring of fields to raise the
bulbs in grew very high. A gentleman was offered 50,000
florins a year for his field for seven years, in addition to a
share in the profits. Such was the rage for buying and
selling, that most of the inns and taverns in the town were
turned into places of Exchange and Mart, where bulbs were
bought and sold even before they could be taken out of the
ground. A book-keeper was employed, who kept a book of

22

170 DUTCH BULBS AND GARDENS

all the transactions and of the profits made, which seemed in
some cases very large.

Many men, unused to the possession of so much money,
became so very extravagant that they spent more than their
income, and began to live at such a high rate of expenditure,
buying carriages and horses, and living in such a fashion
that only men who possessed untold wealth and capital
could afford to do it.

What was foreseen by more wise and more thoughtful
people came to pass. Everyone having now become bulb-
grower, there came to be so many tulips in the market that
prices suddenly dropped, and many buyers refused to take
the bulbs at the price agreed upon, and many quarrels and
disputes arose over the matter. Finally, the States-General
of Holland appointed by decree that, from the 27th of April
1636, tulip-sellers had the right to force buyers to buy at
a price agreed upon (a standard price ?). So this decree
stopped very high speculations, and a Semper Augustus, for
example, for which previously several thousand florins had
been paid, now fetched only 50 florins. There came a re-
action, and a great number of people were ruined.

In this way, says De Koning, began and ended a trade or
commerce in bulbs, which in nearly all the towns in Holland,
but especially in Haarlem, Leyden, Amsterdam, Alknaar,
Hoorn, and Enkhuizen, was kept up with such energy that,
alone in Haarlem, 10,000,000 florins for tulip bulbs was paid
and received, and the States-General of Holland were even
weighing the advisability of taxing the industry which
brought so much luxury. The little gardens near and in
and about Haarlem had both wide and narrow " moneyless
paths," all of which date from the time of the tulip mania in
the seventeenth century, and remain as witnesses of the folly
of our forefathers.

Ill

THE HYACINTH TRADE
From De Koning's Tafereel der Stad Haarlem (1808)

DE KONING gives us an account of the hyacinth trade which
began in 1730, and which continues to the present day. It
was not so astonishing as the tulip trade, and though the
price of the hyacinth did not rise as high as that of tulips,
yet fancy prices were paid for some : —

Passe non plus ultra fetched . . 1850 florins

Gloria Mundi eenjong „ . . 650 „

Tempel Salomons „ . 450 „

Praal Sieraad „ . . 400 „

From these figures one can see that the price of a favourite
hyacinth could not be compared to the price paid for a tulip
bulb, but to this day hyacinth culture is a trade by which
people can really live profitably (this was 1808). Not only
at Amsterdam, where there are many fields of hyacinths, but
in many other Dutch towns, whence the bulbs are sent to all
countries. In Haarlem many of the bulb growers living
outside the Groot and Kleine Hout Poort had to send away
such quantities to foreign countries that the spaces near
their nouses became too small to plant them out, so they
were forced to rent more ground to make new flower-fields,
171

172 DUTCH BULBS AND GARDENS

as their trade was increasing so rapidly. These flower-fields,
so neatly and cleanly kept, made very beautiful surroundings
to our town. When the hyacinths are in full flower they
are, with their different colours, row upon row, a very
beautiful sight, and many people are thus attracted to visit
our country. For bulb growers themselves it is a pleasant
time ; they all meet and talk over the new sorts, and discuss
their culture with no small degree of excitement ; they
collect under the shelters erected over the best sorts, and
there stand smoking their pipes and relating to each other
their various experiences and the experiments they have
tried. Prices are no longer so high as in 1730. We have
known, even in our own day, the " Ophir,1" now become so
common that it has scarce any value at all, sold for 3600
guldens, which shows what people are willing to pay for a
rare flower.

