CLARA BUTT
Tastes and fashions change, but even at a time when artists go by interesting names like “Lady Gaga,” it is hard to imagine a world renowned singer saddled with the name “Clara Butt.” There was such a person, however, and she lived from 1872 to 1936. The tulip named after her, saved from extinction by Scott Kunst, of Old House Gardens nursery, lives on. Both the rosy pink tulip and the name tend to make people smile.
Clara Butt was one of a trio of singing sisters born to an English sea captain and his wife in the port city of Bristol. Her musical talent must have manifested itself early, because by her teens, she was studying voice with a local teacher named Daniel Rootham. In 1889, when she was seventeen, she won a singing contest sponsored by The Royal College of Music. This was the same year that her namesake tulip was introduced by breeder Ernst H. Krelage.
As Butt’s career began in 1889, a new class of tulips, the Darwins, also saw the light of day. ‘Clara Butt’ was one of them and its tall stature and rounded, cup-shaped blossoms were characteristic of the class.
Not to be confused with their descendents, the modern Darwin hybrid tulips, the late nineteenth century Darwins came along at a time when the pendulum of floral fashion had swung away from tulips. According to author Michael King, in his book, Gardening With Tulips, Krelage traveled to France and bought up a notable old French tulip collection. Breeding the best of the single-colored forms from that breeding stock, Krelage came up with the Darwins. The petals were substantial and the flowers were excellent in the garden as well as for cutting. Like Clara Butt, the opera singer, ‘Clara Butt,’ the tulip, became popular with late Victorian and Edwardian consumers.
At over six feet tall, the singer was unusually statuesque for the time and had an equally large, booming contralto voice. Though she sang operatic areas and appeared in 1892 in a production of Gluck’s opera, Orfeo ed Euridice, she made her reputation as a concert singer. Like modern pop artists, she traveled the world, touring the United States, Europe, Australia and Japan. Butt’s repertoire included arias by Bach and Handel and German lieder or art songs; but she was most celebrated for her renditions of popular ballads, patriotic favorites like “Land of Hope and Glory,” and religious pieces including “Abide With Me.”
Clara Butt’s namesake tulip also became wildly popular. By some accounts, the tall, soft pink-flowered variety became the best selling tulip in the world, and Mr. Kunst says that it was featured in scores of catalogs.
But fame was fleeting. In 1943, Dutch breeder D.W. Lefeber introduced the Darwin hybrid tulips, the result of crosses between the Darwins and another group, the Fostoriana tulips. The new hybrids featured the same tall stems as their Darwin forbearers, but bloomed in a broader spectrum of colors, including brilliant reds, yellows and oranges. Darwin hybrids, like the well-known Appledoorn varieties, bloom in mid-spring. As production of the Darwin hybrids waxed, cultivation of the Darwins waned. By 2007, only one breeder still produced ‘Clara Butt’ commercially.
The singer thrived through World War I, when she performed special concerts for the benefit of the troops and war effort. In recognition of her service, she was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1920. Married in 1900 to another singer, Robert Kennerly Rumford, she had three children. In her later career, Clara Butt soldiered on through both severe illness and personal tragedies, but she lived and performed long enough to make a few 78-rpm recordings. Some of those recordings can still be heard on CD’s.
Today the singer and her namesake tulip live on, thanks to some notable friends. Mr. Kunst resurrected ‘Clara Butt’ by buying up the last commercially produced stock and entrusting the tulips to American bulb farmers who gradually increased supplies of the variety until there were enough bulbs to sell on a commercial scale once more. Only last year, the English garden writer and Oxford don, Robin Lane Fox, praised the old-fashioned virtues of the ‘Clara Butt’ tulip.
The story of Clara Butt, tulip and singer, proves that if you wait long enough, everything will come back into vogue again. This may be a comfort for those of us who still have clothes we wore in high school or elderly lava lamps taking up space in the cellar. If you want to hear Clara’s song in your garden, you can order bulbs next spring or summer from Old House Gardens, 536 Third Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48103, (734) 995-1486, www.oldhousegardens.com. Catalog $2.00.