THE HOP FOREMAN AND THE HOP DRIER.
"Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield,
* * * * *
How bowed the woods beneath their sturdy stroke."
--GRAY'S _Elegy_.
Jarge was one of the most prominent characters among my men. He was
not a native of the Vale, coming from the Lynches, a hilly district to
the north of Evesham. He was a sturdy and very excellent workman. He
did with his might whatsoever his hand found to do, and everything he
undertook was a success. The beautifully trimmed hedge in front of his
cottage-garden proclaimed his method and love of order at a glance.
Jarge was a wag; he was the man who, like Shakespeare's clowns,
stepped on to the stage at the critical moment and saved a serious
situation with a quaint or epigrammatic expression.
He was very scornful of the condition of the farm when I came, and it
was he, whose reply to the late tenant that his arable land would soon
be all grass, I have already quoted. In speaking to me, at almost our
first interview, he could not refrain from an allusion to the foulness
of the land; some peewits were circling over those neglected fields,
and it was far from reassuring to be told--though he did not intend to
discourage me--that "folks say, when you sees them things on the land,
the farm's broke!"
From the natural history point of view he was perfectly correct, as
peewits generally frequent wild and uncultivated places where the
ploughman and the labourer are rarely seen.
Owing to the somewhat unconvincing fact of his wife's brother being a
gamekeeper on the Marquis's estate near Jarge's native village, he had
acquired, and retained through all the years of my farming, a sporting
reputation; he was always the man selected for trapping any evil beast
or bird that might be worrying us; and when the cherries were
beginning to show ruddy complexions in the sunshine, and the starlings
and blackbirds were becoming troublesome, armed with an old
muzzle-loader of mine, he made incessant warfare against them, and his
gun could be heard as early as five o'clock in the morning, while the
shots would often come pattering down harmlessly on my greenhouse.
There came a time when some thieving carrion crows were robbing my
half-tame wild duck's nests of their eggs, and Jarge was, of course,
detailed to tackle them. Weeks elapsed without any result; the
depredations continued, and the men began to chaff him; finally Bell
"put the lid on," as people say nowadays, by the following sally: "Ah,
Jarge, if ever thee catches a craw 'twill be one as was hatched from
an addled egg!"
For weeks before harvest Jarge patrolled my wheatfields, crowds of
sparrows rising and dispersing for a time after every shot, only, I
fear, to foregather again very soon on another field, perhaps half a
mile distant. No doubt he sent some to my neighbours in return for
those which they sent to me.
Jarge was an instance of superior descent; his surname was that of an
ancient and prominent county family in former days; he carried himself
with dignity and was generally respected; he possessed the power of
very minute observation, and was of all others the man to find coins
or other small leavings of Roman and former occupiers of my land. His
eldest daughter was a charming girl, and, when Jarge became a widower,
she made a most efficient mistress of his household. She showed, too,
quite unmistakably her descent from distinguished ancestry. Tall,
clear-complexioned, graceful, dignified, and rather serious, but with
a sweet smile, she was a daughter of whom any man might have been
proud. To my thinking, she was the belle of the village, and she made
a very pretty picture in her sun-bonnet, among the green and golden
tracery of the hop-bine in the hopping season accompanied by the
smaller members of the family. At the "crib" into which the hops are
picked, many bushels proved their industry, and there were no leaves
or rubbish to call for rebuke at the midday and evening measurings.
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. For though
hop-picking is a fascinating occupation when the sun shines and the
sky is blue, it is otherwise when the mornings are damp or the hops
dripping with dew, and when heavy thunder-rains have left the ground
wet and cold.
He had a cheery word for all who were working steadily, and a
semi-sarcastic remark for the careless and unmethodical; a keen eye
for hops wasted and trodden into the ground, or for poles of
undersized hops, unwelcome to the pickers and hidden beneath those
from which the hops had been picked. He acted as buffer between
capital and labour, smoothing troubles over, telling me of the
pickers' difficulties, and explaining my side to the pickers when the
quality was poor and prices discouraging, so that the work went with a
swing and with happy faces and good-humoured chaff.
I was always pleased to hear the pickers singing, for I knew then that
all was well. Sometimes, after a trying day, when Jarge had been
called upon to expostulate, or "to talk" more than usual, the corners
of his mouth would take a downward turn, and he complained, perhaps,
of gipsies or tramps whom I was obliged to employ when the crop was
heavy, though they were kept in a gang apart from the villagers; but
he always came up happy again next morning, the mouth corners tending
upwards, and his broad and beaming smile with a radiance like the
rising sun on a midsummer morning.
