Other editions of book Black Tulip

The Black Tulip begins with an event that actually happened - the lynching of Johan de Witt (who was the equivalent of the Dutch Prime Minister) and his brother Cornelis in 1672. The rest of the plot takes place in the next 18 months and follows Cornelius van Baerle, a horticulturist who enters a competition to grow a black tulip, but is suddenly thrown in prison. There he meets Rosa, the prison guard's daughter.

On the 20th of August, 1672, the city of the Hague, always so lively, so neat, and so trimthat one might believe every day to be Sunday, with its shady park, with its tall trees,spreading over its Gothic houses, with its canals like large mirrors, in which its steeples andits almost Eastern cupolas are reflected,—the city of the Hague, the capital of the SevenUnited Provinces, was swelling in all its arteries with a black and red stream of hurried,panting, and restless citizens, who, with their knives in their girdles, muskets on theirshoulders, or sticks in their hands, were pushing on to the Buytenhof, a terrible prison, thegrated windows of which are still shown, where, on the charge of attempted murderpreferred against him by the surgeon Tyckelaer, Cornelius de Witt, the brother of the GrandPensionary of Holland was confined.If the history of that time, and especially that of the year in the middle of which ournarrative commences, were not indissolubly connected with the two names justmentioned, the few explanatory pages which we are about to add might appear quitesupererogatory; but we will, from the very first, apprise the reader—our old friend, towhom we are wont on the first page to promise amusement, and with whom we always tryto keep our word as well as is in our power—that this explanation is as indispensable tothe right understanding of our story as to that of the great event itself on which it is based.Cornelius de Witt, Ruart de Pulten, that is to say, warden of the dikes, ex-burgomasterof Dort, his native town, and member of the Assembly of the States of Holland, was fortynine years of age, when the Dutch people, tired of the Republic such as John de Witt, theGrand Pensionary of Holland, understood it, at once conceived a most violent affection forthe Stadtholderate, which had been abolished for ever in Holland by the “Perpetual Edict”forced by John de Witt upon the United Provinces.As it rarely happens that public opinion, in its whimsical flights, does not identify aprinciple with a man, thus the people saw the personification of the Republic in the twostern figures of the brothers De Witt, those Romans of Holland, spurning to pander to thefancies of the mob, and wedding themselves with unbending fidelity to liberty withoutlicentiousness, and prosperity without the waste of superfluity; on the other hand, theStadtholderate recalled to the popular mind the grave and thoughtful image of the youngPrince William of Orange.

On the 20th of August, 1672, the city of the Hague, always so lively, so neat, and so trimthat one might believe every day to be Sunday, with its shady park, with its tall trees,spreading over its Gothic houses, with its canals like large mirrors, in which its steeples andits almost Eastern cupolas are reflected,—the city of the Hague, the capital of the SevenUnited Provinces, was swelling in all its arteries with a black and red stream of hurried,panting, and restless citizens, who, with their knives in their girdles, muskets on theirshoulders, or sticks in their hands, were pushing on to the Buytenhof, a terrible prison, thegrated windows of which are still shown, where, on the charge of attempted murderpreferred against him by the surgeon Tyckelaer, Cornelius de Witt, the brother of the GrandPensionary of Holland was confined.If the history of that time, and especially that of the year in the middle of which ournarrative commences, were not indissolubly connected with the two names justmentioned, the few explanatory pages which we are about to add might appear quitesupererogatory; but we will, from the very first, apprise the reader—our old friend, towhom we are wont on the first page to promise amusement, and with whom we always tryto keep our word as well as is in our power—that this explanation is as indispensable tothe right understanding of our story as to that of the great event itself on which it is based.Cornelius de Witt, Ruart de Pulten, that is to say, warden of the dikes, ex-burgomasterof Dort, his native town, and member of the Assembly of the States of Holland, was fortynine years of age, when the Dutch people, tired of the Republic such as John de Witt, theGrand Pensionary of Holland, understood it, at once conceived a most violent affection forthe Stadtholderate, which had been abolished for ever in Holland by the “Perpetual Edict”forced by John de Witt upon the United Provinces.As it rarely happens that public opinion, in its whimsical flights, does not identify aprinciple with a man, thus the people saw the personification of the Republic in the twostern figures of the brothers De Witt, those Romans of Holland, spurning to pander to thefancies of the mob, and wedding themselves with unbending fidelity to liberty withoutlicentiousness, and prosperity without the waste of superfluity; on the other hand, theStadtholderate recalled to the popular mind the grave and thoughtful image of the youngPrince William of Orange.