YOU CAN'T KEEP A GOOD MAN DOWN. George Lyon and his sperm

I believe we all know people who have clearly chosen the wrong profession; doctors sickened by the sight of their patients, bartenders opposed to public intoxication and politicians with an unhealthy reverence for the truth. But it is hard to imagine a man who applied himself for so long to a profession for which he had less talent, whose career path was more pockmarked with failure, an individual with more of a supplementary destiny for disaster than Mr. George Lyon, from the little English village of Up Holland, Lancaster.  George called himself the “King of the Robbers”. But although George made his living as a thief, he was a natural born lover. He just never figured out how to make a living at it.

The village gets its name from the same source as the nation of the same name. In the middle ages a “holland’ was a bolt of cotton cloth, and during the 18th century the rolling hills and plains of Lancashire, in northwest England, were one of the world’s great cotton growing regions, along with the western section of what would become the Netherlands.

So wealthy did one cotton growing Lancashire family become that they took the name “de Holland”.

The de Hollands are known as an “ill-fated” family primarily because of Robert de Holland who established the village of Up Holland on a ridge, midway between the towns of Wigan and Skemersdale, in 1307. 

In a power play between the vacillating King Edward III and the bold and decisive Earl of Lancaster, Robert initially sided with Lancaster. But Edward unexpectedly acted decisively and Lancaster uncharacteristically dithered and so Robert switched sides just before the Battle of Boroughbridge, on March 16, 1322 - at which Lancaster was killed. The King won but he never fully trusted Robert again and had him thrown into jail. Robert stayed there until 1328 when somebody did the King a favor and chopped off Robert de Holland’s “ill-fated” head.

By the time George Lyon was born on a back street in Up Holland in 1761, the cotton plantations of Lancashire were feeding the birth of the industrial revolution. Initially weaving was a home business, where working families bought a hand loom on time for two pounds , usually from the same employer who bought the finished cloth from them. For the rest of his life, when asked to give a profession, George always said “Weaver”, but it is likely he worked at it only as a child, “…carding and spinning cotton… until I became of sufficient size and strength for my father to put me into a loom”, as William Radcliffe explained from his own life.

In the late eighteenth century there were as many as 75,000 hand loom weavers in Britain. Then in 1785 the Reverend Edmund Cartwright invented the power loom, which could be operated by children, and the income of weavers began to plummet.

But George was not qualified to claim he was the victim of economic displacement because he had already established a career as an inveterate thief. In 1786, at the age of 25, George was arrested for mugging a man on the Kings Highway in Wigan. This was a hanging offense, but instead of death, George was sentenced to be lugged, or “transportation”, to the American colonies.

Perhaps as many as 50,000 convicts a year were shipped to America in chains, most being sold into indentured servitude for seven years. That would make convicts the single largest source of emigrants to America in the century leading up to the revolution. Mostly this heritage has been whitewashed out of the history books, but it does explain Doctor Samuel Johnson’s 1769 description of Americans as “…a race of convicts (who) ought to be content with anything we may allow them short of hanging.”

But although George was sentenced to seven years in the penal colony of America, there is no record he ever made it transoceanic. However, I am of the opinion that he did, and that at the end of his term George was forcibly returned to England as an undesirable, even in a convict nation, leaving a trail of his genes behind him.

In 1793 the officials of Up Holland were unpleasantly surprised to see George Lyon in the flesh, returned from exile and free as a bird. There had been expectations the reprobate would be scalped by a Red Indian or an offended husband or at least drowned at sea. 

The primary complaint does not seem to have been that George was a master criminal so much as a legendary local Lothario. He was married, but according to a May 1809 letter by Miss Ellen Weeton, “In two houses near together, there have been in each, a mother and daughter lying in (giving birth), nearly at the same time; and one man (the notorious George Lyon) reputed to be father to all four!”

Branded as a serial fornicator, George Lyon indisputably ever was. But his reputation as a highwayman rests on a single escapade, when he and two partners decided to hold up the mail coach which carried cash for the Maypole Colliery. One afternoon George and his two accomplices rendezvoused at the Bull’s Head Pub in Up Holland and drew attention to them selves. At an opportune moment they slipped out to the barn, mounted their rented horses and were waiting at the Tawd River Bridge as the mail coach bound for Liverpool approached.

