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Updated: June 20, 2025
But the opportunity did not come that day, nor the next, nor the next after that, for it seemed that with the approach of the "Hop-picking" Anthea had no thought, or time, for anything else. Wherefore Bellew smoked many pipes, and, as the days wore on, possessed his soul in patience, which is a most excellent precept to follow in all things but love.
A kind-hearted farmer, hearing of the little boy's exertions to aid his mother, employed him to wait on his reapers during harvest; and as the time of fruit-gathering and hop-picking in the autumn furnished plenty of such work as he was able to do, all his time was, as one might say, filled up.
Owing to the bad summer of 1909, which affected the hop-picking and other businesses, the destitution that year was as great during the warm months as it usually is in the winter. The poor of this district, she said, 'generally live upon fried fish and chips.
Hop-picking is always somewhat reminiscent of the Saturnalia; with hundreds of strangers from distant villages and a few gipsies and tramps, it is not possible to enforce strict discipline, for it is very necessary to keep the people in good-humour.
I do not mean that wage-earning was a thing they never did. There was not a woman in the valley, perhaps, but had experience of it at hay-making and harvesting, while all would have been disappointed to miss the hop-picking. But these occasional employments had more resemblance to holidays and outings than they had to constant work for a living.
He had come from Kent, he said, and humorously added that he had been hop-picking, and was going to join his wife and the family circle for the festival of Christmas. He remarked that his wife had written to him to say she had lodgers. The four men naturally stayed a little to hear all this news and to celebrate Christmas once more, but they presently were forced to tear themselves away.
There had been a rush of new entries owing to the conclusion of the hop-picking season, the insolvency of a local ginger-beer bottling factory, and other mysterious influences. "Name?" Nosey spelt it patiently. "Religion?" Nosey looked sheepish and rather flattered as a Hottentot might if you asked him for the address of his tailor.
This stripping of the osiers is a most busy time in the neighbourhood of the large plantations almost like hop-picking for men, women, and children can all help. It does not require so much strength as skill and patience. After the peeling the sticks have to be dried by exposure to the sun; they are then sorted into lengths, and sold in bundles.
I selected Jarge for foreman of the hop-picking as a most responsible and trustworthy man; it was then that his sense of humour was most conspicuous, a very important and valuable trait when 300 women and children, and the men who supplied them with hops on the poles, have to be kept cheerful and good-tempered every day and all day for three weeks or a month, sometimes under trying conditions.
Little dirty Jack, who abides in Clement's Inn gateway, and blacks my boots for a penny, takes his month's hop-picking every year as a matter of course. Why shouldn't he? I'm delighted at it. I love vagabonds, only I prefer poor to rich ones. Couriers and ladies'-maids, imperials and travelling carriages, are an abomination unto me; I cannot away with them.
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