Chapter 6. The Hatred of a Tulip-fancier
From that moment Boxtel's interest in tulips was no longer a stimulus tohis exertions, but a deadening anxiety. Henceforth all his thoughts ranonly upon the injury which his neighbour would cause him, and thus hisfavourite occupation was changed into a constant source of misery tohim.
Van Baerle, as may easily be imagined, had no sooner begun to apply hisnatural ingenuity to his new fancy, than he succeeded in growing thefinest tulips. Indeed; he knew better than any one else at Haarlem orLeyden--the two towns which boast the best soil and the most congenialclimate--how to vary the colours, to modify the shape, and to producenew species.
He belonged to that natural, humorous school who took for their motto inthe seventeenth century the aphorism uttered by one of their number in1653,--"To despise flowers is to offend God."
From that premise the school of tulip-fanciers, the most exclusive ofall 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 indespising 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 thousandtulip-growers of Holland, France, and Portugal, leaving out those ofCeylon and China and the Indies, might, if so disposed, put the wholeworld under the ban, and condemn as schismatics and heretics anddeserving of death the several hundred millions of mankind whose hopesof salvation were not centred upon the tulip.
We cannot doubt that in such a cause Boxtel, though he was Van Baerle'sdeadly foe, would have marched under the same banner with him.
Mynheer van Baerle and his tulips, therefore, were in the mouth ofeverybody; so much so, that Boxtel's name disappeared for ever from thelist of the notable tulip-growers in Holland, and those of Dort were nowrepresented by Cornelius van Baerle, the modest and inoffensive savant.
Engaging, heart and soul, in his pursuits of sowing, planting, andgathering, Van Baerle, caressed by the whole fraternity of tulip-growersin Europe, entertained nor the least suspicion that there was at hisvery door a pretender whose throne he had usurped.
He went on in his career, and consequently in his triumphs; and inthe course of two years he covered his borders with such marvellousproductions as no mortal man, following in the tracks of the Creator,except perhaps Shakespeare and Rubens, have equalled in point ofnumbers.
And also, if Dante had wished for a new type to be added to hischaracters of the Inferno, he might have chosen Boxtel during the periodof Van Baerle's successes. Whilst Cornelius was weeding, manuring,watering his beds, whilst, kneeling on the turf border, he analysedevery vein of the flowering tulips, and meditated on the modificationswhich might be effected by crosses of colour or otherwise, Boxtel,concealed behind a small sycamore which he had trained at the top of thepartition wall in the shape of a fan, watched, with his eyes startingfrom their sockets and with foaming mouth, every step and every gestureof his neighbour; and whenever he thought he saw him look happy, ordescried a smile on his lips, or a flash of contentment glistening inhis eyes, he poured out towards him such a volley of maledictionsand furious threats as to make it indeed a matter of wonder thatthis venomous breath of envy and hatred did not carry a blight on theinnocent flowers which had excited it.
When the evil spirit has once taken hold of the heart of man, it urgeshim on, without letting him stop. Thus Boxtel soon was no longer contentwith seeing Van Baerle. He wanted to see his flowers, too; he hadthe feelings of an artist, the master-piece of a rival engrossed hisinterest.
He therefore bought a telescope, which enabled him to watch asaccurately as did the owner himself every progressive development ofthe flower, from the moment when, in the first year, its pale seed-leafbegins to peep from the ground, to that glorious one, when, after fiveyears, its petals at last reveal the hidden treasures of its chalice.How often had the miserable, jealous man to observe in Van Baerle's bedstulips which dazzled him by their beauty, and almost choked him by theirperfection!
And then, after the first blush of the admiration which he could nothelp feeling, he began to be tortured by the pangs of envy, by that slowfever 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, inthe midst of tortures which no pen is able fully to describe,--howoften did he feel an inclination to jump down into the garden during thenight, to destroy the plants, to tear the bulbs with his teeth, and tosacrifice to his wrath the owner himself, if he should venture to standup for the defence of his tulips!
But to kill a tulip was a horrible crime in the eyes of a genuinetulip-fancier; as to killing a man, it would not have mattered so verymuch.
Yet Van Baerle made such progress in the noble science of growingtulips, which he seemed to master with the true instinct of genius, thatBoxtel at last was maddened to such a degree as to think of throwingstones and sticks into the flower-stands of his neighbour. But,remembering that he would be sure to be found out, and that he would notonly be punished by law, but also dishonoured for ever in the face ofall the tulip-growers of Europe, he had recourse to stratagem, and, togratify his hatred, tried to devise a plan by means of which he mightgain his ends without being compromised himself.
He considered a long time, and at last his meditations were crowned withsuccess.
One evening he tied two cats together by their hind legs with a stringabout six feet in length, and threw them from the wall into the midst ofthat 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 flyeach in a different direction, until the string by which they were tiedtogether was tightly stretched across the bed; then, however, feelingthat they were not able to get off, they began to pull to and fro, andto wheel about with hideous caterwaulings, mowing down with their stringthe flowers among which they were struggling, until, after a furiousstrife of about a quarter of an hour, the string broke and thecombatants vanished.
Boxtel, hidden behind his sycamore, could not see anything, as it waspitch-dark; but the piercing cries of the cats told the whole tale, andhis heart overflowing with gall now throbbed with triumphant joy.
