Originally posted Thursday, November 22, 2012
A notorious experiment with paper money was commenced, to his personal and French national ruin, by John Law in 1717. This was the very same year that Isaac Newton effectively invented the gold standard, setting England on a course of two centuries of (mostly) prosperity.
Law’s Mississippi Bubble triggered many other speculations — the stories of which are collected in a 1720 volume called The Great Picture of Folly.
Presented for our pleasure, at Flickr, by blacque_jacques:
KERMIS WIND-KRAAMER EN GROSSIER
[Fair of the Retail and Wholesale Wind-Peddler.]
Wie redeneeren wil is mis. Men vind de Lapis by de gis.
[Who relies on reason goes astray. You’ll find the Philosopher’s Stone by the way.] [1720]
Shares for sale by carny folk! Whither the profits? Up in Smoke!
Animals can explain it all. They escaped Bubble-fever’s thrall.
The gentleman is Scottish banker John Law, founder of the Mississippi Company in France and architect of its collapse. You’ll be seeing a lot more of him.
Description below, followed by verses in French and Dutch describing the scene.
A man seated in the air on clouds, having a windmill on the top of his hat ;he casts papers from his hand, on these is written “Papiere Blaasbalge te grubbel (Paper bellows for whoever will catch them), “Actien vol passien” (Shares full of sufferings), and “Quinquampou”(Quincampoix) Behind this man is another, holding a candle, and indicating a scroll which hangs before them in the air; he says:
“‘k Dagt eerst ik was het ventje
Maar ‘t Brand myn hand aan ‘t endje”
[At first I thought I was the man; but in the end I burned my hand.]
A third man, who is also in the clouds, uses a pair of bellows to keep aloft a cat also aided by inflated bladders attached to its paws. The air forced from the bellows is variously “Heet” (Hot),”Lauw” (Lukewarm, and a pun on the name of John Law, promoter of the Mississippi Scheme), and “Koud” (Cold). The cat says:
“Word ik niet van de wind verstooten
Ik Val op ‘t Land nog op myn pooten”.
[If I were not blown by Wind, I should very soon fall on my feet]
Frans De Bruyn, at Project Muse, says of this marvelous volume:
Of the many polemical, literary, and artistic productions inspired by the great financial speculation that swept across Europe in 1719-20, the lavish folio Het groote tafereel der dwaasheid or The Great Picture [Scene] of Folly, which first appeared in Amsterdam at the end of 1720, is perhaps the most remarkable and undoubtedly the most elaborate. Het groote tafereel gathers numerous topical materials from satirical and didactic poems, plays, and farces to polemical pamphlets, engravings, and conditien (the terms of subscription for many of the Bubble companies hastily formed in the Netherlands in 1720). The collected riches of the volume are a blessing to the historian, since many of the texts and prints are preserved nowhere else.
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