There is good reason for believing that hops were known to the Anglo-Saxons, whether or not they introduced them into Britain; for the name is admittedly derived from the Anglo-Saxon hoppan, ‘to climb.’ There is, however, a distich:
Turkey, carps, hoppes, pickard, and beer,
Came into England all in one year—
whence has arisen the notion that the plant was not known in this kingdom until the time of Henry VIII. But although the method of cultivating the plant in vogue in the Low Countries may then have been first introduced into England, as early as the year 1428 Parliament was petitioned against the hop as a ‘wicked weed,’ showing that it was then coming into use. It was not, however, until a century later that it became a general ingredient in the manufacture of malt liquors, and it was long chiefly imported; for the plant was not extensively cultivated with us until the beginning of the seventeenth century. The city of London did not look with favour upon the new industry, for they petitioned the Long Parliament against ‘two nuisances or offensive commodities which were likely to come into great use and esteem; and that was Newcastle coal in regard of their stench, and hops in regard that they would spoyl the taste of drink and endanger the people.’ The petition, however, does not seem to have met with very great success, for both industries soon increased to prodigious proportions. Hops were presently taxed, and became a source of considerable revenue.
Kent was always the chosen hop county. Some seventy thousand acres are now under this crop, and of these, forty thousand are in Kent alone. Farnham is the centre of the hop district of Surrey. Then parts of Hants and Sussex, Essex and Suffolk, Hereford and Worcester, and even so far north as Notts, have long been cropped with hops; and although success has been checkered with failure, the returns as a whole have proved fairly remunerative. The yield is, of course, very variable, ranging from eight to ten hundredweight per acre in a good season, the heaviest crop on record being twenty-five hundredweight, to five and even three or less in a bad one. The prices realised, too, depend so much upon condition and quality that it is only possible to give here the slightest indication. As much as twenty-five pounds per hundredweight has been paid for the first ‘pockets’ on sale in the Borough; but this is, of course, a phenomenal price. Owing to the immense quantities of foreign hops in the market, prices in an ordinary year seldom rule higher, for all but the very finest sorts, than from nine to thirteen pounds per hundredweight. But although hop cultivation is steadily on the increase in England, it by no means keeps pace with the import trade. Every year we import many hundred thousand hundredweight, of which about half comes from the United States, and the remainder from Australia, Belgium, France, Würtemberg, Central Germany, and Holland. Against this we export only a few thousand hundredweight to India and some of the colonies.
From all this, it will be seen that there is room for a considerable increase in the land under hop cultivation in this country. Nor, if the culture of the plant be strictly subordinated to that of other crops, need the risk be prohibitive. Moreover, a variety of uses have lately been introduced for the waste of the crop. Little, for instance, has hitherto been made out of the bines in this country; but within the last few years they have been experimentally converted into ensilage and found to form at once a valuable feeding material and a useful tonic. Other uses have been found for them abroad. Thus, in Sweden, they have long been treated so that they could be woven into a rough kind of cloth. The process was formerly very tedious, consisting chiefly of soaking them in water all the winter; but it has been greatly expedited by treating them successively with alkaline lye and acetic acid, when the fibre is at once ready for bleaching. This use for hopbine has, however, for some unknown reason, never attracted much attention in Great Britain. An English patent was once taken out for using the plant for tanning purposes; but, so far as we know, it has never been very successfully used; and the bine is still to a large extent regarded as a waste product, or at best used as litter.
GEORGE HANNAY’S LOVE AFFAIR.
CHAPTER III.—SUCCESS AT LAST.
Alfred Roberton was too politic to make known the full extent of his discomfiture. He made light of the matter: most authors had had their difficulties at first, and why should he expect to escape? He made himself very agreeable to the old gentleman. The short experience he had had of trying to earn money had led him to reflect that a man having a snug going business and a farm worth four or five thousand pounds might not be such an undesirable father-in-law after all, even though he was an innkeeper. He threw greater fervour than ever into his manner towards Anne, and talked in a gay and hopeful way of the future. But she was too keen-sighted to be deceived; she read the secret of his crushed hopes in his sunken eyes and cheeks, and was not at all misled by his forced cheerfulness of manner. She forbore to annoy him with prying questions, and affected in the meantime to see as roseate a prospect as he himself did. When the colour came back to his cheeks and he began to look more like his former self, she spoke to him seriously. Would he allow her to see the returned manuscripts?
‘You know, Alfred,’ she said, ‘I have been a great reader of what is called “light literature” in my day, and perhaps I might—from a reader’s point of view, you know—happen to light on the secret of your want of success. Give me two or three of your stories, and I will have a look at them before I go to bed to-night.’