INDEX

Achimenes, 113
Aconite, Winter, 31, 43

efficacy against poison, 43
Aconites, 105
Alkmaar, 86, 109, 170
Alliums, 45
Alphen, 154
Amaryllis, 113
Amstelveen, 154
Amsterdam, 4, 5, 6, 170

Great Canal of, 3
Anemone coronaria, 68, 71
Anemones, 23, 70

legendary origin of, 70

Star, 70
April in the bulb gardens, 9, 78,

83, 161
Arums, 113

Barns, bulb, 5, 11, 52, 104-106,
111-113, 164

orderliness of, 105

protection from mice and fire,
111

protection from frost, 112
Begonias, 73, 113

protection against frost, 74, 112

growing from seed, 74
Bicycles in the bulb gardens, 11
Bulb cleaning, 106, 107, HO
Busbecq, 98, 100
Bride, The, 15

Calochortus, 17, 113

Caunas, 113

Catalogues, 15, 116, 117
Cleanliness, 5, 107
Clusius, 59, 63, 71, 75, 76
Colchicums, 34
Collectors, bulb, 44, 113
"Conquests," 141 et sea., 146,

166
Co-operation among bulb growei'S,

123

Crinums, 113
Crocus sativus, 34
Crocuses, 32-39, 113, 161

ancestry of, 33, 35

legends connected with, 35, 36

saffron, 34-39

uses of, 36, 37
Culpeper, 38, 3!)

Daffodils, 74-82

Gerranfs, 76

Great Rose, 76

Parkinson's, 76

Strange Sea, 76

White Sea Bastard, 76

Wilmers double, 76
Dahlias, protection from frost,

112

Darry (or Derry), 153, 161
De Koning's History of Haarlem,

168
De Koning's Tafereel der Stad

Haarlem, 171
Derry (or Darry), 153, 161

173

174

DUTCH BULBS AND GARDENS

Enkhuizeu, 170
Eranthis hyemalis, 43

" Fair Maids of February," the, 40
" Fleur-de-lys," the, 60"
" Flower-de-luce," the, 00
Flowerdeluce, Great Turkey, 65
Fritillarias, 71-73, 161

Aurea, 73

Crown Imperial, 71, 161

Recurva, 73

Snakes-head, 73

Galen, 59

Gerard, 16, 33, 38, 39
Gesner, Conrad, 99, 100
Gladioli, 10, 15, 16, 115

ancestry of, 33

protection from frost, 112
Glove-gardeners, 89
Gloxinias, 113

Great Turkey Flowerdeluce, 65,
67

Haarlem, 7, 8, 9, 10, 13, 19, 20,
33, 50, 64, 83, 91, 92, 109,
110, 121-167, 168-172
Hakluyt quoted, 34
Hedges, 9, 17
Hepaticas, 70
Hille, 33
Hillegom, 44
Hoorn, 170

Houses in Holland, 9, 25,
Hyacinths, 17-19, 47-59, 91, 113
Alcibiades, 149
Beau-regard, 149
bees and, Saint-Simon's theory,

146
bulbs, impossibility of reserving

for second year, 128
cleaning the bulbs, 164
culture at Haarlem in the

eighteenth century, 121-167
cutting the, 18, 19, 57
disease in, 56, 127, 134, 164
experiments with, 147

Hyacinths, Flavo superbe, 137
'Francois 1st, 126, 136, 148
Gloria Florum Suprema, 125,

149

Gloria Mundi, 126, 143, 171
grape, 58
Heroine, 137
high prices paid for, 142
Jacques, 50
La Comete, 137
La Perruque, 137
Le Comte de Provence, 126
legends connected with, 47, 48,

124

Le Hoi de la Grande Bretagne, 143
lifting the bulbs, 149
manuring the ground, 91
Marie, 143

Marquise de Bonnac, 148
methods of producing bulbs, 51
Mine d'Or, 126

Og Roi de Basan, 126, 137, 148
Ophir, 172
Orientate, 123
organs of reproduction, 132,

144 et seq.
origin of, 49, 123
Passe non plus ultra, 148, 171
Praal Sieraad, 171
preparation of soil, 151, 156

et seq.
propagation of, 126, 132, 136

protection of bulbs, 56, 131,

158, 162

Rex Ruln-orum, 126
Rien ne me Surpasse, 148
Saturne, 137
Sceptre of David, 121
selection and cultivation, 50
sowing seed, 138 et seq.
Tempel Salomons, 171
Theatre-Italien, 148
the four classes of, 125
the right soil for, 121, 149
use of cow manure, 152, 157
use of frames, 158

