GLR November-December 2024

ESSAY ‘The men were always Murmuring.’ A NDREW H OLLERAN

M OST PEOPLE think the Irish appeared in America in the 19th century, when famine forced millions of people to flee Ireland for the New World. But the truth is that the Irish were here long before that, and they belonged to a very distinct social class called the Protestant Ascendancy: the Anglo-Irish who comprised the British Army, keeping order in the colonies. The 18th Regiment was even called The Royal Irish and was stationed for the most part in a large barracks in downtown Philadelphia, where they wore handsome uniforms, lived with

the rumor that two captains in the Irish Royals began circulat ing around the barracks, so that when Newburgh finally arrived for his new post, the other officers treated him coolly or with disdain for reasons he did not understand. The reason was sim ple: they thought he was a buggerer—not what you want as your regimental chaplain. There was one other thing that marked Newburgh as a ho mosexual in the eyes of Captain Chapman, one of his two chief accusers. One day after Newburgh’s arrival, Chapman was out walking with a fellow officer when he galloped by looking, in Chapman’s words, “More like a fashionable Groom or Jockey”

their wives and children, went to the the ater, and got along well with the local colonists, who footed the bill for their presence. In the 1770s, being in Philadelphia was a lot better than being sent to the frontier. Illinois, for example, was so in hospitable for the Anglo-Irish that they considered it as bad as Senegal. But in Philadelphia, at that time the largest city in the colonies, they could enjoy life a bit more, though all this did not prevent the boredom that pushes many a peace time army to cause trouble. They also had to deal with alcohol, poverty, and venereal disease (without penicillin). In his new book Vicious and Immoral , John Gilbert McCurdy reports on at least one case of child abuse whose de tails are still sickening to read about. And then there were the class resent ments that the “subalterns” (anyone below the rank of captain) felt vis-à-vis the officers who outranked them. As one of the sergeants said about the City of Brotherly Love: “The men were always Murmuring.” Enter Robert Newburgh, a graduate

than a clergyman. Chapman described his garb during one of the trials that New burgh would later initiate to clear his rep utation: “Close Light Coloured Surtout, with a Scarlet or Crimson falling Collar, with a round Buck Hat, perfectly in the Stile of a Groom.” Chapman claimed that “at other times he has seen him in the Barracks and streets at Philadelphia in a Dress that had not the Least resemblance to that usually worn by [a] Clergyman: one Dress that he has seen him in, as mostly as he can recollect, is a Light Coloured frock made of Bath coating, Close Buck or Lambskin Breeches, white Silk Stockings and a Smart Fashionable Cocked Hat, in short what is now termed a Maccaroni Dishabille.” White stockings were newly fashion able then, and so was the Maccaroni—a term for men dressed in spots and stripes and other outrageous clothes, who were precursors of the English dandy—not quite cross-dressers but men dressed to get attention. At that time, as McCurdy points out, what one wore was related to the social order and was essential to the maintenance of the British Empire, which

Grenadier, Yorkshire Regiment, 1770. P. W. Reynolds illustration.

of Trinity College Dublin, a man whose uncle was a friend of the Duke of Devonshire, obviously fond of fashionable clothes, and rumored, before he sailed from Ireland to become the Royal Irish’s chaplain, to be what was then called a “buggerer.” The basis for this rumor was Newburgh’s sleeping in the same bed with his servant, something he had done since childhood be cause of an illness (which is never identified) that caused him to need help in the night. The last part, however, was left out of Andrew Holleran’s latest novel is The Kingdom of Sand. His other novels include Grief and The Beauty of Men .

may have been another reason Captain Chapman was appalled by Newburgh’s get-up. The irony is that the uniforms worn by the Royal Irish—copiously displayed in this beautifully pro duced book—were so gorgeous that there’s something incon gruous, if not sad, about dressing like a popinjay only to go into battle and get blown apart. The British grenadier, a fashionista’s dream, wore a hat as tall as a Pope’s mitre—all blown to smithereens during confrontations with the American rebels in Concord, Lexington, and Boston. The rumor that Newburgh slept with his servant, along with his taste for fashionable dress—and, one suspects, a superior education and social status

TheG & LR

10