The plan was for George to block the road and fire two shots to convince the coachman to stop. Then while George held his third flint lock pistol on the driver the accomplices would take the money box and rob the passengers. Unfortunately George had not taken the weather into account. It was raining heavily, and when George pulled the triggers, the hammers of his two pistols slammed onto wet powder. Unharmed the coachman whipped the horses around George and the coach wheels splashed him as it galloped past.

Having failed as a highwayman George returned to his primary profession, and his hobby as a thief. But I believe it was the official outrage over George’s favorite leisure pursuit which prompted the government’s investment in a professional “thief taker” named John McDonald. By representing himself as a fence McDonald was able to buy stolen goods from George, paying for them with marked money. In October of 1814 George was arrested, and after a brief trial, on 8 April, 1815, he was sentenced to be hanged. The sentence was not unusual for the time. Of the 213 people hanged at Lancaster Castle between 1800 and 1865 only 20% had been convicted of murder. The rest had been sentenced for burglary, lying under oath, arson, or rustling cattle or sheep.

Judgment day for George was Saturday, 22 April 1815, in the hangman's corner of Lancaster Castle (above).  

At about noon, dressed in his best black suit and well shined jockey boots, George was led from the Drop Room by John Higgens, 'The Gentleman Jailer', and delivered into the hands the hangman.  A crowd of 5,000 witnessed as the noose was slipped around George's neck. The trap door was opened on the low platform. George dropped about three feet and then slowly strangled to death. As the Lancaster Gazette recorded, “After hanging the usual time (an hour) the bodies were taken down…and given to their friends for internment.” 

A huge crowd attended the funeral back in Up Holland, a large section of which included George's progeny.  George Lyon, king of the lovers, was dead at fifty-four. He was buried next to his mother, sharing a grave with his legal daughter, Nanny Lyons, and it is her name on the stone that caps their shared grave.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=-e4xSSaEq04
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Lyon_(highwayman)

- 30 -

A DEATH IN WARTIME - The Execution of Mata Harji.

I admit, she was a sinner, and an experienced one at that. But was she responsible for the deaths of 50,000 French soldiers, as she was charged with?  In six short months of 1917 the arrogant and inept commander of the French armies General Robert Nivelle was responsible for throwing away the lives of 33,000 Frenchmen, and the wounding at least 182,000 more, while driving the French army to mutiny. During that same spring Margaretha Zelle seduced officers of the French, German and Russian Army, usually just one man at a time. If anything she improved morale, if just one man at a time. But she was the one they shot.

They came for her in the dark, before five on the morning of Wednesday, 15 October, 1917. They hoped to find her awake when they opened the door of cell number 12, but a nun had to touch her shoulder to wake Margaretha. The martinet who had prosecuted her, Captain Pierre Bouchardon, informed the startled woman, “Have courage! Your request for clemency has been rejected by the President of the Republic. The time for atonement has come.” Her first reaction was panic. She cried out, "It's not possible! It's not possible!” Then, luckily for her executioners, Margaretha got herself under control, whispering to a nun, “Don't be afraid, Sister, I shall know how to die.”

It took her thirty years, but Margaretha Zella eventually learned how to live. Adam Zelle's “little princess” was the only daughter in a Fisian speaking Dutch family with four sons. When she was 13 her doting father lost his hat shop and went bankrupt . Over the next three years her parents divorced, her mother Antje died and her father remarried. The siblings from the first marriage were scattered to relatives and Margaretha was eventually shuffled off to an uncle. Three years later Margaretha answered an ad in a lonely hearts magazine and married Rudolf MacLeod, a mustached Dutch Colonial Army captain, more than twice her age. A year later she gave birth to a son, Norman. The following year Rudolf was posted back to the Dutch East Indies. In 1898, now in Indonesia, the 21 year old Margaretha gave birth to a daughter, named Jeanne. That same year Margaretha began studying local culture, and in her native dance class she adopted the Malay name meaning “Eye of the Day.”: Mata Harji.

She dressed quickly in the cold cell, in the few threads of respectability nine months of imprisonment had left her - a gray suit, a blouse and stockings, with a blue coat slung over her shoulders, and topped by a jaunty tri-cornered hat to hide her gray hair. In the courtyard of the Prison de Saint-Lazare (above), they hustled her into an automobile, with the windows blocked out. Before five thirty that morning they drove her away from the River Seine, southward in the cold dark empty streets, past the palace of Palace of  Versailles. Turning right on the Avenue de la Pipinere, and then right again onto the Avenue Mufs du Pare, the car passed through the stone gates of a cavalry barracks.

