... "Sherlock Holmes disguised as 'a Nonconformist clergyman' and Irene Adler as 'a slim youth in an ulster'" --elsewhere in the book Robb cites "nonconformist" as a Victorian euphemism for homosexual.
This made me go a little bit o.O
Has anyone else encountered this usage? It does make sense if you were looking for euphemisms, but given the number of times that I've encountered the term in its "straight" usage in Victorian texts, I'd be inclined to think when it came to that engraving that sometimes a clergyman is just a clergyman.
The other thing that niggled me about this book--and I've only looked at the Google books version--was a passing reference to J. Edgar Hoover having been a crossdresser. This is a fairly groundless rumor that no reputable historian really entertains, so I have to admit that it made me a little uneasy about what the standard of research might be for the rest of the volume.
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2010-05-05 11:20 am (UTC)This made me go a little bit o.O
Has anyone else encountered this usage? It does make sense if you were looking for euphemisms, but given the number of times that I've encountered the term in its "straight" usage in Victorian texts, I'd be inclined to think when it came to that engraving that sometimes a clergyman is just a clergyman.
The other thing that niggled me about this book--and I've only looked at the Google books version--was a passing reference to J. Edgar Hoover having been a crossdresser. This is a fairly groundless rumor that no reputable historian really entertains, so I have to admit that it made me a little uneasy about what the standard of research might be for the rest of the volume.