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 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 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.
John Carlin, c. 1845
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 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 of learned allusions and quotations, made him something of a deaf Edward Everett (examples of his speeches appear in part two). He was among the first to argue for a national college for the deaf, demonstrating his firm belief in deaf people’s potential. At the inauguration of the National Deaf-Mute College in 1864, Carlin was the main speaker and received the college’s first honorary degree in recognition of his services to the deaf community.
When photography made his painted miniatures obsolete, Carlin turned to painting landscapes and portraits. He produced several important works, including After a Long Cruise, which was later purchased by New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. He continued writing; in 1868 he authored a children’s book, The Scratchsides Family. He also published articles on architecture and lectured on such diverse topics as geology and New York’s Central Park. In 1864 he founded the Manhattan Literary Association of the Deaf, the first such organization in the country. He also helped to raise funds for the Gallaudet Home for Aged and Infirm Deaf. Carlin died in 1891 at age seventy-eight.
The Mute’s Lament
I move—a silent exile on this earth;
As in his dreary cell one doomed for life,
My tongue is mute, and closed ear heedeth not;
No gleam of hope this darken’d mind assures
That the blest power of speech shall e’er be known.
Murmuring gaily o’er their pebbly beds
The limpid streamlets as they onward flow
Through verdant meadows and responding woodlands,
Vocal with merry tones—I hear them not.
The linnet’s dulcet tone; the robin’s strain;
The whippowil’s; the lightsome mock-bird’s cry,
When merrily from branch to branch they skip,
Flap their blithe wings, and o’er the tranquil air
Diffuse their melodies—I hear them not.
The touches-lyric of the lute divine,
Obedient to the rise, the cadence soft,
And the deep pause of maiden’s pensive song,
While swells her heart, with love’s elated life,
Draw forth its mellow tones—I hear them not.
Deep silence over all, and all seems lifeless;
The orator’s exciting strains the crowd
Enraptur’d hear, while meteor-like his wit
Illuminates the dark abyss of mind—
Alone, left in the dark—I hear them not.
While solemn stillness reigns in sacred walls,
Devotion high and awe profound prevail,
The balmy words of God’s own messenger
Excite to love, and troubled spirits soothe—
Religion’s dew-drops bright—I feel them not.
From wearied search through long and cheerless ways
For faithless fortune, I, lorn, homeward turn;
And must this thankless tongue refuse to breathe
The blest word “Mother” when that being dear
I meet with steps elastic, full of joy,
And all the fibres of this heart susceptive
Throb with our nature’s strongest, purest love?
Oh, that this tongue must still forbear to sing
The hymn sublime, in praise of God on high;
Whilst solemnly the organ peals forth praises,
Inspired and deep with sweetest harmony!
Though sad and heavy is the fate I bear,
And I may sometimes wail my solitude,
Yet oh, how precious the endowments He,
T’alleviate, hath lavished, and shall I
Thankless return his kindness by laments?
O, Hope! How sweetly smileth Heavenly Hope
On the sad, drooping soul and trembling heart!
Bright as the morning star when night recedes,
His genial smile this longing soul assures
That when it leaves this sphere replete with woes
For Paradise replete with purest joys,
My ears shall be unsealed, and I shall hear;
My tongue shall be unbound, and I shall speak,
And happy with the angels sing forever!
Advantages and Disadvantages of the Use of Signs
Fully sensible how grave and momentous the nature of the ground is, along which I am about to tread, it will be my special care to render every argument in favor of my theory, perspicuous and worthy of consideration, at the same time avoiding any thing that may savor of dogmatical conceit or pedantry. … With the system of instructing deaf mutes in articulation, carefully and philosophically expounded by Messrs. Weld and Day, who visited a few years since the principal institutions of Europe, we rest perfectly satisfied in the conclusion that is not the one which has long been or desideratum.1 It has been to us a source of surprise and regret to see so much voluntary blindness and infatuation with which the German and other professors have continued, and are still continuing the system, utterly regardless of the strong and natural antipathy of their pupils to it, and also of the truth that they have made little progress in literature.
