- The Good: Betrayal, treason, love, and tulips!
- The Bad: Simple characters and plot; underdeveloped romance
- The Literary: An entertaining treat of historical fiction through a romanticist lens
Dedicated young botanist and tulip-grower Cornelius von Baerle sets his sights on a prize of 100,000 francs, offered by the city of Haarlem to whoever can grow a black tulip. In addition to the money, the winner’s name will also be included in the scientific name given to the tulip itself.
Tulipomania gripped seventeenth century Holland, and it was exactly what it sounds like: a mania for tulips. Tulips, and all their bred variations, became ultra fashionable and a symbol for wealth, and for several years expensive contracts were paid upfront for next years’ bulbs. Prices paid for tulips skyrocketed, to easily more than several years’ wages for a skilled laborer. Tulipomania is often considered the first recorded speculative bubble in history.
Dumas’ opens his historical novel with the real murders of two Dutch statesman, Johan de Witt and his brother Cornelis de Witt. Both brothers were long-standing politicians, but with the onset of the Franco-Dutch war, they were arrested for treason, tortured, shot, and then left to the mob, who reportedly roasted and ate their livers. It’s clear that tensions ran high for reasons beyond mere tulips.
Cornelius’ neighbor Isaac also seeks the prize money and fame of growing the first black tulip, but he’s not as far ahead as Cornelius. Struck with jealousy, Isaac tells the authorities that Cornelius is a traitor, supported by the fact that he is related to Johan de Witt. Cornelius is stripped of his possessions, his house, his servants, and condemned to a life sentence in prison. Cornelius’ only comfort is Rosa, the jailer’s beautiful daughter. They fall in love and concoct a plan to grow the black tulip in secret.
The themes and characters in The Black Tulip are quite simple, but effective. Cornelius and Rosa are honorable, honest, and deserving of happiness, wealth, and love. Isaac and Rosa’s father, the jailer, and others, are conniving, brutish, dishonorable, and will eventually meet their appropriate fate. If you haven’t read Dumas before, be prepared for the heavy hand of providence, as “Misfortune” is almost a character in itself. By the grace of God though, the truth will out, and so is justice. “To despise flowers is to offend God.”
As a modern reader, it’s easy to interpret fate as a simple and childish writing device, and I suppose it is. But taken in context, The Black Tulip is a quintessential piece of romanticism, from which readers of the time craved a sense of the unexplainable supernatural, like the guiding hand of God, as well as strong (i.e. overly dramatic) emotional reactions, in response to the in response to the Age of Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution.
In addition, Dumas further cements The Black Tulip as romantic by choosing to write an entire book centered around beautiful flowers. The romantics favored a return to nature, preferring the untamed greenery to the industrialized cities. It’s fitting though, as the reverence for nature was, well, romanticized, glorifying a return to “simpler” times. “Nature always triumphs over artifice.” But the tulip is a hallmark of man purposely manipulating nature through selective breeding and could be the most artificially manipulated flower in history.
While Dumas likely didn’t catch the irony of writing about tulips, I love that he provides some darkness, some loss of innocence into his characters. Sure, God’s will prevails, and everything works out in the end, but the protagonists are haunted by their trauma. Justice is maybe not so sweet after all. “Sometimes one has suffered enough to have the right to never say: I am too happy.”
Whereas The Three Musketeers have their chivalrous friendship, and The Count of Monte Cristo has his cellmate Faria, The Black Tulip’s most powerful relationship is the romance between Cornelius and Rosa. There’s no real reason why they fall in love, other than they are both good people in a world of bad. Rosa is young, has a soft heart, and tends to all the inmates. She can’t resist Cornelius (although it’s unclear why), and he teaches her to read and how to judge soil quality. At some point she becomes jealous of his obsession with tulips and doesn’t visit him for several days, eventually giving him an ultimatum. So the romance is quite childish and underdeveloped.
While I really enjoy the contents of The Black Tulip (and Dumas’ other works), especially the many action scenes, the prose is too flowery, and the book is too long for its subject. If you are new to Dumas though, I’d suggest starting with this one as the character list is quite limited (especially compared to The Count of Monte Cristo) to get a feel for his work.
Recommended as an entertaining historical fiction with easy-to-root-for characters!