A year after their arrival in Indonesia , both children fell ill. Two year old Norman died, and the marriage drowned in recrimination. Randolf wrote his family that Margaretha was "scum of the lowest kind, a woman without heart, who cares nothing for anything". Margaretha told her family, “I prefer to die before he touches me again. My children caught a disease from him.” She dreamed of living “like a colorful butterfly in the sun.” Rudolf resigned from the army, and the family returned to Holland in 1901. In 1903, leaving her daughter with Rudolf, Margaretha moved to Paris, but the 5'10” olive skinned woman could only find work riding horseback in a circus, and as an artists' model. In desperation, she even sought work as an exotic dancer.

As the car pulled to a stop, an officer shouted out, “Sabremain! Presentez-armes!” and the twelve khaki uniformed Zouave Sergeants snapped to attention. None of them knew their intended target was to be a woman until Margaretha stepped out of the car. It is unlikely any of them knew who the 41 year old woman was even then, since her trial had been secret, and the peak of her fame was a decade passed. Quickly, efficiently, Margaretha was led to the chosen spot in front of an eight foot berm, which was to act as a backstop for the firing squad. Her coat was removed, while a Captain quickly droned through her death sentence, and a sergeant looped a rope around her waist, binding her to the execution post. He started to bind her wrists as well, but Margaretha told him, “That will not be necessary.”

The 30 year old Margaretha, with little grace or training, fashioned her image after the bohemian artist dancer, Isadora Duncan. One historian has written, “There can have been no more ludicrous spectacle...than the bogus temple dance with which ''Lady MacLeod, Mata Hari'' rounded off the dinner parties of Parisian high society. Audiences in evening dress peered approvingly... while ''Lady MacLeod''...gyrated to allegedly Oriental strains on the violin, removed a series of veils....and finally collapsed into the sacred, though clearly carnal, embrace of the invisible (god) Siva.” '

She was famous, featured in post cards, and lurid magazine stories. But within five years “anyone who was anyone in Europe had seen her dance at least once”, and she was competing with dozens of more talented and younger imitators of herself.. By 1908 her career had begun to fade, and she had become a professional courtesan , the mistress to millionaire industrialist Émile Guimet, who was followed by numerous other wealthy men.

A priest whispered a passage from the bible, while an officer offered Margaretha a blindfold. She asked, “Must I wear it?” The officer replied, “If Madame prefers not, it makes no difference.”  He turned on his heel and he and the priest strode away, leaving the lady alone, facing the twelve combat veterans (above). The young sublieutenant raised his saber, and shouted “Joue!”, or prepare! Twelve rifles were raised to twelve shoulders. It was just after six in the morning, Wednesday, 15 October, 1917, and through the damp cold clouds, the sun was struggling to rise over the horizon.

At the outbreak of the war in August of 1914, Margaretha was caught in Germany. Two days later, she tried to leave. German custom officials seized her fur coat. Once in Switzerland, the neutral bureaucrats were suspicious of her Dutch papers, and she was returned to Germany. There an army officer offered her 20,000 francs if she would be a spy  Margaretha saw the funds as reimbursement for her stolen property. The Germans assigned her the code name H-21.

Margaretha met the eyes of the young sublieutenant and loudly thanked him, but for what was unclear. Perhaps she saw pity in his eyes. Then she blew a kiss to her lawyer, 74 year old Edouard Clunet, and then did the same to the twelve men staring at her over their rifles. Witnesses saw her turn her head away from the guns and nervously smile. The officer's saber flashed down in the gray light. The twelve rifles fired as one. Eleven bullets slammed into her chest. Margaretha Zelle crumpled against the rope binding her to the post. Then, wrote British reporter Henry Wales, “...she seemed to collapse...slowly, inertly...her head up always, and without the slightest change of expression on her face...gazing directly at those who had taken her life...and did not move”.

Margaretha contacted German intelligence only once, and then only at the request of Capt. Georges Ladoux, of French Intelligence. Then British Intelligence intercepted a German radio message about information obtained in Belgium from agent H-21. Shortly after, in February 1917,  Margaretha returned to Paris - while General Nivelle was planning his disastrous April offensive - and Ladolux ordered her arrest. Margaretha was charged with spying, but not tried until July - as British armies were suffering during the bloody muddy Passchendaele offensives (above), launched to distract the Germans from the French army's mutiny.

