La tulipe noire. English
Chapter 31. Haarlem
Haarlem, whither, three days ago, we conducted our gentle reader, andwhither we request him to follow us once more in the footsteps of theprisoner, is a pleasant city, which justly prides itself on being one ofthe most shady in all the Netherlands.
While other towns boast of the magnificence of their arsenals anddock-yards, and the splendour of their shops and markets, Haarlem'sclaims to fame rest upon her superiority to all other provincial citiesin the number and beauty of her spreading elms, graceful poplars, and,more than all, upon her pleasant walks, shaded by the lovely arches ofmagnificent oaks, lindens, and chestnuts.
Haarlem,--just as her neighbour, Leyden, became the centre of science,and her queen, Amsterdam, that of commerce,--Haarlem preferred to be theagricultural, or, more strictly speaking, the horticultural metropolis.
In fact, girt about as she was, breezy and exposed to the sun's hotrays, she seemed to offer to gardeners so many more guarantees ofsuccess than other places, with their heavy sea air, and their scorchingheat.
On this account all the serene souls who loved the earth and its fruitshad gradually gathered together at Haarlem, just as all the nervous,uneasy spirits, whose ambition was for travel and commerce, hadsettled in Rotterdam and Amsterdam, and all the politicians and selfishworldlings at the Hague.
We have observed that Leyden overflowed with scholars. In like mannerHaarlem was devoted to the gentle pursuits of peace,--to music andpainting, orchards and avenues, groves and parks. Haarlem went wildabout flowers, and tulips received their full share of worship.
Haarlem offered prizes for tulip-growing; and this fact brings us in themost natural manner to that celebration which the city intended to holdon May 15th, 1673 in honour of the great black tulip, immaculate andperfect, which should gain for its discoverer one hundred thousandguilders!
Haarlem, having placed on exhibition its favourite, having advertisedits love of flowers in general and of tulips in particular, at a periodwhen the souls of men were filled with war and sedition,--Haarlem,having enjoyed the exquisite pleasure of admiring the very purest idealof tulips in full bloom,--Haarlem, this tiny town, full of trees andof sunshine, of light and shade, had determined that the ceremony ofbestowing the prize should be a fete which should live for ever in thememory of men.
So much the more reason was there, too, in her determination, in thatHolland is the home of fetes; never did sluggish natures manifest moreeager energy of the singing and dancing sort than those of the goodrepublicans of the Seven Provinces when amusement was the order of theday.
Study the pictures of the two Teniers.
It is certain that sluggish folk are of all men the most earnest intiring themselves, not when they are at work, but at play.
Thus Haarlem was thrice given over to rejoicing, for a three-foldcelebration was to take place.
In the first place, the black tulip had been produced; secondly, thePrince William of Orange, as a true Hollander, had promised to bepresent at the ceremony of its inauguration; and, thirdly, it was apoint of honour with the States to show to the French, at the conclusionof such a disastrous war as that of 1672, that the flooring of theBatavian Republic was solid enough for its people to dance on it, withthe accompaniment of the cannon of their fleets.
The Horticultural Society of Haarlem had shown itself worthy of its fameby giving a hundred thousand guilders for the bulb of a tulip. The town,which did not wish to be outdone, voted a like sum, which was placed inthe hands of that notable body to solemnise the auspicious event.
And indeed on the Sunday fixed for this ceremony there was such a stiramong the people, and such an enthusiasm among the townsfolk, thateven a Frenchman, who laughs at everything at all times, could nothave helped admiring the character of those honest Hollanders, whowere equally ready to spend their money for the construction of aman-of-war--that is to say, for the support of national honour--as theywere to reward the growth of a new flower, destined to bloom for oneday, and to serve during that day to divert the ladies, the learned, andthe curious.
At the head of the notables and of the Horticultural Committee shoneMynheer van Systens, dressed in his richest habiliments.
The worthy man had done his best to imitate his favourite flower in thesombre and stern elegance of his garments; and we are bound to record,to his honour, that he had perfectly succeeded in his object.
Dark crimson velvet, dark purple silk, and jet-black cloth, with linenof dazzling whiteness, composed the festive dress of the President, whomarched at the head of his Committee carrying an enormous nosegay, likethat which a hundred and twenty-one years later, Monsieur de Robespierredisplayed at the festival of "The Supreme Being."
There was, however, a little difference between the two; very differentfrom the French tribune, whose heart was so full of hatred and ambitiousvindictiveness, was the honest President, who carried in his bosom aheart as innocent as the flowers which he held in his hand.
Behind the Committee, who were as gay as a meadow, and as fragrant asa garden in spring, marched the learned societies of the town, themagistrates, the military, the nobles and the boors.
The people, even among the respected republicans of the Seven Provinces,had no place assigned to them in the procession; they merely lined thestreets.
This is the place for the multitude, which with true philosophic spirit,waits until the triumphal pageants have passed, to know what to say ofthem, and sometimes also to know what to do.
This time, however, there was no question either of the triumph ofPompey or of Caesar; neither of the defeat of Mithridates, nor of theconquest of Gaul. The procession was as placid as the passing of a flockof lambs, and as inoffensive as a flight of birds sweeping through theair.
Haarlem had no other triumphers, except its gardeners. Worshippingflowers, Haarlem idolised the florist.
In the centre of this pacific and fragrant cortege the black tulipwas seen, carried on a litter, which was covered with white velvet andfringed with gold.
