A Bitter Taste

• kateshrewsday

Disappointment has a bitter taste.

Like disillusion and disenchantment, it is one of those emotions you really don’t want to get involved with. Like the common cold, it is not bad enough to keep you off work: it does not have the clout of devastation or depression; it just niggles.

It entails a rosy picture in the first place: an Eden with everything in its place. And sometimes, reality cannot hope to live up to this Utopia.

So it falls flat on its face.

But disappointments are part of this globe’s modus operandum. And sitting here, playing Zeus with all of space and all of time to choose from, however can one find something ignominious enough to illustrate this most unedifying of emotions?

Simple: ask Charles Mackay.

He’s dead of course: how disappointing. I discover a brand new hero of my own, a man after my own heart, and I find he died 60 years before I shuffled onto this mortal coil.

Mackay was a songwriter, writer, journalist and editor of the London Illustrated News among other publications. He was Times Correspondent for the American Civil War, and a friend of Charles Dickens and Henry Russell.

And it was he who published the most stupendous book in 1841.

It is called: Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds.

MacKay relates some of those really disappointing episodes in history such as the failure to achieve alchemy, and the exposure of the Magnetisers as quacks. He rarely makes a comment, but between each fabulously written line is a rich sense of English irony.

The book contains wonderful cameos in disappointment. Like Tulipomania.

Holland, 1559. Dutchman Conrad Gesner popped over to view the collection or rare flora and fauna belonging to his friend, a Counsellor Herewart. He viewed a plant which had been grown from a bulb from that most exotic of cities, Constantinople.

It was called a tulip, after the Turkish word for ‘turban’.

Its sophisticated form sparked instant acquisitiveness, and soon everyone wanted one. The rich sent straight to Constantinople for them: and soon the middle and merchant classes saw that possession of the tulip was a way to show one had moved up in the world.

One Harlaem trader paid half his fortune for a single root to keep in his conservatory.

In a country where a bed set you back 100 florins and eight fat pigs cost around 240 florins, demand pushed the price of the tulip bulb through the roof. One variety cost 4400 florins.

And for what? Like dotcom companies, rare bulbs were not robust. They were little more than an onion.

Which is what one unfortunate sailor thought.

He had come in on a boat with a precious cargo from the Mediterranean and Syria. Tulip bulbs, the rarity of which would make any man’s heart beat faster.

The sailor made his way with all speed to inform a merchant of the boat’s arrival. The merchant was delighted, and gave him a great big herring as a reward.

Now, thought the sailor as the merchant threw on his cloak and made off in haste to the harbour, what I need to go with this is a really nice onion.

And there one sat, bold as brass, on the counter.Perfect, thought the sailor. I’ll just take this along too and eat my meal down at the harbour.

The merchant returned to find that his Semper Augustus tulip bulb, valued at around 3,000 florins, was nowhere to be seen.

Consternation! Staff ransacked the building, and then through a process of deduction arrived at the conclusion that the sailor must have disappeared with it.

The merchant bolted down to the harbour, trailing servants and employees like the pied piper. The motley procession arrived to find the sailor polishing off the end of his herring-and-onion al fresco repast.

Now that was an expensive meal.

The stock exchanges of major Dutch towns began to trade in bulbs, and excess became routine. At first, tulips could only make money, and tales of huge personal gains filled the coffee houses.People of all classes were converting their property into cash and then using it to buy outrageously priced bulbs.

From abroad money poured into Holland and daily necessities became more expensive accordingly. A code of conduct was drawn up for bulb traders; notaries and clerks were appointed to oversee this great new craze.

It couldn’t last.

The disappointment of the merchant who lost his rare bulb was nothing to that of the Dutch nation as tulips began to lose their charm, along with their financial clout.

Tulips which had been worth six hundred florins were now fetching 500. Some held onto their gains but many lost, and a deeply disillusioned Holland’s economy took a very long time to recover.

Disappointment, as I said: it has a bitter taste.

Written in response to Side View’s challenge which you can find here

32 thoughts on “A Bitter Taste”

  1. I suppose boom and bust has always been with us in one form or another, and yet it always takes us by surprise – loved this read.
    At the end of April Dyrham Park, NT, usually have a Tulipomania event. They have a huge collection of the special Delft vases that were used to display the tulips.

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  2. I love the juxtaposition of disappointment and the tulip bulb, mostly eaten. Those little flowers always make me happy. Trying to grow them here is impossible, but the florist almost never disappoints. 🙂

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  3. And, after all that, Kate, no one mentioned what the ‘onion’ tasted like! I’ve always thought of tulips as quite perfect flowers, but also very cold and imperious.

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  4. The economic bubble-for-nothing has been around for ever it seems. You’d think people would learn from history, but NOOOO they want to try one of them for themselves.

    Greatly disappointing post – in the best sense.

    At least the tulip now brings Holland money, not at those levels but as a valid export. Have you seem photos of the flower farms when they start blossoming? The most amazing coloured farms ever.

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  7. Of all the emotions, disappointment leaves me flat. That it provokes no rage, no paroxysms of grief, no heaving sobs, or sublime delight…makes me not know what to do with it. That is usually arrives accompanied by dashed hopes or un-desirable awareness makes it all the more discomfiting.

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  9. At the price of that sailor’s meal, I’m surprised it wasn’t his last… or was it?

    There is a house just up from Willows Beach that in spring is a riot of tulips – really, the lawns, the balconies, everywhere you look, tulips in all colours of the rainbow.. I hear say the owners are of Dutch heritage.

    I love tulips, but not so much the more blowsy variety that is popular around here now.

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    1. They don’t have the class of the older varieties, do they, Ruth?
      It was not, mercifully, the sailor’s last meal, but I can report that his misidentification cost him a few months in prison eating the meagre prison fayre…

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  10. Wonderful post, Kate.
    When expectations are dashed, disappointment follows in due course.

    I’ve just planted tomatoes, squash, and marigolds . . . far less than princely price of tulips.

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  11. Brings to mind the housing market and its demise here.

    I’ve had to give up on tulips. The deer eat them, as well as the chipmunks. The squirrels just replant them. We have swaths of daffodils now, and how I love the Alliums.

    I enjoyed this, Kate. Have you read the Omnivore’s Dilemma? A whole chapter on tulipmania.

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    1. I haven’t, Penny. Half term coming up: some reading time! I had no idea deer eat tulips. That’s my garden out then. Although we have no chipmunks….daffs are our mainstay. Such exuberant plants to start the Spring!

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  13. Tulips…such beauty in simplicity. We actually have a Dutch town that has a much anticipated tulip festival every Spring….most say they go for the splendor (truth, it is the Dutch letters!)
    A wonderfully charming post, Kate…I must figure why I know the MacKay name though…

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