That the American system, adapted after the Abbés de l’Epée and Sicard’s, has proved itself superior to any already known, except the French, none can have reason to deny; nor can he ever disagree with me that the manual alphabet, being the principal branch of our system, is the best and surest channel of knowledge and communication for the deaf and dumb; nor can he offer any dissent to the fact that the language of signs, properly used, is indispensable to their mental improvement in the school-room and chapel. The latter is indeed an immense advantage offered to them to facilitate their intellectual power of comprehending even the most difficult principles of the English grammar, if clearly and plainly explained—otherwise had it been, without that necessary assistance, that a deaf-mute pupil would have been a great wonder—worth exhibiting in the Crystal Palace, if he could form in a short time clear and correct ideas of new words spoken by digital gyrations only!2 Yet I regret to say the beautiful language of signs has given them grievous disadvantages to experience. …
The speaking person’s mind enjoys all the wonderful powers of his five senses: besides its power of thought and reasoning, it sees all things pertaining to nature, and art, hears all the sounds and noises, smells, tastes, and feels all that have even long before passed through the organic channels. Hence, deriving from its constant repetitions of hearing words spoken, his superiority in language over the deaf mute. The speaking blind has but four senses. Unless he had lost his sight in his youth, his mind can convey no clear, decided idea of nature with all her beauties of form and color. But yet, by his mind’s constantly hearing words spoken, he has indeed gained a vast advantage over the poor deaf mute in the power of language. The celebrated Laura Bridgman, whom all know, has but three senses to enjoy.3 Her two lost senses (of seeing and hearing) which deprived her mind of the privilege of seeing nature, persons and things, and hearing words, (what a sad spectacle her case presents!) have increased the strength and inquisitiveness of her sense of touching. Here I respectfully invite your attention to this fact that, by her mind’s long practice in feeling the raised letters of her few books and words in the manual alphabet spelt within her hands, she has acquired a superiority in language over most of the deaf and dumb community. …*
On a new pupil’s first entrance in the institution, his mind is all blank, though it retains in remembrance a few objects at his home and other places; but the longer he remains in his new home, the more stored it gets with new objects, faces and signs. As the pupils uniformly converse with each other in the language of gestures, almost without the use of dactylology, the said pupil’s mind, being constantly in contact with them, naturally receives and retains the impressions of what his eyes have seen, and of course is overloaded with signs, while but few words—one word to twenty signs—are treasured therein. At all times, in the daylight or in the inky of darkness of the night, and every where, it sees nothing but gestures perpetually swinging, advancing, retreating and flourishing in the air. O, would to heaven that but half of these images haunting his brain were of the fingers moving in our own as well as the English manual alphabet, and of the printed or written letters!4
Here I pause, and ask if the learned signs are his natural, vernacular language? If so, what is Laura Bridgman’s—certainly not of signs? What has rendered her superior to most of us in written language? Believe me to say that I candidly admit the necessity and indispensability of gestures to his mental improvement. Yet, what has always led him to commit such grammatical errors and blunders as to raise a flush of mortification and vexation in his teacher’s face? It is the exclusive preponderance of superfluous signs, impressed on his memory, which bewilders and entangles his ideas intended to be written down or spelt on the fingers. Nevertheless I am happy to mention that there are among us several mutes of superior intellectual capacities, who, having labored incessantly and with signal success to treasure so many words and rules of the English language as to countervail their mental signs, are able to convey their ideas in writing with almost as much ease and fluency as any speaking persons do.
There are four kinds of signs: the NATURAL, the VERBAL, the PANTOMIMIC, and the INDIVIDUAL. Of these the verbal is the most necessary and appropriate to the pupil’s faculty of comprehension. It is eminently qualified for defining all necessary abstract words and the principles of the English grammar. The natural signs, by their beauty, grace and impressiveness, have a tendency to encourage his predilection for them and excessive indulgence in their use, and, by their being mostly superfluous, to retard his intellectual progress.5 The pantomimic are sometimes useful in depicting passions and imitating others’ actions for his edification—yet his teacher should be extremely sparing and circumspect in their use at school. The individual, with a few exceptions, are wholly superfluous and nonsensical. What! our new pupils are to be marked like sheep by individual signs ridiculous in the extreme—as for one, the right fore finger pressing the shut right eyelids, a compliment by no means agreeable to him or her—for another the fore finger pushing the nose’s end upward, signifying that he or she has a pug nose, and so on with others.6 No such thing is ever known in the public schools, seminaries and colleges. Among the few exceptions, those for God and the Savior are proper in the chapel. Of the pantomimic, I deem it a duty incumbent upon me, notwithstanding my extreme repugnancy, to remark the fact that in some public exhibitions (particularly of one of our leading institutions), those signs have been used to excess: though a few recherche specimens of some little mute boys’ powers of mimicry might perhaps suffice to render the whole exhibition attractive and interesting, the little theatrical representations displayed by young ladies would not seem to be in keeping with the high position the institution has been enjoying; and I question the propriety of making little mute girls, being non-professors in religion, to repeat the Lord’s prayer in beautiful, graceful and measured gestures before the gaping spectators. The Lord’s prayer is a solemn incense of the soul to our Heavenly Father, and not a show to court human admiration and applause.
