Angels and Outcasts : An Anthology of Deaf Characters in Literature

The Lost Senses

The Losf Senses by 30hn KiHo EDITORS' PREFACE John Kitto, an English missionary ofthe last century, wrote this autobiography in mid life. He had lost his hearing early in life, though postlingually, and tells us of the difficulties he had in finding a niche in life because of the prejudices against deaf people. It should be interesting to all our deaf readers who have struggled much of their life with English to find that Kitto finally settled upon writing as one of his professions. He was almost as audacious in this decision as was David Wright, a modern English poet who is deaf, who not only decided to become a writer but a poet, and, not only that, but a translator as well (the only other deafperson we know who has had the gall to translate professionally is one of the people who has his name on the front cover of this book). Wright has become successful in all his ventures in spite of his deafness, and Kitto was also, although not to quite the degree that Wright is. The excerpts from Kitto give us another side ofthe world of the deaf in the nineteenth century that we encountered in the first part. Kitto is no Gerasim or Gargan, for sure, since he obviously was well established in the world and hardly the isolated "natural man" that Gerasim and Gargan were. In Kitto's account we find out about the most hopeful signs for the advancement of deaf people in his time. His is a practical account, a realistic appraisal of the life of an educated deafperson (albeit one who could speak, and who could use English well) in the last century. It should be 208 • The Lost Senses· interesting to compare this account with the ones that follow it, they all having been written more recently, when deaf people were becoming more impatient with accepting second class citizenship. FROM THE LOST SENSES • INTRODUCTION • I became deaf on my father's birthday, early in the year 1817, when I had lately completed the twelfth year of my age.... The circumstances of that day-the last of twelve years of hearing, and the first of twenty-eight years of deafness, have left a more distinct impression upon my mind than those ofany previous, or almost any subsequent, day of my life. It was a day to be remembered. The last day on which any customary labour ceases,-the last day on which any customary privilege is enjoyed,-the last day on which we do the things we have done daily, are always marked days in the calendar oflife; how much, therefore, must the mind not linger in the memories of a day which was the last of many blessed things, and in which one stroke of action and suffering,-one moment of time, wrought a greater change of condition, than any sudden loss of wealth or honours ever made in the state of man. . . . On the day in question my father and another man, attended by myself, were engaged in new slating the roof of a house, the ladder ascending to which was fixed in a small court paved with flag stones.... In one of the apartments of the house in which we were at work, a young sailor, of whom I had some knowledge, had died after a lingering illness, which had been attended with circumstances which the doctors could not well understand. It was, therefore, 209 • From DeafAuthors· concluded that the body should be opened to ascertain the cause of death. I knew this was to be done, but not the time appointed for the operation. But on passing from the street into the yard, with a load of slates which I was to take to the house-top, my attention was drawn to a stream ofblood, or rather, I suppose, bloody water, flowing through the gutter by which the passage was traversed. The idea that this was the blood of the dead youth, whom I had so lately seen alive, and that the doctors were then at work cutting him up and groping at his inside, made me shudder, and gave what I should now call a shock to my nerves, although I was very innocent of all knowledge about nerves at that time. I cannot but think it was owing to this that I lost much of the presence of mind and collectedness so important...