The handles of the litter were supported by four men, who were from timeto time relieved by fresh relays,--even as the bearers of Mother Cybeleused to take turn and turn about at Rome in the ancient days, when shewas brought from Etruria to the Eternal City, amid the blare of trumpetsand the worship of a whole nation.
This public exhibition of the tulip was an act of adoration renderedby an entire nation, unlettered and unrefined, to the refinement andculture of its illustrious and devout leaders, whose blood had stainedthe foul pavement of the Buytenhof, reserving the right at a future dayto inscribe the names of its victims upon the highest stone of the DutchPantheon.
It was arranged that the Prince Stadtholder himself should give theprize of a hundred thousand guilders, which interested the people atlarge, and it was thought that perhaps he would make a speech whichinterested more particularly his friends and enemies.
For in the most insignificant words of men of political importance theirfriends and their opponents always endeavour to detect, and hence thinkthey can interpret, something of their true thoughts.
As if your true politician's hat were not a bushel under which he alwayshides his light!
At length the great and long-expected day--May 15, 1673--arrived; andall Haarlem, swelled by her neighbours, was gathered in the beautifultree-lined streets, determined on this occasion not to waste itsapplause upon military heroes, or those who had won notable victoriesin the field of science, but to reserve their applause for those who hadovercome Nature, and had forced the inexhaustible mother to be deliveredof what had theretofore been regarded as impossible,--a completely blacktulip.
Nothing however, is more fickle than such a resolution of the people.When a crowd is once in the humour to cheer, it is just the same as whenit begins to hiss. It never knows when to stop.
It therefore, in the first place, cheered Van Systens and his nosegay,then the corporation, then followed a cheer for the people; and, atlast, and for once with great justice, there wa
s one for the excellentmusic with which the gentlemen of the town councils generously treatedthe assemblage at every halt.
Every eye was looking eagerly for the heroine of the festival,--that isto say, the black tulip,--and for its hero in the person of the one whohad grown it.
In case this hero should make his appearance after the address we haveseen worthy Van Systens at work on so conscientiously, he would not failto make as much of a sensation as the Stadtholder himself.
But the interest of the day's proceedings for us is centred neither inthe learned discourse of our friend Van Systens, however eloquent itmight be, nor in the young dandies, resplendent in their Sunday clothes,and munching their heavy cakes; nor in the poor young peasants, gnawingsmoked eels as if they were sticks of vanilla sweetmeat; neither is ourinterest in the lovely Dutch girls, with red cheeks and ivory bosoms;nor in the fat, round mynheers, who had never left their homes before;nor in the sallow, thin travellers from Ceylon or Java; nor in thethirsty crowds, who quenched their thirst with pickled cucumbers;--no,so far as we are concerned, the real interest of the situation, thefascinating, dramatic interest, is not to be found here.
Our interest is in a smiling, sparkling face to be seen amid the membersof the Horticultural Committee; in the person with a flower in his belt,combed and brushed, and all clad in scarlet,--a colour which makes hisblack hair and yellow skin stand out in violent contrast.
This hero, radiant with rapturous joy, who had the distinguished honourof making the people forget the speech of Van Systens, and even thepresence of the Stadtholder, was Isaac Boxtel, who saw, carried on hisright before him, the black tulip, his pretended daughter; and on hisleft, in a large purse, the hundred thousand guilders in glittering goldpieces, towards which he was constantly squinting, fearful of losingsight of them for one moment.
Now and then Boxtel quickened his step to rub elbows for a moment withVan Systens. He borrowed a little importance from everybody to make akind of false importance for himself, as he had stolen Rosa's tulip toeffect his own glory, and thereby make his fortune.
Another quarter of an hour and the Prince will arrive and the processionwill halt for the last time; after the tulip is placed on its throne,the Prince, yielding precedence to this rival for the popular adoration,will take a magnificently emblazoned parchment, on which is written thename of the grower; and his Highness, in a loud and audible tone, willproclaim him to be the discoverer of a wonder; that Holland, by theinstrumentality of him, Boxtel, has forced Nature to produce a blackflower, which shall henceforth be called Tulipa nigra Boxtellea.
From time to time, however, Boxtel withdrew his eyes for a moment fromthe tulip and the purse, timidly looking among the crowd, for more thananything he dreaded to descry there the pale face of the pretty Frisiangirl.
She would have been a spectre spoiling the joy of the festival for him,just as Banquo's ghost did that of Macbeth.
And yet, if the truth must be told, this wretch, who had stolen what wasthe boast of man, and the dowry of a woman, did not consider himself asa thief. He had so intently watched this tulip, followed it soeagerly from the drawer in Cornelius's dry-room to the scaffold of theBuytenhof, and from the scaffold to the fortress of Loewestein; he hadseen it bud and grow in Rosa's window, and so often warmed the air roundit with his breath, that he felt as if no one had a better right to callhimself its producer than he had; and any one who would now take theblack tulip from him would have appeared to him as a thief.
Yet he did not perceive Rosa; his joy therefore was not spoiled.
In the centre of a circle of magnificent trees, which were decoratedwith garlands and inscriptions, the procession halted, amidst the soundsof lively music, and the young damsels of Haarlem made their appearanceto escort the tulip to the raised seat which it was to occupy onthe platform, by the side of the gilded chair of his Highness theStadtholder.
And the proud tulip, raised on its pedestal, soon overlooked theassembled crowd of people, who clapped their hands, and made the oldtown of Haarlem re-echo with their tremendous cheers.