Mrs. Sigourney of Hartford: Poems and Prose on the Early American Deaf Community

“Marriage of the Deaf and Dumb” (1834)

108 Part 2 “Marriage of the Deaf and Dumb” (1834) This poem first appeared in Sigourney’s 1834 Poems, and was one of her most widely reprinted poems about acquaintances in Deaf Hartford . The identity of the bridal couple is unknown, but the poem is likely a composite, since marriages among former pupils of the Hartford Asylum were common—in her essay on the American Asylum reprinted above, Sigourney says that more than one hundred former pupils had married a classmate by the time of that essay, 1845. If the poem’s statements about this wedding are to be believed, the officiate is signing the ceremony in silence and there is no spokenEnglish interpreting for any hearing witnesses, as would be expected today. We would assume this officiate is the Rev. Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet himself. Gallaudet had left the Asylum in the fall of 1830, intending to establish a small school for hearing children and write children’s books, and in 1834 he sought, and received, ordination in the Congregational ministry, almost twenty years after completing his seminary education. It’s difficult to imagine another minister in 1834 or earlier with fluency, equal to this task, in the sign language that had sprung up in Hartford. The speaker of this poem is not Sigourney herself but rather a fictional naïve observer who thinks, “Mute! mute! ’tis passing strange!” and compares the minister’s sign language to “necromancy,” a show of magic or conjuring. The speaker’s naïveté is also in evidence in the modifier “heavily” in the sentence “Methinks this silence heavily doth brood / Upon the spirit.” By the third stanza, Sigourney brings the speaker around to the understanding of the conventional Romantic notion that spoken language is inadequate for a bride’s vows, which “Hath never yet been shadowed out in words, / Or told in language.” Instead of ending, as she usually does, with a declaration that hearing and speech will be granted in heaven, here she concludes her poem with the thought that in heaven, the couple, still deaf, will have need only for the silent “eternal dialect of love.” “Marriage of the Deaf and Dumb” is written in blank verse, found elsewhere in this volume only in “The Funeral of Dr. Coggswell.” The lines concerning the risk a young woman takes in marrying— “a maiden casts / Her all of earth, perchance her all of heaven, / Into Sigourney Main Pgs 1-162.indd 108 4/4/2013 12:35:32 PM Deaf Hartford 109 a mortal’s hand”—are poignant when we consider the author’s unhappy marriage to the odious Charles Sigourney, who had denied her the separation she had asked for in 1827 and with whom she apparently lived in an uneasy truce until his business failure in 1837 wiped out his leverage over her. This text is from the 1834 Poems. “Marriage” was reprinted in Sigourney’s Pocohantas and Other Poems (1841), as well as in Select Poems (the successor of the 1834 Poems), which went through at least eleven editions between 1838 and 1856, and in her Illustrated Poems (1849, 1860). It also appeared as “Bridal of the Deaf and Dumb” in Sigourney’s 1850 Whisper to a Bride. • Marriage of the Deaf and Dumb No word! no sound! But yet a solemn rite Proceedeth through the festive-lighted hall. Hearts are in treaty and souls doth take That oath which unabsolved must stand, till death With icy seal doth stamp the scroll of life. No word! no sound! But still yon holy man With strong and graceful gesture doth impose The irrevocable vow, and with meek prayer Present it to be registered in Heaven. Methinks this silence heavily doth brood Upon the spirit. Say, thou flower-crowned bride! What means the sigh that from thy ruby lip Doth scape,* as if to seek some element Which angels breathe? Mute! Mute! ’tis passing strange! Like necromancy all. And yet ’tis well. For the deep trust with which a maiden casts Her all of earth, perchance her all of heaven, Into a mortal’s hand, the confidence With which she turns in every thought to him, Her more than brother, and her next to God, Hath never yet been shadowed out in words, *escape Sigourney Main Pgs 1-162.indd 109 4/4/2013 12:35:32 PM 110 Part 2 Or told in language. So ye voiceless pair, Pass on...