• Name: Carlyle, Thomas
• Gender: Male
• Birth Date: 4  December  1795
• Death Date: 5  February  1881
• Occupation: author
• Occupation: biographer
• Occupation: historian

Thomas Carlyle had a very successful literary career and he is best known for his three-volume The French Revolution (1837).

Carlyle described tea with the Godwins, Kenneys, and Badams in a letter to Jane Welsh Carlyle, 17 August 1831:

'Next came Godwin. Did you not grudge me that pleasure, now? At least mourn that you were not there with me? Grudge not, mourn not, dearest Jeannie: it was the most unutterable stupidity ever enacted on this Earth. We went, Jack and I, to the huge Frenchwoman Mrs Kenny's (once Mrs Holcroft) Badams's Mother-in-law: a sort of more masculine Aurelia, who lives moves and has her being among Plays, Operas, Dilettantes and Playwrights. Badams and his wife were not returned from the country but in a few minutes came: Mrs Godwin already sat gossiping in the dusk, an old woman of no significance, by and by dropt in various Playwrightesses and Playwrights, whom I did not even look at; shortly before candles, Godwin himself (who had been drinking good green tea by his own hearth before stirring out). He is a bald, bushy-browed, thick, hoary, hale little figure with spectacles: taciturn enough, and speaking when he does speak with a certain epigrammatic spirit; wherein except a little shrewdness there is nothing but the most commonplace character. (I should have added that he wears spectacles, has full grey eyes, a very large blunt characterless nose, and ditto chin.) By degrees I hitched myself near him, and was beginning to open him, and open on him, for he had stared twice at me; when suddenly enough began a speaking of French among the Kennys and Badamsinas (for they are all French-English); and presently Godwin was summoned off to—take a hand at whist! I had already flatly declined. There did the Philosopher sit, and a swarm of noisy children, chattering women, lounging dilettantes round him; and two women literally crashing hoarse thunder out of a piano (for it was louder than an iron-forge), under pretext of its being music by Rossini. I thought of my own piano, and the far different fingering it got; looked sometimes not without sorrow at the long-nosed whist-player; and in the space of an hour (seeing supper about to be laid in another room) took myself away. Godwin, if I like, I can see again: but poor Badams! O what an element of rubbish and tatters and hollow theatrical brawling dost thou live in! John says, he also detests it: then why not say to his loving, resolute tho' too girlish wife, March with me this night, and let us leave it forever? Mine is “quite another style of Wife.” God be thanked!'

This fits with the date of Godwin' s only reference to Carlyle 'Tea Kenney's, w. Badamses, Carlyles (Edinburgh), 4 Mortons and MJ' (15.8.1831). The other Carlyle mentioned is Thomas's brother John Aitken (Jack) Carlyle (1801-1879), physician and writer.

• DNB
• The Carlyle Letters Online, http://carlyleletters.dukejournals.org.

This table lists the people this person is most frequently noted with in the diary.

• Name: Carlyle, John Aitken (Jack)
• Gender: Male
• Birth Date: 7  July  1801
• Death Date: 15  September  1879
• Occupation: physician
• Occupation: writer

John was the brother of Thomas Carlyle. He graduated MD from the University of Edinburgh in 1826. He later tried to earn a living from writing in London. He attended William Hazlitt when Hazlitt was dying. He spent a number of years working as a travelling physician to the aristocracy, a period which included a seven year stint in Italy. He married well and devoted himself to literary pursuits in later life.

Godwin's one entry is to meeting the Carlyles (noting that they were from Edinburgh) in 1831. For a full account of the visit, from Thomas Carlyle's point of view, see his entry.

• DNB

This table lists the people this person is most frequently noted with in the diary.