ABSTRACT
The social critic and historian Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) met Godwin during a six-month visit to London in 1831. Carlyle first met his future biographer, the historian James Anthony Froude (1818–94), in 1849. Earlier that year Froude’s publication of The Nemesis of Faith, a novel recounting his breach with orthodox religion, had established his notoriety. After the novel was publicly burned, Froude resigned his Oxford fellowship and moved to London, where he became Carlyles lifelong friend and chief disciple. This chapter presents an extract taken from a letter from Carlyle to his wife Jane, which describes his meeting with Godwin, aged seventy-five, on 15 August 1831. Carlyle presents Godwin as irritatingly self-contained and writes dismissively of his friends. Such a view of Godwin as disappointingly ordinary may reflect his sense of pique at Godwin’s apparent disregard of his conversation in favour of a game of whist.
