Chapter 6. The Hatred of a Tulip-fancier

From that moment Boxtel’s interest in tulips was no longer a stimulus to

his exertions, but a deadening anxiety. Henceforth all his thoughts ran

only upon the injury which his neighbour would cause him, and thus his

favourite occupation was changed into a constant source of misery to

him.

Van Baerle, as may easily be imagined, had no sooner begun to apply his

natural ingenuity to his new fancy, than he succeeded in growing the

finest tulips. Indeed, he knew better than any one else at Haarlem or

Leyden--the two towns which boast the best soil and the most congenial

climate--how to vary the colours, to modify the shape, and to produce

new species.

He belonged to that natural, humorous school who took for their motto in

the seventeenth century the aphorism uttered by one of their number in

1653,--“To despise flowers is to offend God.”

From that premise the school of tulip-fanciers, the most exclusive of

all schools, worked out the following syllogism in the same year:--

“To despise flowers is to offend God.

“The more beautiful the flower is, the more does one offend God in

despising it.

“The tulip is the most beautiful of all flowers.

“Therefore, he who despises the tulip offends God beyond measure.”

By reasoning of this kind, it can be seen that the four or five thousand

tulip-growers of Holland, France, and Portugal, leaving out those of

Ceylon and China and the Indies, might, if so disposed, put the whole

world under the ban, and condemn as schismatics and heretics and

deserving of death the several hundred millions of mankind whose hopes

of salvation were not centred upon the tulip.

We cannot doubt that in such a cause Boxtel, though he was Van Baerle’s

deadly foe, would have marched under the same banner with him.

Mynheer van Baerle and his tulips, therefore, were in the mouth of

everybody; so much so, that Boxtel’s name disappeared for ever from the

list of the notable tulip-growers in Holland, and those of Dort were now

represented by Cornelius van Baerle, the modest and inoffensive savant.

Engaging, heart and soul, in his pursuits of sowing, planting, and

gathering, Van Baerle, caressed by the whole fraternity of tulip-growers

in Europe, entertained nor the least suspicion that there was at his

very door a pretender whose throne he had usurped.

He went on in his career, and consequently in his triumphs; and in

the course of two years he covered his borders with such marvellous

productions as no mortal man, following in the tracks of the Creator,

except perhaps Shakespeare and Rubens, have equalled in point of

numbers.

And also, if Dante had wished for a new type to be added to his

characters of the Inferno, he might have chosen Boxtel during the period

of Van Baerle’s successes. Whilst Cornelius was weeding, manuring,

watering his beds, whilst, kneeling on the turf border, he analysed

every vein of the flowering tulips, and meditated on the modifications

which might be effected by crosses of colour or otherwise, Boxtel,

concealed behind a small sycamore which he had trained at the top of the

partition wall in the shape of a fan, watched, with his eyes starting

from their sockets and with foaming mouth, every step and every gesture

of his neighbour; and whenever he thought he saw him look happy, or

descried a smile on his lips, or a flash of contentment glistening in

his eyes, he poured out towards him such a volley of maledictions

and furious threats as to make it indeed a matter of wonder that

this venomous breath of envy and hatred did not carry a blight on the

innocent flowers which had excited it.

When the evil spirit has once taken hold of the heart of man, it urges

him on, without letting him stop. Thus Boxtel soon was no longer content

with seeing Van Baerle. He wanted to see his flowers, too; he had

the feelings of an artist, the master-piece of a rival engrossed his

interest.

He therefore bought a telescope, which enabled him to watch as

accurately as did the owner himself every progressive development of

the flower, from the moment when, in the first year, its pale seed-leaf

begins to peep from the ground, to that glorious one, when, after five

years, its petals at last reveal the hidden treasures of its chalice.

How often had the miserable, jealous man to observe in Van Baerle’s beds

tulips which dazzled him by their beauty, and almost choked him by their

perfection!