Jarge was a man of discrimination. When we were forced to inaugurate a
School Board on account of the growing difficulty, owing to the bad
times, of collecting voluntary subscriptions, all the old school
managers, including my second Vicar--I served under three Vicars as
church-warden--refused to join the Board. Jarge, who was much
exercised in his mind as to the possibility of future bad management,
came to me, and referring to a proposal to place working-men on the
Board, said: "We wants men like you, sir, for members; what's the good
of sending we dunderyeads there?"
Going round the farm on his daughter's wedding-day, I was surprised to
find him at work; and when I asked him why he was not at the ceremony,
"Well," he replied, "I don't think much of weddings--the fittel
(victuals) ain't good enough; give me a jolly good fu-ner-ral!"
Jarge wore a brown velveteen coat on high-days and holidays by virtue
of his sporting reputation, and looked exceedingly smart with special
corduroy breeches and gaiters and a wide-awake felt hat. He was much
annoyed in Birmingham, whither I had sent all the men to an
agricultural show, at hearing a man say to a companion, "There's
another of them Country Johnnies." When I told him what a swell he
looked, he replied somewhat ruefully, "No! that's what I never could
be," as though he felt that his appearance was disappointingly rustic.
Though a most industrious man, he had dreams of the enjoyment of
complete leisure; he told me that if ever he possessed as much as
fifty pounds he would never do another day's work as long as he lived.
I answered that when that ideal was reached he would postpone his
projected ease until he had made it a hundred, and so on ad infinitum;
and this proved a correct forecast, for in time, by the aid of a
well-managed allotment and regular wages, he saved a good bit of
money. When I sold my fruit crops by auction, on the trees, for the
buyers to pick, just before I gave up my land, as I should not be
present to harvest the late apples and cider fruit after Michaelmas,
he came forward with a bid of one hundred pounds for one of the
orchards, though it was sold eventually for a higher price.
He was not well versed in finance, however, for when the owner of his
cottage offered, at his request, to build a new pigsty if he would pay
a rent of 5 per cent, annually on the cost--a very fair
proposal--Jarge declined with scorn, being, I think, under the
impression that the owner was demanding the complete sum of five
pounds annually, and I found it impossible to disabuse his mind of the
idea. He felt aggrieved also by the fact that, having paid rent for
twenty-five or thirty years, he was no nearer ownership of his cottage
than when he began. His argument was that, as he had paid more than
the value of the cottage, it should be his property; the details of
interest on capital and all rates and repairs paid by the owner did
not appeal to him.
On the occasion of a concert at Malvern, which my wife and her sister
organized for the benefit of our church restoration fund, I gave all
my men a holiday, and sent them off by train at an early hour; they
were to climb the Worcestershire Beacon--the highest point of the
Malvern range--in the morning, and attend the concert in the
afternoon. It was a lovely day, and the programme was duly carried
out. Next morning I found Jarge and another man, who had been detailed
for the day's work to sow nitrate of soda on a distant wheat-field,
sitting peacefully under the hedge; they told me that the excitement
and the climb had completely tired them out, but that they would stop
and complete the job, no matter how late at night that might be. It
was the hill-climbing, I think, that had brought into play muscles not
generally used in our flat country. I sympathized, and left them
resting, but the work was honourably concluded before they left the
field.
When there was illness in Jarge's house and somebody told him that the
doctor had been seen leaving, he answered that he "Would sooner see
the butcher there any day"--not, perhaps, a very happy expression in
the circumstances, but intended to convey that a butcher's bill, for
good meat supplied, was more satisfactory than a doctor's account,
which represented nothing in the way of commissariat.
Among the annual trips to which I treated my men, I sent them for a
long summer day to London, and one of my pupils kindly volunteered to
act as conductor to the sights. They had a very successful day, and
the principal streets and shows were visited; among the latter the
Great Wheel, then very popular, was the one that seemed to interest
them most.
Next morning some of the travellers were hoeing beans in one of my
fields; I interviewed them on my round, and inquired what they thought
of London. They had much enjoyed the day, and were greatly struck by
the fact that the barmaid, at the place where they had eaten the lunch
they took with them, had recognized them as "Oostershire men"; they
had demanded their beer in three or four quart jugs, which could be
handed round so that each man could take a pull in turn, instead of
the usual fashion of separate glasses, and it appeared that this
indicated the locality from whence they came. Probably she had noticed
their accent, and, being a native of Worcestershire, remembered their
intimate drinking custom as a county peculiarity. The men proceeded to
describe the sights of London, and one of them added that there was
one thing they could not find there, stopping suddenly in some
confusion. I pressed him to explain. He still hesitated, and, turning
to the others, said: "_You_ tell the master, Bill." Bill was not so
diffident. "Well," he said, "we couldn't see a good-looking 'ooman in
Lunnon; for Jarge here, 'e was judge over 'em for a bit, and then Tom
'e took it, nor 'e couldn't see one neither!"
