by Christopher Roland

Created on: October 19, 2008

Robert Ross' first conquest was Oscar Wilde. In 1886, this 17-year-old boy needed to board with a London family while he attended a "crammers" school to prepare for entrance exams to Cambridge University. Wilde, at 32, was not yet successful as a writer, though he had already achieved minor celebrity as a young aesthete and had been caricatured as such by Gilbert and Sullivan in their musical Patience (1881). He lectured on art and fashion on both sides of the Atlantic, and although his wife Constance had her own family income, there was never enough money to satisfy Oscar's luxurious tastes. So a paying boarder that year was welcome.

Robbie had heard of Oscar before moving in, and he seduced him soon after, then was surprised to discover that he was Oscar's first male lover. The seduction was well timed. Oscar loved his wife when they married; he sired two sons with her; but her difficult second pregnancy had soured any interest in conjugal relations after that. Oscar now realized how much more he preferred all the young men he saw every day. Robbie served to confirm this switch.

In the depressing history of Oscar Wilde, Robbie Ross is the one figure who stands out in golden terms: unswerving devotion, tolerance of folly, good sense. Robert Ross (1869-1918) started as Oscar's first lover and ended as his literary executor. It was Robbie who raised the funds needed to settle Oscar in France after prison, and after Oscar's death in 1900, Robbie's unflagging efforts restored copyrights lost to bankruptcy in order to benefit Wilde's two sons. Wilde's entire literary legacy was secured by Ross, and the fascinating details of how he did it are told in the first biography of him, Robbie Ross: Oscar Wilde's Devoted Friend by Jonathan Fryer (New York: Carroll & Graf, 2000), who also wrote earlier about Wilde's friendship with Andre Gide (Andre and Oscar, St. Martin's Press, 1997).

Youngest son of a Canadian family that moved frequently around Europe, Robbie was educated privately before college and benefited from long art tours around the continent with his mother. When he turned up in London to board with the Wildes, this cosmopolitan past gave him enough polish to fit in at The Savile Club, where his older brother was already a member, sharing cocktails with the likes of Henry James. By the time Robbie arrived at Cambridge, he had already perfected the chameleon skills to befriend aristocratic or artistic figures and smoothly navigate among their jealousies and

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