And then, after the first blush of the admiration which he could not

help feeling, he began to be tortured by the pangs of envy, by that slow

fever which creeps over the heart and changes it into a nest of vipers,

each devouring the other and ever born anew. How often did Boxtel, in

the midst of tortures which no pen is able fully to describe,--how

often did he feel an inclination to jump down into the garden during the

night, to destroy the plants, to tear the bulbs with his teeth, and to

sacrifice to his wrath the owner himself, if he should venture to stand

up for the defence of his tulips!

But to kill a tulip was a horrible crime in the eyes of a genuine

tulip-fancier; as to killing a man, it would not have mattered so very

much.

Yet Van Baerle made such progress in the noble science of growing

tulips, which he seemed to master with the true instinct of genius, that

Boxtel at last was maddened to such a degree as to think of throwing

stones and sticks into the flower-stands of his neighbour. But,

remembering that he would be sure to be found out, and that he would not

only be punished by law, but also dishonoured for ever in the face of

all the tulip-growers of Europe, he had recourse to stratagem, and, to

gratify his hatred, tried to devise a plan by means of which he might

gain his ends without being compromised himself.

He considered a long time, and at last his meditations were crowned with

success.

One evening he tied two cats together by their hind legs with a string

about six feet in length, and threw them from the wall into the midst of

that noble, that princely, that royal bed, which contained not only the

“Cornelius de Witt,” but also the “Beauty of Brabant,” milk-white,

edged with purple and pink, the “Marble of Rotterdam,” colour of flax,

blossoms feathered red and flesh colour, the “Wonder of Haarlem,” the

“Colombin obscur,” and the “Columbin clair terni.”

The frightened cats, having alighted on the ground, first tried to fly

each in a different direction, until the string by which they were tied

together was tightly stretched across the bed; then, however, feeling

that they were not able to get off, they began to pull to and fro, and

to wheel about with hideous caterwaulings, mowing down with their string

the flowers among which they were struggling, until, after a furious

strife of about a quarter of an hour, the string broke and the

combatants vanished.

Boxtel, hidden behind his sycamore, could not see anything, as it was

pitch-dark; but the piercing cries of the cats told the whole tale, and

his heart overflowing with gall now throbbed with triumphant joy.

Boxtel was so eager to ascertain the extent of the injury, that he

remained at his post until morning to feast his eyes on the sad state in

which the two cats had left the flower-beds of his neighbour. The mists

of the morning chilled his frame, but he did not feel the cold, the hope

of revenge keeping his blood at fever heat. The chagrin of his rival was

to pay for all the inconvenience which he incurred himself.

At the earliest dawn the door of the white house opened, and Van Baerle

made his appearance, approaching the flower-beds with the smile of a

man who has passed the night comfortably in his bed, and has had happy

dreams.

All at once he perceived furrows and little mounds of earth on the beds

which only the evening before had been as smooth as a mirror, all at

once he perceived the symmetrical rows of his tulips to be completely

disordered, like the pikes of a battalion in the midst of which a shell

has fallen.

He ran up to them with blanched cheek.

Boxtel trembled with joy. Fifteen or twenty tulips, torn and crushed,

were lying about, some of them bent, others completely broken and

already withering, the sap oozing from their bleeding bulbs: how gladly

would Van Baerle have redeemed that precious sap with his own blood!

But what were his surprise and his delight! what was the disappointment

of his rival! Not one of the four tulips which the latter had meant to

destroy was injured at all. They raised proudly their noble heads above

the corpses of their slain companions. This was enough to console Van

Baerle, and enough to fan the rage of the horticultural murderer, who

tore his hair at the sight of the effects of the crime which he had

committed in vain.

Van Baerle could not imagine the cause of the mishap, which,

fortunately, was of far less consequence than it might have been. On

making inquiries, he learned that the whole night had been disturbed

by terrible caterwaulings. He besides found traces of the cats,

their footmarks and hairs left behind on the battle-field; to guard,

therefore, in future against a similar outrage, he gave orders that

henceforth one of the under gardeners should sleep in the garden in a

sentry-box near the flower-beds.

Boxtel heard him give the order, and saw the sentry-box put up that

very day; but he deemed himself lucky in not having been suspected, and,

being more than ever incensed against the successful horticulturist, he

resolved to bide his time.