Jarge was somewhat of a _bon vivant_, and much appreciated my annual
present of a piece of Christmas beef. When thanking me and descanting
upon its tenderness and acceptability, on one occasion, he continued,
"It ain't like the sort of biff we folks has to put up with, that
tough you has to set in the middle of the room at dinner, for fear you
might daish your brains out agen the wall a-tuggin' at it with your
teeth!"
Jarge had one song and only one that I ever heard, and he was always
called upon for it at harvest suppers and other jollifications; it was
not a classic, but he rendered it with characteristic drollery, and
always brought down the house. I conclude my sketch of him by
mentioning it because it is almost my last impression of his vivid
personality, trotted out with great energy at my farewell supper, a
day or two before I left Aldington.
Among the men who were bequeathed to me, so to speak, by my
predecessor, Tom was one of whom I always had a high opinion. Tall,
vigorous, and well made, one recognized at once his possibilities as a
valuable man. He was somewhat cautious, taciturn, very sensitive and
reserved, but would open out in conversation when alone with me. As
quite a young man he had worked at the building of the branch line
from Oxford to Wolverhampton, via Worcester, the "O.W. and W.," or
"Old Wusser and Wusser," as it was called, until taken over by the
Great Western Railway. The latter, extending from London to Oxford,
was, I believe, one of Brunell's masterly conceptions, being without a
tunnel the whole way. But the new line had to pierce the Cotswolds
before reaching the Vale of Evesham, and Tom had many yarns about the
construction of the long Mickleton tunnel. Among them was a tradition
of the cost, so great that guineas laid edgeways throughout its length
would not pay for it.
In my time there was a splendid service of express trains running from
London to Worcester without a stop, and coming downhill into the Vale,
through the tunnel and towards Evesham, the speed approximated to a
mile a minute. I was talking to one of my men, a hedger, working near
the line which bounded a portion of my land, when one of the express
trains came dashing along and passed us with a roar in a few seconds.
"My word," said he, "I reckon that's a co-rider." I was puzzled, but
presently it came to me that he meant "corridor"; he had probably seen
the word in the local paper without having heard it pronounced.
It was a treat to watch Tom's magnificent physique when felling a big
tree, stripped to his shirt, with sleeves rolled up, and his gleaming
axe slowly raised and poised for a second above him before it fell
with the gathered impetus of its own weight and his powerful stress.
Biting time after time into the exact place aimed at, and at the most
effective angle possible, the clean chips would fly in all directions
until the necessary notch was cut and the basal outgrowths, close to
the ground around the sturdy column, were reduced, so that the
cross-cut saw could complete its downfall with a mighty crash. There
is always something sad about the felling of an ancient tree; one
feels it is a venerable creature that has passed long years of
unchallenged dominion on the spot occupied, and one can scarcely avoid
an idea of its intelligence and its silent record of passing
generations, who have welcomed its shade at blazing summer noontides,
or crept close to its warm touch for shelter from the winter's
chilling blast and the hissing hail.
Tom was always the leader of my team of mowers when the grass was cut,
for, with the large staff I employed on purpose for the all-important
hop-gardens, I never wanted, till towards the end of my time, to make
use of a machine. The steady swing of his scythe, with scarcely an
apparent effort, the swish, as the swathe fell beneath its keen edge,
and the final lift of the severed grasses at the end of the stroke,
all in regular rhythmic action, were very fascinating to watch. At
intervals came a halt for "whetting" the blade, and the musical sound
of rubber (sharpening stone) against steel, equally adroitly
accomplished, proved the artist at his work, with a delicacy of touch
which, perhaps in different circumstances, might have produced the
thrills with which Pachmann's velvet caress or Paderewski's refined
expression enchant a vast and rapturous audience.
As a land-drainer, too, I loved to watch him standing in the slippery
trench, with not an inch more soil moved than was necessary, lifting
out the decreasing "draws," and leaving a bottom nicely rounded
exactly to fit the pipes, and finally the methodical adjustment of
each pipe, with the concluding tap to bring it close to the last one
laid. Draining is an art which taxes the ability of the best of men,
for it must be remembered that, like the links of a chain, its
efficiency is no greater than that of its weakest part.