Boxtel was so eager to ascertain the extent of the injury, that heremained at his post until morning to feast his eyes on the sad state inwhich the two cats had left the flower-beds of his neighbour. The mistsof the morning chilled his frame, but he did not feel the cold, the hopeof revenge keeping his blood at fever heat. The chagrin of his rival wasto pay for all the inconvenience which he incurred himself.
At the earliest dawn the door of the white house opened, and Van Baerlemade his appearance, approaching the flower-beds with the smile of aman who has passed the night comfortably in his bed, and has had happydreams.
All at once he perceived furrows and little mounds of earth on the bedswhich only the evening before had been as smooth as a mirror, all atonce he perceived the symmetrical rows of his tulips to be completelydisordered, like the pikes of a battalion in the midst of which a shellhas 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 andalready withering, the sap oozing from their bleeding bulbs: how gladlywould Van Baerle have redeemed that precious sap with his own blood!
But what were his surprise and his delight! what was the disappointmentof his rival! Not one of the four tulips which the latter had meant todestroy was injured at all. They raised proudly their noble heads abovethe corpses of their slain companions. Th
is was enough to console VanBaerle, and enough to fan the rage of the horticultural murderer, whotore his hair at the sight of the effects of the crime which he hadcommitted in vain.
Van Baerle could not imagine the cause of the mishap, which,fortunately, was of far less consequence than it might have been. Onmaking inquiries, he learned that the whole night had been disturbedby 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 thathenceforth one of the under gardeners should sleep in the garden in asentry-box near the flower-beds.
Boxtel heard him give the order, and saw the sentry-box put up thatvery day; but he deemed himself lucky in not having been suspected, and,being more than ever incensed against the successful horticulturist, heresolved 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 aspot of colour, a thing which had not yet been accomplished, and wasconsidered impossible, as at that time there did not exist a flower ofthat species approaching even to a dark nut brown. It was, therefore,generally said that the founders of the prize might just as well haveoffered two millions as a hundred thousand guilders, since no one wouldbe able to gain it.
The tulip-growing world, however, was thrown by it into a state of mostactive commotion. Some fanciers caught at the idea without believing itpracticable, but such is the power of imagination among florists, thatalthough considering the undertaking as certain to fail, all theirthoughts were engrossed by that great black tulip, which was looked uponto be as chimerical as the black swan of Horace or the white raven ofFrench 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 soonas the idea had once taken root in his clear and ingenious mind, beganslowly the necessary planting and cross-breeding to reduce the tulipswhich he had grown already from red to brown, and from brown to darkbrown.
By the next year he had obtained flowers of a perfect nut-brown, andBoxtel espied them in the border, whereas he had himself as yet onlysucceeded in producing the light brown.
It might perhaps be interesting to explain to the gentle reader thebeautiful chain of theories which go to prove that the tulip borrows itscolors from the elements; perhaps we should give him pleasure if we wereto maintain and establish that nothing is impossible for a florist whoavails himself with judgment and discretion and patience of the sun'sheat; 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 ofone particular tulip which we have undertaken to write, and to that welimit ourselves, however alluring the subject which is so closely alliedto ours.
Boxtel, once more worsted by the superiority of his hated rival, wasnow 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 thesun; cabinets with glass walls, shelves, cupboards, boxes, and ticketedpigeon-holes, which could easily be surveyed by the telescope. Boxtelallowed his bulbs to rot in the pits, his seedlings to dry up in theircases, and his tulips to wither in the borders and henceforward occupiedhimself with nothing else but the doings at Van Baerle's. He breathedthrough the stalks of Van Baerle's tulips, quenched his thirst with thewater he sprinkled upon them, and feasted on the fine soft earth whichhis neighbour scattered upon his cherished bulbs.
But the most curious part of the operations was not performed in thegarden.
It might be one o'clock in the morning when Van Baerle went up to hislaboratory, into the glazed cabinet whither Boxtel's telescope had suchan easy access; and here, as soon as the lamp illuminated the walls andwindows, Boxtel saw the inventive genius of his rival at work.
He beheld him sifting his seeds, and soaking them in liquids which weredestined to modify or to deepen their colours. He knew what Corneliusmeant when heating certain grains, then moistening them, then combiningthem with others by a sort of grafting,--a minute and marvellouslydelicate manipulation,--and when he shut up in darkness those which wereexpected to furnish the black colour, exposed to the sun or to thelamp those which were to produce red, and placed between the endlessreflections of two water-mirrors those intended for white, the purerepresentation of the limpid element.
This innocent magic, the fruit at the same time of child-like musingsand of manly genius--this patient untiring labour, of which Boxtel knewhimself to be incapable--made him, gnawed as he was with envy, centreall his life, all his thoughts, and all his hopes in his telescope.
For, strange to say, the love and interest of horticulture had notdeadened in Isaac his fierce envy and thirst of revenge. Sometimes,whilst covering Van Baerle with his telescope, he deluded himself into abelief that he was levelling a never-failing musket at him; and then hewould seek with his finger for the trigger to fire the shot which wasto have killed his neighbour. But it is time that we should connect withthis 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.