SOME TALES OF THE TULIP 
REV. JOSEPH JACOB 
Author of "Tulips,” the only book in English devoted to this family 
The Extravagant Regard in which Tulips Were Long Held by the Dutch Is Well 
Known but There Is a Further Tulip Lore Rich in Human Interest Waiting to Beguile 
THREE DISTINCT TYPES 
A Darwin or self-colored Tulip before 
it breaks, on the left, a broken or rec- 
tified Darwin (which then becomes a 
Rembrandt) on the right, and a late- 
flowering Cottage of delicate canary 
yellow — Ellen Willmott by name 
— below. The Darwins never show 
any trace of yellow 
fpl^HERE is so much to be said when writing about Tulips 
r / ; S that the difficulty always is to know where to make a 
Mgfe start, and when it is time to leave off! The April num- 
rliP ber of The Garden Magazine contained an account of 
the romance of the Kurume Azaleas; and a capital book on the 
Peony by Mrs. Edward Harding, published by Lippincott’s in 
March, 1917, introduces its readers 
to the mythical and the matter of 
fact history of what may well be 
called the most ancient of culti- 
vated flowers. And did I grow 
Azaleas or Peonies m any quantity, 
1 would feel I ought to be familiar 
with the contents of that article, or 
that book- — for it just makes all the 
difference in the world, when one 
is doing the honors of one’s garden, 
if he is able to do also a little talkee- 
talkee! How dull is the cicerone 
who has never anything to tell in 
the way of an anecdote, or who 
can’t bring in some little joke, or 
draw on his imagination — as I do 
when, on coming to Avis Kenni- 
cott, one of our very best tall yel- 
lows, 1 tell people it may have been 
taken over in the Mayflower by a 
Pilgrim Father who was a bit of a 
Tulip fancier. 
1 have no doubt but there is 
plenty to be said too about their 
favorite flower for a Rose man or 
a Gladiolus man; but, with the possible exception of the former, 
I very much doubt if there is any flower which has made its 
mark in general literature in the same way that the Tulip has 
done. How much was written in the way of caustic skits for 
instance on the time of the Tulip mania in Holland (1635-1637) 
will probably never be known. But a goodly number of little 
books and pamphlets and a few 
pictures still survive; and from 
one of the former, which describes, 
in the form of a dialogue between 
two weavers, all that went on, we 
get the best account we have of 
that strange and marvellous time 
in Holland when a Tulip bulb was 
far more valuable than its weight 
in gold. “T’ Samenspraecken 
tusschen Waermondt ende Gaer- 
goedt” is the Dutch title, and it 
was published at Haarlem in 1637 
by Adriaen Roman. 
The first edition is excessively 
rare, but the third, which appeared 
in 1734 has a most interesting his- 
tory. About this date — say about 
1730 to 1735 — there were symp- 
toms of a Hyacinth mania brewing, 
and the Government got frightened ! 
And so, as an awful example of 
what actually had happened in the 
past and warning of what might 
happen again with Hyacinths, they 
brought out a reprint of the above 
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