LAURA REDDEN SEARING
(1840–1923)
Laura Searing was born as Laura Catherine Redden, in Somerset County, Maryland on February 9, 1840. She became deaf at age eleven due to meningitis. By that time, her family was living in St. Louis, so she enrolled in the Missouri School for the Deaf in Fulton. She wrote the essay included here when she was just eighteen. It appeared in the American Annals of the Deaf. In it, she offers some perceptive observations on the relationship between deafness, sign language, and writing.
After graduating in 1858, Searing found work as a columnist and assistant editor for a St. Louis religious newspaper, The Presbyterian. She also contributed articles to the St. Louis Republican. She became engaged to a St. Louis Presbyterian minister, but instead of marriage chose to go to Washington, D.C., as a war correspondent. There she interviewed President Lincoln, General Ulysses S. Grant, and members of Congress. In 1862 she published her first book, Notable Men in the House of Representatives, under the pen name of Howard Glyndon, which she used throughout her career. An ardent Unionist, Searing also started writing patriotic poetry. In 1863, her poem “Belle Missouri”—written in response to “Maryland, My Maryland”—was set to music and became a popular battle song among pro-Unionists. The following year, her book of war poems, Idyls of Battle, appeared and was well received. President Lincoln was among the people who bought the volume.
Searing’s subsequent career was equally distinguished. She spent several years in Europe as a foreign correspondent. Her writing appeared in such diverse publications as the New York Times, Harper’s, and the Atlantic Monthly. In 1876, she married a hearing attorney, Edward W. Searing, and settled in New York. They had one child.
Searing advocated the teaching of speech in schools for deaf students. Yet embarrassed by her own strained and unnatural speech, she refused to speak for years, preferring to write or sign instead. As an adult, she was a pupil of Alexander Graham Bell, who helped her to regain confidence in her voice, although she never learned to speechread.
In 1889, Searing delivered a lengthy dedicatory poem in sign and voice at the unveiling of the Gallaudet statue on the campus of the National Deaf-Mute College. She published more than two hundred poems and five books during her career. She spent her final years in California.
A Few Words about the Deaf and Dumb
It is one of the most interesting sights in the world to watch a mute, whose mind is just beginning to come out of its dormant state, after he has mastered the first rudiments of instruction, and is beginning to comprehend what is taught him. The countenance before so inanimate and vacant, becomes bright and intelligent. His movements are quick and nervous. His eye, sparkling with awakened thought, is ever turning to some new object of which he would seek information. It seems as though he can not learn fast enough. Life wears a new aspect for him, it is all rose-hued; and the joy of being able to communicate with others, and to be understood and sympathized with by them, is almost too great for him. Every glance, every movement shows that the mind within has at last been aroused, and is seeking to free itself from the fetters which have so long enthralled it. From the moment that the mute begins to think, we date a new era in his mental existence.1
Laura Redden Searing, 1884
Signs are the natural language of the mute. Writing may be used in his intercourse with others, but when conversing with those who are, like himself, deprived of hearing and speech, you will always find that he prefers signs to every other mode of intercourse; and every other established means of communicating his thoughts, no matter what facility he may have acquired in it, is no more nor less than what a foreign language is to those who hear and speak. It may be never so well learned, but still it is foreign.2 And this, I believe, is just as it should be. Pantomime is the language Nature has provided for the mute, and he should never be discouraged in making signs. Teach him to articulate if you can, make him a good writer if you will, but you will find, if he has his choice, signs will always be the medium of his intercourse with others. It is right. Do you not all love your mother tongue? Then why should not the mute prefer his own language to any other? The language of signs is not, as some may imagine, a confused jargon. Signs, when used by one well versed in them, can be made to convey the most subtle and abstract ideas. They are a language built up like any other, and those who would acquire it perfectly and thoroughly must make it a life-study.3 Yet it is not to be denied, that as a means of intercourse with the world, it fails utterly; but we use his own language to convey to the mute the knowledge of that which is foreign, and signs are the chief means of instructing him in written language.
There are but few instances of the deaf and deaf-dumb having attained literary eminence. It must be partly because the mind, in most cases, does not rise above the common level; and partly because the language of signs, from its peculiar structure, disqualifies them for expressing their thoughts in written language. How could we expect an English poet to excel in writing French rhymes? And thus a mute may be never so eloquent when expressing his thoughts in pantomime, but be utterly powerless to reproduce the same on paper.4 Massieu and Clerc are brilliant instances of what perseverance may accomplish.5 But does any one doubt that if these men had been blessed with hearing and speech, their acquirements would have been much more extensive and varied? Dr. Kitto and Charlotte Elizabeth are noble examples of the triumph of intellect over all obstacles.6 And here the light of genius burned brightly, in spite of disadvantages. But each of them became deaf after they had acquired speech, and distinct ideas of language. Semi-mutes have an immense advantage over those who are born deaf. A child endowed with hearing learns incidentally and without effort, things which it requires years of patient toil to teach the mute.
