Thomas Carlyle, the X-Club and the Hero as Man of Science

Abstract

When Bowden penned his attacks on the BAAS in the British Critic in 1839, he also constructed an alternative model of masculinity involving a rehabilitation of the traditional figure of the scholar. Unlike Davy and the BAAS, he did not attempt to associate scholarly and scientific work with radically different masculine ideals like the aristocratic gentleman; rather, he asked his readers to recognize as manly and valuable those qualities and circumstances of the scholar’s life which many commentators had condemned as effeminate. Most obviously, moreover, he sought to do this through an alternative interpretation of the character and career of the chief historical hero of the British Association—Francis Bacon himself. To emphasize his status as a celibate monk (a fact the BAAS certainly avoided), Bowden referred to him as ‘Friar Bacon’ and described his life as a ‘solitary student, wasting the midnight oil in his cloister’.1