Prosecutor Bouchardon said that hanging on the post, Margaretha “ looked like a heap of skirts.” An officer strode up to the body, drew his pistol, and held it's barrel an inch from Margaretha's right ear. He pulled the trigger, and with a bang! a lead pellet plowed into her brain, demolishing forever whatever was left of the “little princess” and Mati Hari, and everything in between those two images.

At her trial Prosecutor Bourchard had blamed her for the failure of the Nivelle offensive. Her ex-lover Clunet had argued, “Mata Hari has been a courtesan, but never a spy.” But he was allowed to call only one witness in her defense.. After forty minutes of consideration, the six man military jury had sentenced Margaretha to die. The transcripts of her trial were ordered sealed, and will not be released to the public before October, 2017. But thirty years after her death, Bourchard would admit of the case against her, “there wasn't enough evidence to flog a cat”

Four days after Margaretha's death  in 1917, the man who had ordered her arrest, Captain Ladoux, was himself arrested, and charged with spying for Germany. He was not tried until after the war, when cooler heads acquitted him. The transcripts from his trial were also ordered sealed for one hundred years.

When Margaretha's ex-husband, Rudolf MacLeod, heard of her execution, he told the reporter, “Whatever she has done in life, she did not deserve that.” The same could have been said of every one, soldier and civilian, who has died in any war. Mata Hari: she died for our sins, as well as her own.

- 30 -

VIRUS

I want to talk about the human propensity for greed, by first discussing a small family of viruses which ignore humans completely -  the Potyviridae. These five related parasites, 100^th the size of a bacteria, do not infect humans, but they do infect and quickly kill lilies – after all,  the word virus is Latin for poison. In response, lilies evolved the tulip,  resistant enough to the Potyviridae that they could reproduce for perhaps a dozen generations before succumbing to these miniature succubus. And that's when humans come into the picture, because long before humans knew there was such thing as a virus, they found a way to ruin their own lives, and the lives of thousands of their fellows, by using Potyviridae.

See, tulips evolved from lilies where Europe blends into Asia, in the Ferghana Basin, north of Afghanistan, east of the Caspian Sea and west of Lake Balkhash. The basin is surrounded by mountains, and in this isolated test tube 36 different varieties of wild tulips developed over a few thousand years. Some had multiple stalks and blooms, some only one. The blooms could be white, red, yellow or orange. But when infected with Potyviridae the blooms would be wildly stained as if a child had asymmetrically dripped paint over them. Then, the unexpected happened. In the 8^th century, humans living in the Ferghana Basin converted to Islam, and tulip bulbs were transported westward to Islamic centers, as a beautiful curiosity, the more so because of the fanciful patterns they displayed when infected by Potyviridea, which traveled with its host bulb. And because the bulbs could be transported thousands of miles, because they were purely ornamental, and because they had to be replaced every decade or so,  to own and grow them became a display of extreme wealth, conspicuous consumption, restricted to the ruling caliphs in Baghdad and later Istanbul.

A century after Christopher Columbus – in 1593 - tulip bulbs were first planted in the Netherlands, by the botanist Carolus Clusius. His wealthy patrons were for the first time in history, not blue-blood royalty but the local burgomasters of the the town of Leiden. Recently freed from paying protection money to Spanish royalty, these Dutch Protestant capitalists were interested in just two things, making money, and showing everybody how much money they were making. The “Nouveau riche” adopted all the accouterments of their noble predecessors, including fine clothes, large homes, fancy carriages, personal portraits, and within ten years, ownership of the exotic tulip, so named because its bloom resembled a Turkish turban. And it was now that human greed enters our story, when tulips pass from being a de rigueur symbol of wealth, to a means of  measuring and achieving wealth.

The Lord, it seemed, had designed the tulip to make humans rich, and a few Calvinist ministers pointed this out. The plant blooms for only a week or two in the spring. And having proven its colors, after the leaves have died back, the bulb may be dug up and sold, before being returned to the soil for the winter. So the primary tulip market was set by the plant itself, every fall. The rest of the year traders would buy and sell future contracts on the bulbs in the ground, gambling on their future vitality, which, considering their pattern variations was being determined by a virus that was slowly killing the plant, was never a sure thing.  The futures market in tulips began to drive the price of tulips upward, until, within twenty years of Clusius' experiment - in 1610 - the burgomasters felt required to make it illegal to sell tulip futures “short”, meaning to gamble that the price for bulbs in the ground would drop before the next spring bloom.