But yet, do not think that our lot is all dark; that because the many glad sounds of earth fall not upon our ears, and no words of affection or endearment pass our lips, all sources of happiness are closed to us. Oh! no, no. Our God is a tender and merciful Father, and well has he provided for his “silent ones.” We can read upon your faces the emotions of your minds as if they were written in a book.7 All the world of nature is open to our eager gaze; and the eye almost supplies the deficiencies of the ear. Our life has much of sunshine; and our Father, in His all seeing wisdom, has blessed the greater part of us with buoyant spirits and quick sympathies. We are much more inclined to enjoy the present moment, than to repine for the past or doubt the future. And if sometimes a deep yearning for those blessings which we see you enjoying, but which are denied to us, dims for a moment the mirthful light of our eyes, it is soon swept away by the dear remembrance of our Father’s promise, for we know “He doeth all things well.” And when we reach our heavenly home, the deaf ear will be unsealed and the mute voice gush out in glorious melody, to be hushed no more through all eternity.8 And this sweet hope, this dear assurance, gives me strength to say, with head bowed in meek submission, “Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in thy sight!”
Belle Missouri
Arise and join the patriot train,
Belle Missouri! My Missouri!
They should not plead and plead in vain,
Belle Missouri! My Missouri!
The precious blood of all thy slain
Arises from each reeking plain.
Wipe out this foul disloyal stain,
Belle Missouri! My Missouri!
Recall the field of Lexington,9
Belle Missouri! My Missouri!
How Springfield blushed beneath the sun,
Belle Missouri! My Missouri!
And noble Lyon all undone,10
His race of glory but begun,
And all thy freedom yet unwon,
Belle Missouri! My Missouri!
They called thee craven to thy trust,
Belle Missouri! My Missouri!
They laid thy glory in the dust,
Belle Missouri! My Missouri!
The helpless prey of treason’s lust,
The helpless mark of treason’s thrust,
Nor shall thy sword in scabbard rust!
Belle Missouri! My Missouri!
She thrills! her blood begins to burn!
Belle Missouri! My Missouri!
She’s bruised and weak, but she can turn,
Belle Missouri! My Missouri!
1. Like Laurent Clerc (see p. 10, n. 4), Searing dramatizes the effect of education on deaf people somewhat by suggesting that they do not truly think before coming to school.
2. As we have seen, Clerc, Burnet, and Carlin make similar points about the foreignness of English to congenitally deaf people. Cf. p. 14, n. 9; p. 57, n. 10; and p. 104, n. 10.
3. Searing, like Burnet and other nineteenth-century deaf writers, argues that ASL is a complex, fully developed human language. Yet this fact continued to elude the popular consciousness until the early 1960s, when William Stokoe published Sign Language Structure and the nowclassic Dictionary of American Sign Language. Those texts helped to galvanize a period of intense interest in and respect for signed languages. Today, scores of American colleges and universities accept ASL for their foreign language requirements, showing that society has come to embrace what Redden, Burnet, and others pointed out over a century ago.
4. For more discussion of this essential paradox, see the general introduction.
5. Jean Massieu (1772–1846) was an accomplished student and teacher in France. Born deaf, he had five deaf siblings. After he arrived at the National Institute for the Deaf in Paris, he quickly became Abbé Sicard’s top student and main performer at public exhibitions. At age eighteen, Massieu became a teaching assistant, making him the first known deaf person to enter the teaching profession. He held the post for thirty-two years. Among other accomplishments, Massieu helped to teach French to the young Laurent Clerc and sign language to Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet.
6. Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna (1790–1846) was a British author and poet who became deaf at age ten. Her writings often address religion and social reform. In 1844, Harriet Beecher Stowe published a volume of Tonna’s pieces, The Works of Charlotte Elizabeth, with which Searing was probably familiar. For information on Kitto, see p. 104, n. 11.
7. With the pronouns in this sentence, Searing makes explicit what has been implicit all along: she is writing specifically to hearing people in this essay.
8. Like Carlin at the end of “The Mute’s Lament” and Jewel at the conclusion of the first part of her narrative, Searing looks forward to becoming hearing in heaven.
9. Lexington and Springfield are cities in Missouri that fell under Confederate control early in the Civil War.
10. General Nathaniel Lyon (1818–1861) commanded the Union forces in Missouri during 1861. A fiery, courageous leader, he won an early victory in Boonville that helped to establish Union control of Missouri and made him the North’s first genuine war hero. Two months later, he found his forces greatly outnumbered. Instead of surrendering, he attacked. In the fighting, Lyon was slightly wounded twice and had his horse shot out from under him before he was killed, becoming the first general to die in battle during the Civil War. His death demoralized his soldiers, who had also almost run out of ammunition, and the Union troops retreated.