Victorian readers knew Eliza Cook (1818–1889) as one of Britain's most popular poets. Her verses were recited in homes on both sides of the Atlantic, her political opinions won admiration among reformers, and her writing championed ordinary working people. Yet local tradition also claims that the celebrated poet spent part of her youth in the Redhill area - a story that is both intriguing and difficult to prove.
Born in London, Eliza was the youngest of eleven children of a brazier and shopkeeper. When she was nine, the family moved to a small farm near Horsham. Almost entirely self-educated, she began writing poetry while attending Sunday school, where her talent was first encouraged. Although some of her poems now seem sentimental to modern readers, many display a sharp social conscience than Victorian critics often acknowledged.
Eliza published her first poetry collection at the age of just seventeen and wrote frequently for magazines and newspapers. Further collections followed in 1838, 1864 and 1865, while her own periodical, Eliza Cook's Journal, ran from 1849 to 1854 before much of it was republished as Jottings from my Journal.
In childhood’s hour I linger’d near
The hallow’d seat with list’ning ear;
And gentle words that mother would give,
To fit me to die and teach me to live.
She told me shame would never betide,
With truth for my creed and God for my guide;
She taught me to lisp my earliest prayer,
As I knelt beside that old arm-chair.
Her best-known poem, The Old Armchair, is a moving meditation on memory, home and a mother's influence. Its popularity made her a household name throughout Britain and the United States.
Our Father
Pale, struggling blossoms of mankind,
Born only to endure;
White, helpless slaves whom Christians bind;
Sad children of the poor!
Ye walk in rags, ye breathe in dust,
With souls too dead to ask
For aught beyond a scanty crust,
And Labour’s grinding task.
Yet Cook's reputation rested on far more than sentimental verse. One contemporary described her as a ‘red hot radical.’ She believed passionately in education as a means of self-improvement - an idea she described as "levelling up" -and was closely associated with the Chartist movement. Between 1839 and 1845 she was the leading female poet published in the Chartist newspaper, the Northern Star, earning a reputation as the poet of the working classes.
Her poems frequently attacked social injustice. She condemned child labour, argued for shorter working hours and reminded prosperous Victorians that their wealth depended upon the sacrifices of working children. In her poem Our Father, she described them as the "unheeded workers in the marts of England's boasted wealth."
Eliza Cook never married, and her private life has attracted considerable attention from modern historians. Contemporary descriptions often referred to her masculine style of dress, short hair and independent manner, leading some writers to speculate that she was lesbian
Whether these writings reflect a romantic relationship remains uncertain. Cushman is known to have had long-term relationships with other women, but the precise nature of her friendship with Cook is impossible to establish from the surviving evidence.
Cook's connection with Redhill rests largely on local tradition rather than documentary evidence.
Following her death in 1889, local newspapers reported that she had once lived in Hooley Lane, although they disagreed about the exact location.
One account, published in the Surrey Gazette on 30 September 1889, identified the house as Hooley Cottage, a sixteenth-century cottage at 10 Hooley Lane. Another tradition linked her with The Waterhouse, later known as Brook Glen, a substantial Victorian house beside Redhill Brook near the junction with Earlsbrook Road.
These stories gave rise to another attractive legend. Local writers suggested that Redhill Brook inspired Cook's 1845 poem The Old Watermill, believing it referred to a watermill that once stood beside the brook before being removed during construction of the railway bridge at Hooley Lane.
The Old Watermill
“And is this the old millstream that ten years ago
Was so fast in its currents, so pure in its flow,
Whose mystical waters would ripple and shine,
With the glory and dash of a miniature Rhine?”
Unfortunately, the evidence does not support the tale. There is no convincing proof that Cook spent her childhood in the Redhill area, nor is there evidence that a watermill ever existed at the supposed location. The story remains an appealing piece of local folklore rather than established history.
Whether or not Eliza Cook ever lived in Redhill, Eliza Cook was an intriguing woman and she deserves to be remembered as a poet whose work gave a voice to those who were rarely heard.
A History of Redhill, Volume One, (1999) Alan Moore
The Redhill Story, (1994) Nigel Dunne
“Loud and Open Speaking in ‘the People's’ Mighty Name”: Eliza Cook, Music and Politics, Published online by Cambridge University Press, (2021)