I might be asked how the superfluity of signs could be effectually remedied, and I would with due respect submit a modus operandi to your consideration. When new pupils enter into the institutions next year and in the succeeding years, give them no individual signs—but impose on them a habit of spelling their names, though, for the reason of old habit, the old pupils must still retain their individual signs—yet they themselves, as well as their teachers are also to spell the new ones’ names. The new ones will in one month or two be able to spell their own as well as the others’ names. Thus, this new habit you will undoubtedly perceive will tend to increase their mental sight of dactylological images. Besides, all the signs should be given them to comprehend what the words they represent are, and, after they are repeated twice or thrice in order to make their impressions firm in their memory, they (the signs) must be discarded for ever (I mean in the school-room). For example—the teacher is to represent the word LION, by an impressive sign or a picture if within his reach, and then substitute in its place, and use always and uniformly the digital characters: thus, his pupils will be habituated to see the word LION, spelt on the fingers. Again, for “a strong lion,” he is to define this abstract adjective by a gesture, and afterwards repeat the word by the fingers. It is to be remembered that the articles should be distinguished by the teacher’s expressions, which his pupils, proverbially quick-sighted, will readily interpret; as for the article A or AN, his face should present an indefinite and unfixed expression; and for THE, the expression should be definite and intensely fixed in attention to any particular object either visible or imaginary.
Were I to give more examples ad infinitum, it would require to fill a volume; but I trust these examples already shown are sufficient for the purpose; and I sincerely hope that all the instructors will heartily undertake the arduous and somewhat fatiguing task of spelling words to their pupils after their respective signs are given.7 All for their intellectual good. May God speed their success!
The National College for Mutes
The human mind is one of the most precious of all things with which man is endowed by his Maker. Its mysterious nature has through all ages been studied and explored by hosts of philosophers. …
Taking in consideration the great variety of minds, arising from the physical formation of the brain, and the effects of climate, disease, parental negligence, etc., it would be at variance with the logical principles of physiology, to suppose that all speaking and hearing persons have minds equally capable of superior culture, or that all the minds of the deaf and dumb are incapable of higher training. Yet, though there can be found no difference between speaking persons or deaf mutes, of the higher class, in imagination, strength of mind, depth of thought and quickness of perception, it can not be denied, however repugnant it may be to our feelings, that the deaf mutes have no finished scholars of their own to boast of, while the speaking community present to our mental vision an imposing array of scholars; as the two Websters, Irving, Prescott, Anthon, Maury, Mott and other Americans known in the literary and scientific worlds, besides the host of learned men of Europe.8 How is this discrepancy accounted for, seeing that the minds of the most promising mutes are eminently susceptible of intellectual polish? Does it not show that there must be in existence certain latent causes of their being thrown in the shade? Is it not within the range of our researches to solve the mystery in which they are enveloped?
There are in the great deaf-mute family several graduates, whose intellectual soil, being but partially cultivated at the institutions, by reason of their limited term of pupilage, has returned to its status quo; and the germs of knowledge, notwithstanding the favorable signs which they once gave of healthy vegetation, have in some cases withered away, and in others made but little progress toward maturity, which we may with propriety attribute to the baneful effects of their incessant toil in trades detrimental to their superior minds. Respecting certain persons of this same class, they have, since their discharge from school, succeeded in making respectable scholars, and that without their having ever been under the proper and practical husbandry of experienced preceptors. Indeed their great successful efforts in obtaining the object of their longings, under such adverse circumstances, are a striking illustration of the excellent maxim: “Perseverantia vincit omnia.”9
It must, however, be borne in mind, that they are few in number, and that they have come far short of the mark—the front rank of the learned—toward which their hearts have long been yearning. Why have they come short of the point which the speaking scholars have gained, even without such efforts, as the former have made in their undertaking? It is simply because they have no universities, colleges, high schools and lyceums of their own, to bring them through the proper course of collegiate education to a level with those human ornaments of the speaking community, who are indebted to the existence of their own above-named temples of learning, for their superior attainments and for their consequent reputation and success in literary, scientific and civil undertakings.