Just then the Tulip Society of Haarlem offered a prize for the discovery

(we dare not say the manufacture) of a large black tulip without a

spot of colour, a thing which had not yet been accomplished, and was

considered impossible, as at that time there did not exist a flower of

that species approaching even to a dark nut brown. It was, therefore,

generally said that the founders of the prize might just as well have

offered two millions as a hundred thousand guilders, since no one would

be able to gain it.

The tulip-growing world, however, was thrown by it into a state of most

active commotion. Some fanciers caught at the idea without believing it

practicable, but such is the power of imagination among florists, that

although considering the undertaking as certain to fail, all their

thoughts were engrossed by that great black tulip, which was looked upon

to be as chimerical as the black swan of Horace or the white raven of

French tradition.

Van Baerle was one of the tulip-growers who were struck with the idea;

Boxtel thought of it in the light of a speculation. Van Baerle, as soon

as the idea had once taken root in his clear and ingenious mind, began

slowly the necessary planting and cross-breeding to reduce the tulips

which he had grown already from red to brown, and from brown to dark

brown.

By the next year he had obtained flowers of a perfect nut-brown, and

Boxtel espied them in the border, whereas he had himself as yet only

succeeded in producing the light brown.

It might perhaps be interesting to explain to the gentle reader the

beautiful chain of theories which go to prove that the tulip borrows its

colors from the elements; perhaps we should give him pleasure if we were

to maintain and establish that nothing is impossible for a florist who

avails himself with judgment and discretion and patience of the sun’s

heat, the clear water, the juices of the earth, and the cool breezes.

But this is not a treatise upon tulips in general; it is the story of

one particular tulip which we have undertaken to write, and to that we

limit ourselves, however alluring the subject which is so closely allied

to ours.

Boxtel, once more worsted by the superiority of his hated rival, was

now completely disgusted with tulip-growing, and, being driven half mad,

devoted himself entirely to observation.

The house of his rival was quite open to view; a garden exposed to the

sun; cabinets with glass walls, shelves, cupboards, boxes, and ticketed

pigeon-holes, which could easily be surveyed by the telescope. Boxtel

allowed his bulbs to rot in the pits, his seedlings to dry up in their

cases, and his tulips to wither in the borders and henceforward occupied

himself with nothing else but the doings at Van Baerle’s. He breathed

through the stalks of Van Baerle’s tulips, quenched his thirst with the

water he sprinkled upon them, and feasted on the fine soft earth which

his neighbour scattered upon his cherished bulbs.

But the most curious part of the operations was not performed in the

garden.

It might be one o’clock in the morning when Van Baerle went up to his

laboratory, into the glazed cabinet whither Boxtel’s telescope had such

an easy access; and here, as soon as the lamp illuminated the walls and

windows, Boxtel saw the inventive genius of his rival at work.

He beheld him sifting his seeds, and soaking them in liquids which were

destined to modify or to deepen their colours. He knew what Cornelius

meant when heating certain grains, then moistening them, then combining

them with others by a sort of grafting,--a minute and marvellously

delicate manipulation,--and when he shut up in darkness those which were

expected to furnish the black colour, exposed to the sun or to the

lamp those which were to produce red, and placed between the endless

reflections of two water-mirrors those intended for white, the pure

representation of the limpid element.

This innocent magic, the fruit at the same time of child-like musings

and of manly genius--this patient untiring labour, of which Boxtel knew

himself to be incapable--made him, gnawed as he was with envy, centre

all his life, all his thoughts, and all his hopes in his telescope.

For, strange to say, the love and interest of horticulture had not

deadened in Isaac his fierce envy and thirst of revenge. Sometimes,

whilst covering Van Baerle with his telescope, he deluded himself into a

belief that he was levelling a never-failing musket at him; and then he

would seek with his finger for the trigger to fire the shot which was

to have killed his neighbour. But it is time that we should connect with

this epoch of the operations of the one, and the espionage of the other,

the visit which Cornelius de Witt came to pay to his native town.