INDEX

175

Hyacinths, use of tents, 159

'wild, 124

wood, 48, 58
Hyacinthus, 47-49, 124

candicans, 58

orientalis, 49, 58

Hymerocallis, protection from
frost, 112

" lohnquills," 75, 161
Iris anglica, 62

Hakeriana, 64

hispanica, 14

histroides, 64

reticulata, 64

susiuna, 17, 65, 66, 67

xiphion, 60

Irises, 13, 17, 47, 48, 49, 60-67,
161

legends connected with, 48

new varieties from seed, 62

purple, 15

remedial uses of, 60

Spanish, 60, 63
Ixia viridiflora, 16
Ixias, green, 16

Jonquils, 75, 161
July in the bulb gardens, 78
June in the bulb gardens, 10, 19-
24

Kniphofias, 115

Land, preparation of new, 161
value of, 13, 33, 44, 108

Language of Flowers, the, 38, 69,
97

Leyden, 64, 110, 154, 170

Lilies, 161
Torch, 114

Lily tribe, the, 10

Manure, the use of, 40, 56, 91,

152, 157
March in the bulb gardens, 64,

78

May in the bulb gardens, 9, 78,

161
" Mevrouw," 8, 10, 17

Narcissi, 74-82, 161

Barri, 78

Emperor, 78

Empress, 78

Golden Spur, 78

Grandee, 78

Henry Irving, 78

legends connected with, 79-
81

Poeticus, 78, 79

polyanthus, 77-79

protection from cold, 77

Red, 77

Sir Watkin, 88

Van-Sion, 75

Will Scarlet, 77
Narcissus, 79, 80

Clusii, 75

maxinius, 75

Tazetta, 78
Neatness on the farms, 5, 107

Onions, 45

Orderliness, 5, 105, 112
Over-covering the bulbs, danger

of, 31
Overween, 159

Parasites, 31

Parkinson, 16, 33, 41, 45, 49, 58,

59, 76, 77, 87
quoted, 16, 50, 65, 71, 82, 93,

95
Pollarding, 17

Ranunculus, 10, 23, 68-70

asiaticus, 68

Roads, state of the, 12, 13
Robinio of Paris, 33
Robinson, 94, 96
Rubbish-heaps, absence of, 5

Saffron growing, 34

176

DUTCH BULBS AND GARDENS

Saint-Simon, 121, 122, 126, 128,

146, 147, 167
Sand, 5
Scilla alba, 45, 59

medical uses, 59

rubra, 59

sibirica, 31, 43-45

origin of, 43

multiplication of, 43
Scott, Reginald, quoted, 45
Screens, to protect the farms, 17
Sheveliug, 155
Sidney, Sir Philip, 99, 100
Snowdrops, 39-43, 105, 113

legends connected with, 40

liking for neglected soil, 39-40

multiplication of, 41
Soil, 5, 40, 51, 57, 91, 108, 121,

149, 151, 153 et seq.
Solfatare, the, 14
" Squills," 59
Stoves, 29
Swertius, 142

Tigridias, 113

Tradecant, 76

Tricycles in the bulb gardens, 11

" Trompetts," 75

Tuberoses, 113

Tulipa Gemeriana, 96

Gemeriana spathulata, 98

kaufmanniana, 92

turcica, 95
Tulips, 83-103, 113, 161

Bizarres, 94

Bybloomens, 94

Calif ornian, 17

Chimney Sweep, 89

Darwin, 100

disease in, 92

Dora, 85

Tulips, Due van Tholl, 91, 96, 102
feathered, 94
" Flamed," 94
gambling in, 169
Gemeriana apathtdata, 85
high prices paid for, 84, 85, 86
Louis the XV I., 84
manuring the ground, 91
new varieties from seed, 92
origin of, 96-100
Painted Lady, 89
Parrot, 95
protection from mice and other

vermin, 90

protection of bulbs by straw, 91
Rose, 94

Semper Augustus, 84, 169, 170
Seventeenth-century mania for,

168 et seq.
storing the bulbs in the barns,

106

the " breaking " of seedlings, 93
The Citadel of Antwerp, 85
variegated, 84
wild, 100
Yellow Fool's Coat, 95

Vallotas, 115

Van Zomped, 159

Vegetables, 9, 91, 110

" Venice of the North," the, 5

Voorhelm, George, 136, 142, 157,

167
Voorhelm, Pierre, 142

Wages, 106

Walcheren, 155

West Cappel, 155

Women, employment of, 106, 110

Ymuenden, 3

Printed by R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED, Edinburgh.

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