The question, whether there is any possibility on the part of able masters to develop the intellect of their prominent mute scholars to its fullest scope, were their term of pupilage extended, and their course of studies semblant to that generally pursued at colleges, may be answered in the affirmative; for, with the gracious permission of my excellent friend, Mr. Isaac L. Peet, the able preceptor of the High Class at the New York Institution, than whom, as one fitted for that arduous avocation, the directors thereof could not have made a better selection, I have made careful and impartial investigations of the progress his scholars have made in their studies.
Notwithstanding their having been but one year and a half in the High Class, they have, in their pursuance of the higher branches of education, pushed on with prodigious strides toward the goal, where merit, honor and glory wait to be conferred upon their brows. They are now drinking in the beauties of rhetoric, astronomy, chemistry, the Old Testament Scriptures—with reference to literature, geography, history, civil polity and ethics—history, geography and algebra, unfolded and explained by their teacher, with examples, analogies and the like, expressly to sharpen, strengthen and make exquisite their cognoscitive faculties. Whence came their evident success in what naturally appears difficult for them to acquire within so short a time? Allow me to assert, with a certainty of the fact, that the secret of their success lies in their knowledge of the superiority of their minds, the value and importance of such a department, which they have had the good fortune to obtain permission to occupy, and the brevity of time allowed for their whole course of study. Hence, their ambition being aroused and encouraged most judiciously by their preceptor, in his endeavors to elevate their minds to the standard of speaking scholars, they have studied, and still study con amore, and with all possible diligence, even under many discouraging difficulties which most of our instructors of deaf mutes are enabled by their long experience to trace to their source.
Besides those of the New York High Class, I have learned with much satisfaction that the scholars of the Hartford High Class have made such progress as to encourage our hopes of the ultimate success of that department of higher mute education.
Notwithstanding the acknowledged excellence of that department, and its system which is arranged expressly to accelerate the progress of its scholars in knowledge, it is still but a step, which invites them to ascend to the college, where they may enter upon a still more enlarged scale of studies, and then retire with honorary degrees. But alas! no such college is yet in existence.
Apropos of High Classes in the Institutions, I am fully convinced by what I have seen, of their being absolutely indispensable to the intellectual improvement of all their most intelligent pupils, therefore I earnestly recommend them to those which have none of the kind.
The question: Is a college absolutely necessary for gifted mutes? may perhaps create some discussion, par écrit in the Annals, and viva voce at our next convention, in which arguments pro and con will be duly given so as to lead to a conclusion, whether or not the deaf mutes should be blessed with that precious boon.
With a view of securing its establishment, I shall here state a few arguments, which I trust will meet general approbation; but I will be happy to read, weigh and analyze opinions unfavorable to the subject in question, and to acquiesce in them, if they fully convince me of their correctness.
1st. Universities, Colleges, Free Academies and High Schools have been built. For whom? For speaking persons of fine minds. For what? For their intellectual culture to the utmost degree. Why should not one college be reared in fair proportions to elevate the condition of our most promising deaf mutes and semi-mutes, seeing that they have a just claim to the superior education enjoyed by the former?
2d. Those of those who speak and hear have indeed produced eminent men. So will our “National College,” also. I do not pretend to say that the mutes will be equal to the speaking in the extent of their learning and in the correctness and elegance of their language;10 but if proofs be needed to give conviction of the truth of my assertion, that mutes of decided talents can be rendered as good scholars as the Barneses, Macaulays, Lamartines and Bryants, I will readily refer to Dr. Kitto, of England, the celebrated biblical commentator, Messieurs Berthier and Pelissier, of France, the former a successful biographer, and the latter a fine poet; our own Nack and Burnet, both excellent authors and poets, and Mr. Clerc, who is the only mute in this country enjoying the honorary degree of Master of Arts, to which he is fully entitled by his learning and long experience in mute education.11 It is worth remembering that those gentlemen have never been educated at colleges.
3d. The proposed ALMA MATER will be the only real nursery, under whose fostering care we may have reason to believe will be produced mute sages and distinguished men of all professions—especially civil engineers, physicians, surgeons, lawyer and statesmen, who will thereby be restored to society, from which they have been isolated, by reason of the nature of their misfortune, and of the poverty of their minds.