A disaster in the tulip trade was predictable as far back as the summer of 1623, when a bulb of the rarest variety (only 10 existed), Semper Augusttus, was sold for a thousand guilders. The most skilled carpenters earned only 250 guilders a year, and Carolus Clusius, the man responsible for all of this, earned a mere 750 guilders a year. But when the bulb of the Semper Augusttus (above)  was pulled from the ground, it was found to have two “daughter” bulbs, meaning the value of each Semper Augusttus bulb had just been reduced by 15%. The owner of all 12 bulbs was the wealthy  Adriaan Pauw.  

The law against selling tulips short had been reaffirmed in 1621, and again in 1630, and yet again in 1636. Clearly many burgomasters saw the practice of betting on a catastrophe as dangerous. At the same time it seems safe to assume there were few bets being made that the price of tulip bulbs was going to go down, since no penalties were ever attached to a violation. The general feeling in Holland seems to have been (as it is in America today about the big banks and hedge funds ) that everybody could continue making money as long as everybody stayed greedy but smart. But that has never happened in all of human history. And it did not happen in 17th Century Holland - first because the traders were not trading in what they thought they were trading in, which was tulips, but in a virus which infected tulips. And second I have now arrived at the central theme of this essay -  greed makes you stupid.

Adriaan Pauw was smart. He kept the value of his Semper Augusttus high by the simple expedient of not selling his bulbs, which prevented anybody from noticing that they got weaker with each generation. But he did go to the expense of constructing a gazebo in his garden, covered in mirrors, to reflect his blooms during their brief existence. It also more than doubled the impression of his wealth. In 1624 Pauw's 12 prized  Augusttus were valued at 1,200 guilders each. The next year that went up to 2,000 guilders each, and in 1626 up to 3,000 guilders for a single bulb. Inflation spread like a virus to all varieties of tulips. During one two year period the price for a “General of Generals” bulb increased from 100 guilders to 750 guilders. On 5 February, 1637 at an auction held in the lake side fortress village of Alkmarr, 70 rare bulbs sold for 53,000 guilders, an all time high - several hundred million American dollars today. Who could resist such temptation? Not  Pauw.  He finally sold a single bulb of Augusttus for 5,500 guilders. But the bloom was about to fall off the rose.

Just two days earlier and 20 miles to the south in the village of Harrlem, a tulip investor club – called a college – decided to see how deep the demand for tulips really was. They held an auction of a huge quantity of common bulbs. Only one buyer showed up. Realizing he was the market, he demanded a 35 % discount. And he got it. And when word of this disaster reached Alkmarr prices of tulips collapsed like the price of baseball trading cards or houses in 2007.  Many varieties of tulips would quickly lose 95% of their value.

Families went bankrupt -  heads of households and sons committed suicide - how many has become a subject for much debate in economic circles. Many victims sought a new start in the New World. Said one Calvinist, it was “ God’s Just Plague-Punishment, for the attention of the well-to-do Netherlanders in this bold, rotten century.”  It was the usual, "Heads, God wins; tails human lose" philosophy. But why get God involved when there are so many lawyers around? There were endless lawsuits, because every buyer wanted out of their futures contracts and every seller wanted them enforced. So the politicians did nothing.   Most futures contracts were quietly closed out for 10-15% of their paper value.

A lot of people have tried to claim the Tulip Mania  was not a “market bubble”, like all the other market bubbles since. But the best description of what went wrong that I have found was written by A Maurits van der Veen, from the Virginia college of William and Mary. (BUBBLE)   He wrote in 2009, “...it became increasingly difficult to distinguish those with solid private knowledge from those who were simply following the crowd... these constituted a new kind of trade, no longer linked to individual bulbs.” In other words, greed driven investors were betting not on tulips, but on other tulip investors - call it the tulip derivatives market. That was where the market had first blown up. Sounds like a market bubble to me. And when Tulip mania died, so did some of the most valuable tulips, because their viruses were not passed on. There has not been a Semper Augusttus bloom since the middle of the 17^th century.

