Trouble Your Head with Your Own Affairs

These interesting verses were lately sought through this column by an enquirer and a copy has been kindly supplied by a western reader.  She mentions the author as Eliza Cook,[1] whose name is a household word.

You all know the burden that hangs to my song,

Like the bell of Saint Paul’s ‘tis a common ding-dong,

I don’t go to college for classical tools,

For Apollo has now set up national schools.

Oh mine is a theme you can chant when you may,

Fit for every age, and for every day;

And if rich folks say, “Poor folks, don’t give yourselves airs,”

Bid them trouble their heads with their own affairs.

Bid them trouble their heads with their own affairs.

Bid them trouble their heads with their own affairs.

Oh, how hard it appears to leave others alone,

And those with most sin often cast the first stone;

What missiles we scatter wherever we pass,

Tho’ our own walls are formed of most delicate glass;

Faults and errors chock up like a snowstorm, I ween,

But we each have a door of our own to keep clean;

And ‘twould save us a vast many squabbles and cares,

If we’d trouble our heads with our own affairs.

If we’d etc.

The “Browns” spend the bettermost part of the day

Watching the “Greens” who live over the way;

They knew about this and they know about that,

And can tell Mister Green when he has a new hat.

Mrs. Brown finds that Mrs. Green’s never at home.

Mrs. Brown doubts how Mrs. Green’s money can come;

Mrs. Brown’s youngest child tumbles downstairs

Through not troubling her head with her own affairs

Through not etc.

Figgins, the grocer, with sapient frown,

Is forsaking his counter to go to the “Crown;”

With his grog and his politics, mighty and big,

He raves like a Tory, or swears like a Whig;

He discusses the Church, Constitution, and State

Till his creditors also get up a debate,

And a plum of rich color is lost to his heirs

Through not troubling himself with his own affairs.

Through etc.

Let a symptom of wooing or weeding be found,

And full soon the impertinent whisper goes round;

The fortune, the beauty, the means, and the ends

Are all carefully weighted by our good-natured friends;

‘Tis a chance if the lady be perfectly right—

She must be a flirt if she be not a fright;

And how pleasant ‘twould be if the meddlesome dears

Would but trouble their heads with their own affairs.

Would but etc.

We are busy in helping the far-away slaves;

We must cherish the Turk, for he’s foreign and brave;

But methinks there are those in our own famous land

Whose cheeks may be fattened by charity’s hand;

We must interfere with all other men’s creeds,

From the Brahmin’s white bull, to the string of prayer-beads;

But a wise exhortation in Christian Prayers

Would be “Trouble your heads with your own affairs.”

Would be etc.

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[1] Eliza Cook was born in 1818 in London Road, Southwark to a local tradesman and his wife. She attended the local Sunday Schools and was encouraged by the son of the music master to produce her first volume of poetry. From this she took confidence; in 1835 while only seventeen years of age she published her first volume titled Lays of a Wild Harp. In 1837 she began to offer verse to the radical Weekly Dispatch, then edited by William Johnson Fox. She was a staple of its pages for the next ten years. She also offered material to The Literary Gazette, Metropolitan Magazine and New Monthly. In 1838 Eliza published Melaia and other Poems. From 1849 to 1854 she wrote, edited, and published Eliza Cook’s Journal, a weekly periodical she described as one of “utility and amusement.” Cook also published Jottings from my Journal (1860), and New Echoes (1864); in 1863 she was given a Civil List pension income of £100 a year.

Her work for the Dispatch and New Monthly was later pirated by George Julian Harney, the Chartist, for the Northern Star. Familiar with the London Chartist movement, in its various sects, she followed many of the older radicals in disagreeing with the O’Brienites and O’Connorites in their disregard for repeal of the Corn Laws. She also preferred the older Radicals’ path of Friendly Societies and self-education.

Her poem The Old Armchair (1838) made hers a household name for a generation, both in England and in America. Cook was a proponent of political and sexual freedom for women, and believed in the ideology of self-improvement through education, something she called “levelling up.” This made her a great favorite with the working-class public. Her works became a staple of anthologies throughout the century. She died in Wimbledon in 1889.