4th and lastly. The establishing of a National College for mutes, being the first of the kind in the world, will perpetuate the gratitude of its hundreds of students, and add fresh luster to the halo of glory encircling our blessed republic; a country distinguished for the beauty and solidity of her federal and state governments, her unrivaled prosperity in commerce and domestic enterprise, and the great number of public and private acts of benevolence, consummated by her enlightened citizens.12 The importance of such an establishment can not fail to be obvious to all thinking minds; and, furthermore, all whose hearts are ever alive with a generous desire to promote the welfare of the class of beings referred to, will not fail to consider it a duty, as imperative in its call as laudable in its execution, to carry into full effect that grand desideratum. …
Perhaps the Annals, in succeeding numbers, may be the most proper medium of maturing our deliberations in this matter, before our next convention comes; and on that occasion we may accomplish what is binding on us to promote the well-being, intelligence, happiness in social ties, and prosperity in business of those beings to whom the blessed auditory sense is denied by our Heavenly Father, for certain reasons which it is always difficult to fathom.
*When I and my wife visited her a few years ago, we were struck with the ease and rapidity of her spelling forth words, and the correctness of their grammatical construction; and I, incited by curiosity, asked her amiable and patient benefactress if she ever made signs in explaining new words to her sightless pupil. She answered Oh no—Not at all; but it however cost her much pains to make her comprehend the meaning of a word by means of a sort of synonyms. It strikes us that she has no idea of signs except by a very few plain ones necessary for her immediate wants. [Carlin’s note.]
1. Lewis Weld, of the American Asylum, and George E. Day, of the New York Institution, visited Germany in 1844 to observe the methods of oral deaf education used there. They agreed that such techniques were not effective and should not be utilized in the United States.
2. The Crystal Palace was the centerpiece of the 1851 Great Exhibition in London. Constructed in less than one year, the building housed thousands of exhibits of new and unusual things, including much of the latest industrial technology.
3. Laura Dewey Bridgman (1829–1889) was the famed deaf-blind student of Samuel Gridley Howe, who patiently taught her English. First, Howe attached labels with raised letters to common objects. Then he cut these labels and mixed up their individual letters; Bridgman gradually learned to rearrange them in their proper order. When she finally understood that the letters were a means to communicate with others, she made rapid progress. Bridgman increased her vocabulary and then was taught the manual alphabet. She could soon spell very quickly with her fingers. Charles Dickens visited Bridgman in 1842 and was impressed. He includes an account of her in his American Notes.
4. Carlin refers here to fingerspelling, the practice of manually spelling out the letters of English words, which is a distinct part of American Sign Language. In modern ASL, fingerspelling is used to give proper names and to express certain other words. By the “English manual alphabet,” Carlin presumably means the two-handed British alphabet.
5. Like many of his contemporaries, Carlin uses a narrow definition of “intellectual,” one that privileges skill in written English and discounts facility with ASL.
6. A protest against the common deaf practice of creating name signs based on people’s physical appearance.
7. Carlin’s proposal is an antecedent of later trends. Beginning in 1878, proponents of the Rochester Method employed fingerspelling almost exclusively in the classroom. Students and instructors at Gallaudet College used fingerspelling a great deal well into the twentieth century; Gallaudet alumni were somewhat notorious in the American deaf community for fingerspelling extensively. Fingerspelling retains a certain air of learning, and occasionally even pretension, in the deaf community today.
8. By listing prominent scholars and including foreign phrases in this essay, Carlin displays his own academic accomplishments and, not incidentally, deaf people’s intellectual potential. Here he refers to Noah Webster (1758–1843), lexicographer and author; Daniel Webster (1782–1852), statesman and orator; Washington Irving (1783–1859), writer; William H. Prescott (1796–1859), historian; Charles Anthon (1797–1867), classics scholar; Matthew Maury (1806–1873), oceanographer and naval officer; and probably Lucretia Coffin Mott (1793–1880), an abolitionist and suffragist orator.
9. “Perseverence conquers everything.”
10. By “language” Carlin means English. Since English is a foreign language to congenitally deaf people, he suggests they will never quite match hearing people in their English fluency.
11. William Barnes (1800?–1886), British philologist and poet; Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800–1859), British historian, author, and statesman; Alphonse-Marie-Louis de Prat de Lamartine (1790–1869), French poet; and William Cullen Bryant (1794–1878), American poet and editor. John Kitto (1804–1854), a British biblical scholar and author, became deaf at age twelve. He published an acclaimed autobiography called The Lost Senses in 1845. Jean-Ferdinand Berthier (1803–1886), who either was born deaf or became deaf at a young age, published papers and books in defense of deaf people and sign language. In 1849 he was elected to the Societé des Gents des Lettres, France’s most distinguished literary fellowship. Pierre Pélissier, totally deaf from childhood, published a well-received book of French poetry in 1844.
12. Like Clerc (see p. 10, n. 5), Carlin appeals to American patriotism by arguing that deaf education will make the United States a greater country.