There are many who still insist the Semper Augusttus was the most beautiful tulip that ever existed, as there are many who insist an unregulated “free market” is morally and functionally superior to regulated markets. But Semper Augusttus was not a true species, but the by-product of Potyviridae devouring the tulip from the inside, consuming its genetic code, and eventually killing the bulb and flower.  It lived no longer than the rich man who had the fortune to maintain its artificial existence.  Modern tulips are far stronger,  their colors symmetrical, and more resistant than the frail infected flowers that so entranced the “Nouveau riche” of 1637. And because of that, billions of people today enjoy tulips  Some day, perhaps, the nouveau riche of a new age will come to admit that like the Potyviridea infected tulip, an unregulated  “free market”, is merely a splash of color which distracts your attention from the parasite devouring capitalism from the inside - unrestricted uninhibited greed.

- 30 -

VIRUS

I want to talk about the human propensity for greed, by first discussing a small family of viruses which ignore humans completely -  the Potyviridae. These five related parasites, 100^th the size of a bacteria, do not infect humans, but they do infect and quickly kill lilies – after all,  the word virus is Latin for poison. In response, lilies evolved the tulip,  resistant enough to the Potyviridae that they could reproduce for perhaps a dozen generations before succumbing to these miniature succubus. And that's when humans come into the picture, because long before humans knew there was such thing as a virus, they found a way to ruin their own lives, and the lives of thousands of their fellows, by using Potyviridae.  And Tulips.

See, tulips evolved from lilies where Europe blends into Asia, in the Ferghana Basin, north of Afghanistan, east of the Caspian Sea and west of Lake Balkhash - in what is today Uzbekistan.

The basin is surrounded by mountains, and in this isolated test tube 36 different varieties of wild tulips developed over a few thousand years. Some had multiple stalks and blooms, some only one. The blooms could be white, red, yellow or orange. But when infected with Potyviridae the blooms would be wildly stained as if a child had asymmetrically dripped paint over them. 

Then, the unexpected happened. In the 8^th century, humans living in the Ferghana Basin converted to Islam, and tulip bulbs were transported westward to Islamic centers, as a beautiful curiosity, the more so because of the fanciful patterns they displayed when infected by Potyviridea, which traveled with its host bulb. And because the bulbs could be transported thousands of miles, because they were purely ornamental, and because they had to be replaced every decade or so,  to own and grow them became a display of extreme wealth, conspicuous consumption, restricted to the ruling caliphs in Baghdad and later Istanbul.

A century after Christopher Columbus – in 1593 - tulip bulbs were first planted in the Netherlands, by the botanist Carolus Clusius. His wealthy patrons were for the first time in history, not blue-blood royalty but the local burgomasters of the the town of Leiden. Recently freed from paying protection money to Spanish royalty, these Dutch Protestant capitalists were interested in just two things, making money, and showing everybody how much money they were making. The “Nouveau riche” adopted all the accouterments of their noble predecessors, including fine clothes, large homes, fancy carriages, personal portraits, and within ten years, ownership of the exotic tulip, so named because its bloom resembled the Dutch name given a Turkish turban. And it was now that human greed enters our story, when tulips pass from being a de rigueur symbol of wealth, to a means of  measuring and achieving of wealth.

The Lord, it seemed, had designed the tulip to make humans rich, and more than a few Calvinist ministers pointed this out. The plant blooms for only a week or two in the spring. And having proven its colors, after the leaves have died back, the bulb may be dug up and sold, before being returned to the soil for the winter. So the primary tulip market was set by the plant itself -  every fall. The rest of the year traders would buy and sell future contracts on the bulbs in the ground, gambling on their future vitality, which, considering their pattern variations was being determined by a virus that was slowly killing the plant, was never a sure thing.  The futures market in tulips began to drive the price of tulips upward, until, within twenty years of Clusius' experiment - in 1610 - the burgomasters felt required to make it illegal to sell tulip futures “short”, meaning to gamble that the price for bulbs in the ground would drop before the next spring bloom.

A disaster in the tulip trade was predictable as far back as the summer of 1623, when a bulb of the rarest variety (only 10 existed), Semper Augusttus, was sold for a thousand guilders. The most skilled carpenters earned only 250 guilders a year, and Carolus Clusius, the man responsible for all of this, earned a mere 750 guilders a year. But when the bulb of the Semper Augusttus (above)  was pulled from the ground, it was found to have two “daughter” bulbs, meaning the value of each Semper Augusttus bulb had just been reduced by 15%. The owner of all 12 bulbs was the wealthy  Adriaan Pauw.  