When I had to arrange for the harvesting of my first hop crop, it was
necessary to find a man who could be entrusted with the critical work
of drying the hops, and Tom was the man I chose. I had my kiln ready,
constructed in an old malthouse, on the latest principles, and in time
for the first crop. The kiln consisted of a space about 20 feet
square, walled off at one end of the old building, but with entrances
on the ground and first floors. Beneath, in the lower compartment, was
the fireplace, a yard square, and 16 feet above was the floor on which
the hops were dried. Anthracite coal was used for fuel, the fire being
maintained day and night throughout the picking--the morning's picking
drying between 1 p.m. and 12 midnight, and the afternoon's picking
between 1 a.m. and 12 o'clock noon. Tom was therefore on duty for the
whole twenty-four hours, with what snatches of sleep he could catch in
the initial stage of each drying and at odd moments.
The process requires great skill and attention; at first he and I,
with what little knowledge I had, puzzled it out together, he having
had no previous experience, and night after night I sat up with him
till the load came off the kiln at midnight. A slight excess of heat,
or an irregular application of it, will spoil the hops, the principle
being to raise the temperature, very gradually at first, to 30 or 40
degrees higher at the finish. Hops should be _blown_ dry by a blast of
hot air, not baked by heat alone. The drier, of course, has to keep a
watchful eye on the thermometer on the upper floor among the hops--Tom
always called it the "theometer"--regulating his fire accordingly and
the admission of cold air through adjustable ventilators on the
outside walls. This regulation varies according to the weather, the
moisture of the air, and the condition of the hops, and calls for
critical judgment and accuracy. Often, tired out with the previous
ordinary day's work, we had much ado to keep awake at night, and it
was fatal to arrange a too comfortable position with the warmth of the
glowing fire and the soporific scent of the hops. Then Tom would
announce that it was "time to get them little props out," which, in
imagination, were to support our wearied eyelids.
When we decided that the hops were ready to be cooled down, to prevent
breaking when being taken off the drying floor, all doors, windows,
and ventilators were thrown open and the fire banked up, and, while
they were cooling, he went to neighbouring cottages to rouse the men
who came nightly to unload and reload the kiln, and then I could
retire to bed.
Tom was devoted to duty, and was so successful as a hop-drier that he
soon became capable of managing two more kilns in the same building,
which I enlarged as I gradually increased my acreage. In a good season
he would often have £100 worth of hops through his hands in the
twenty-four hours, sometimes more. He was the only man I ever employed
at this particular work, and throughout those years he turned out hops
to the value of nearly £30,000 without a single mishap or spoiled
kiln-load--a better proof of his devotion to duty than anything else I
could say.
He was a very picturesque figure when, "crowned with the sickle and
the wheaten sheaf, Autumn comes jovial on," and he was cutting wheat,
his head covered with a coloured handkerchief, knotted at the corners,
to protect the back of his neck from the sun, which must have been
much cooler than the felt hat--a kind of "billycock" with a flat
top--which he habitually wore. I have noticed that the labourer's
style of hat is a matter of great conservatism, probably due to the
fancy that he would "look odd" in any other, and would be liable to
chaff from his fellow-workers.
Tom had a tremendous reach, and got through a big day's work in the
harvest-field, but nearly always knocked himself up after two or three
days in the broiling sun, developing what he called, "Tantiddy's fire
" in one forearm; this is the local equivalent of St. Anthony's fire,
an ailment termed professionally erysipelas, but I have never heard
how it is connected with the saint.
Harvesters often work in pairs, and they are then "butties"
(partners), but not infrequently a harvester will be accompanied by
his wife or daughter to tie up the sheaves; and their active figures
among the golden corn, backed by a horizon of blue sky, make a
charming picture. The mind goes back to the old Scripture references
to the time of harvest, and the idea impresses itself that one is
looking at almost exactly the same scene as it appeared to the old
writers, and which they described in all the dignity of their stately
language.
Tom was not much given to the epigrammatic expression of his thoughts,
like some of the other men, but he had a vein of humour. A relative of
his used to come over from Evesham to sing in our church choir, and I
remember a special occasion when the choir was somewhat _piano_ until
this singer's part came in; he had a strong and not very melodious
voice, and the effort and the effect alike were startling. Tom was in
church at the time, and had evidently been watching expectantly for
the _fortissimo_ climax; he told me afterwards that "when S. opened
his mouth I knew it was sure to come." It did!
I have mentioned Tom's cautiousness; he had a way of assenting to a
statement without committing himself to definite agreement. I once
asked him who the leaders had been in a disorderly incident, being
aware that he knew; I suggested the names, but the nearest approach to
assent which I could extract was, "If you spakes again you'll be
wrong."