A Mighty Change: An Anthology of Deaf American Writing, 1816-1864

4. John Carlin

4 JOHN CARLIN (1813–1891)
John Carlin was not only one of the most accomplished deaf Americans in the nineteenth century, but also one of the most contradictory. A successful artist, writer, and lecturer, he was ambivalent about his deaf identity. He lost his hearing in infancy, used sign language, married a deaf woman, and spent most of his life among deaf people, working for their benefit and urging them to improve themselves. Yet at times he showed contempt for deaf people and sign, saying he preferred to associate with hearing individuals , who seemed to him more proactive and who had ‘‘superior knowledge of the English language.’’ In a society where hearing people had most of the status and power, perhaps such expressions of what we might today call self-hatred should not surprise us. Carlin is but an extreme example of how many nineteenth -century deaf Americans sometimes felt torn between the deaf and hearing worlds. Born on June 15, 1813, in Philadelphia, Carlin was the son of an impoverished cobbler. His younger brother, Andrew, was also deaf. As a child, Carlin wandered the city. When he was seven, he 89 90 JOHN CARLIN was one of a group of deaf street children taken in by David Seixas, a crockery dealer, who took care of them and organized a school that became the Pennsylvania Institution for the Deaf. One of Carlin’s first teachers was Laurent Clerc, who served as acting principal of the school in 1821–22 to help it get underway. (Carlin would later count Clerc among his warmest friends and paint several portraits of him.) Carlin graduated in 1825, at age twelve. He began to study drawing and painting under various teachers. Since his father could not support him, he worked as a sign and house painter to pay for his art education. In 1838, Carlin went to Europe for more formal study of art. In London, he examined ancient artifacts in the British Museum; in Paris, he studied portrait painting under Paul Delaroche. He illustrated in outlines several epic poems, including Paradise Lost and Pilgrim’s Progress. At the same time, he worked on his own verse, but described himself as discouraged with the results. In 1841 he returned to New York, where he opened a studio and began producing miniature paintings on ivory. He was quite successful , with many diplomats and other public figures commissioning him for paintings. Jefferson Davis, who was then the Secretary of War, asked him to paint his son. Carlin developed friendships with Horace Greeley and William Seward, among others . In 1843, he married Mary Wayland, a graduate of the New York school; they had five children. With the encouragement of the poet William Cullen Bryant and others, Carlin continued to write verse. He studied rhyming and pronunciation dictionaries and was soon publishing poems in various newspapers. ‘‘The Mute’s Lament’’ appeared in the first issue of the American Annals of the Deaf and Dumb in 1847. The editor admiringly remarked that a congenitally deaf person writing melodic English poems was such a rarity that it could be compared to a person born blind painting a landscape. The poem’s bleak portrayal of deafness reveals Carlin’s mixed feelings about his identity . Such sentiments were by no means uncommon. Nack offers JOHN CARLIN 91 John Carlin, c. 1845 a similarly gloomy view in ‘‘The Minstrel Boy,’’ and other writers in this collection—including Clerc, Jewel, and Searing—present a vision of becoming hearing in heaven. Beginning in the early 1850s, Carlin took a more active interest in deaf people’s public affairs. He helped to raise $6,000 for St. Ann’s Episcopal Church for the Deaf in New York, the nation’s first church for deaf parishioners. He contributed a side panel to the monument for Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, showing Gallaudet teaching fingerspelling to deaf children. He also began to publish essays on deaf education. Unlike most deaf adults, Carlin was somewhat opposed to sign language in teaching. Although he himself did not speak or speechread, he advocated speechreading and fingerspelling in the classroom, for he thought these were the most effective ways for deaf children to acquire English. Again, we 92 JOHN CARLIN should remember that while Carlin was perhaps more extreme, he was not the only deaf person to hold such views. Carlin frequently gave lectures at deaf events. His long signed speeches, full...