Robbie Ross: Oscar Wilde’s True Love

By Jonathan Fryer

This fascinating portrait of a chameleon figure – at once radical and conservative – gives a vivid picture of life in London at the turn of the 19th century.

Perhaps best known as the young man who first seduced Oscar Wilde and at the end acted as Wilde’s devoted and able literary executor, Robbie Ross achieved something his lover appeared incapable of – he maintained a respected position within the establishment while living an openly homosexual life, at a time when that was all too often a recipe for disgrace or prison.

Ross was a remarkable character – writer, critic, art dealer and administrator, and a pivotal figure on the London literary and artistic scene from the mid-1890s to his premature death towards the end of the First World War. A favourite of the Asquiths, Robbie was a regular guest at Downing Street; a champion of the Sitwells, he nonetheless managed to remain popular with the Bloomsbury group. A friend of Aubrey Beardsley, William Rothenstein and Max Beerbohm, he was Trustee of the Tate, Valuer of Pictures for the Inland Revenue and advisor to the National Gallery in Melbourne. 

Above all, he was Wilde’s devoted friend, and his ashes were eventually placed in Oscar’s tomb, as he had always wished.