By day he has many little things to
do between the greater labours, to make the pockets (or sacks) by sewing
the sackcloth, or to mark the name of the farmer and the date with
stencil plates.
For sewing up the mouth of the pocket when filled there
is a peculiar kind of string used; you may see it hanging up in any of
the country 'stores;' they are not shops, but stores of miscellaneous
articles. He must be careful not to fill his pockets too full of hops,
not to tread them too closely, else the sharp folk in the market will
suspect that unfair means have been resorted to to increase the weight,
and will cut the pocket all to pieces to see if it contains a few bricks.
Nor must it be too light; that will not do.
In this district, far from the great historic hop-fields of Kent, the
hops are really grown in gardens, little pieces often not more than half
an acre or even less in extent. Capricious as a woman, hops will only
flourish here and there; they have the strongest likes and dislikes, and
experience alone finds out what will suit them. These gardens are always
on a slope, if possible in the angle of a field and under shelter of a
copse, for the wind is the terror, and a great gale breaks them to
pieces; the bines are bruised, bunches torn off, and poles laid
prostrate. The gardens being so small, from five to forty acres in a
farm, of course but few pickers are required, and the hop-picking becomes
a 'close' business, entirely confined to home families, to the cottagers
working on the farm and their immediate friends. Instead of a scarcity of
labour, it is a matter of privilege to get a bin allotted to you. There
are no rough folk down from Bermondsey or Mile End way. All staid,
stay-at-home, labouring people - no riots; a little romping no doubt on
the sly, else the maids would not enjoy the season so much as they do.
But there are none of those wild hordes which collect about the greater
fields of Kent. Farmers' wives and daughters and many very respectable
girls go out to hopping, not so much for the money as the pleasant
out-of-door employment, which has an astonishing effect on the health.
Pale cheeks begin to glow again in the hop-fields. Children who have
suffered from whooping-cough are often sent out with the hop-pickers;
they play about on the bare ground in the most careless manner, and yet
recover. Air and hops are wonderful restoratives. After passing an
afternoon with the drier in the kiln, seated close to a great heap of
hops and inhaling the odour, I was in a condition of agreeable excitement
all the evening. My mind was full of fancy, imagination, flowing with
ideas; a sense of lightness and joyousness lifted me up. I wanted music,
and felt full of laughter. Like the half-fabled haschish, the golden
bloom of the hops had entered the nervous system; intoxication without
wine, without injurious after-effect, dream intoxication; they were wine
for the nerves. If hops only grew in the Far East we should think wonders
of so powerful a plant. At hop-picking a girl can earn about 10 - s - . a
week, so that it is not such a highly paid employment as might be
supposed from the talk there is about it. The advantages are sideways, so
to say; a whole family can work at the same time, and the sum-total
becomes considerable. Hopping happily comes on just after corn harvest,
so that the labourers get two harvest-times. The farmers find it an
expensive crop. It costs 50 - l - . or 60 - l - . to pick a very small garden,
and if the Egyptian plague of insects has prevailed the price at market
will not repay the expenditure. The people talk much of a possible duty
on foreign hops. The hop farmer should have a lady-bird on his seal ring
for his sign and token, for the lady-bird is his great friend. Lady-birds
(and their larvae) destroy myriads of the aphides which cause rust, and a
flight of lady-birds should be welcomed as much as a flight of locusts is
execrated in other countries.
II.
One of the hop-picking women told me how she went to church and the
parson preached such a curious sermon, all about our 'innerds' (inwards,
insides), and how many 'boanes' we had, and by-and-by 'he told us that we
were the only beasts who had the use of our hands.' Years since at
village schools the girls used to swallow pins; first one would do it,
then another, presently half the school were taking pins. Ignorant of
physiology! Yet they did not seem to suffer; the pins did not penetrate
the pleura or lodge in the processes. Now Anatomy climbs into the pulpit
and shakes a bony fist at the congregation. That is the humerus of it, as
Corporal Nym might say. At the late election - the cow election - the
candidates were Brown, Conservative, and Stiggins, Liberal. The day after
the polling a farm labourer was asked how he filled up his voting paper.
'Oh,' said he full of the promised cow, 'I doan't care for that there
Brown chap, he bean't no good; zo I jest put a cross agen he, and voted
for Stiggins.' The dream of life was accomplished, the labourer had a
vote, and - irony - he voted exactly opposite to his intent.
Too-whoo! ooo! - the sound of a horn, - the hunt was up; but this was not
the hunting season. Looking out of the kiln door I saw a boy running at
full speed down the lane with a small drain-pipe tucked under his arm.
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