The law against selling tulips short had been reaffirmed in 1621, and again in 1630, and yet again in 1636. Clearly many burgomasters saw the practice of betting on a catastrophe as dangerous. At the same time it seems safe to assume there were few bets being made that the price of tulip bulbs was going to go down, since no penalties were ever attached to a violation. The general feeling in Holland seems to have been (as it is in America today about the big banks and hedge funds ) that everybody could continue making money as long as everybody stayed greedy but smart. But that has never happened in all of human history. And it did not happen in 17th Century Holland - first because the traders were not trading in what they thought they were trading in, which was tulips, but in a virus which infected tulips. And second I have now arrived at the central theme of this essay -  greed makes you stupid.

Adriaan Pauw thought he was smart. He kept the value of his Semper Augusttus high by the simple expedient of not selling his bulbs, which prevented anybody from noticing that they got weaker with each generation. But he did go to the expense of constructing a gazebo in his garden, covered in mirrors, to reflect his blooms during their brief existence. It also more than doubled the impression of his wealth. In 1624 Pauw's 12 prized  Augusttus were valued at 1,200 guilders each. The next year that went up to 2,000 guilders each, and in 1626 up to 3,000 guilders for a single bulb. Inflation spread like a virus to all varieties of tulips. During one two year period the price for a “General of Generals” bulb increased from 100 guilders to 750 guilders. On 5 February, 1637 at an auction held in the lake side fortress village of Alkmarr, 70 rare bulbs sold for 53,000 guilders, an all time high - several hundred million American dollars today. Who could resist such temptation? Not  Pauw.  He finally sold a single bulb of Augusttus for 5,500 guilders. But the bloom was about to fall off the rose - ah, tulip.

Just two days earlier and 20 miles to the south in the village of Harrlem, a tulip investor club – called a college – decided to see how deep the demand for tulips really was. They held an auction of a huge quantity of common bulbs. Only one buyer showed up. Realizing he was the market, he demanded a 35 % discount. And he got it. And when word of this disaster reached Alkmarr, prices of tulips collapsed like the price of baseball trading cards or houses in 2007.  Many varieties of tulips would quickly lose 95% of their value.

Families went bankrupt -  heads of households and sons committed suicide - how many has become a subject for much debate in economic circles. Many victims sought a new start in the New World. Said one Calvinist, it was “ God’s Just Plague-Punishment, for the attention of the well-to-do Netherlanders in this bold, rotten century.”  It was the usual, "Heads, God wins; tails human lose" philosophy. But why get God involved when there are so many lawyers around? There were endless lawsuits, because every buyer wanted out of their futures contracts and every seller wanted them enforced. So the politicians did nothing.   Most futures contracts were quietly closed out for 10-15% of their paper value.

A lot of people have tried to claim the Tulip Mania  was not a “market bubble”, like all the other market bubbles since. But the best description of what went wrong that I have found was written by A Maurits van der Veen, from the Virginia college of William and Mary. (BUBBLE)   He wrote in 2009, “...it became increasingly difficult to distinguish those with solid private knowledge from those who were simply following the crowd... these constituted a new kind of trade, no longer linked to individual bulbs.” In other words, greed driven investors were betting not on tulips, but on other tulip investors - call it the tulip derivatives market. That was where the market had first blown up. Sounds like a market bubble to me. And when Tulip mania died, so did some of the most valuable tulips, because their viruses were not passed on. There has not been a Semper Augusttus bloom since the middle of the 17^th century.

There are many who still insist the Semper Augusttus was the most beautiful tulip that ever existed, as there are many who insist an unregulated “free market” is morally and functionally superior to regulated markets. But Semper Augusttus was not a true species, but the by-product of Potyviridae devouring the tulip from the inside, consuming its genetic code, and eventually killing the bulb and flower.  It lived no longer than the rich man who had the fortune to maintain its artificial existence.  Modern tulips are far stronger,  their colors symmetrical, and more resistant than the frail infected flowers that so entranced the “Nouveau riche” of 1637. And because of that, billions of people today enjoy tulips  Some day, perhaps, the nouveau riche of a new age will come to admit that like the Potyviridea infected tulip, an unregulated  “free market”, is merely a splash of color which distracts your attention from the parasite devouring capitalism from the inside - unrestricted uninhibited greed, leading to unrestricted, uninhibited stupidity.

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