page_title: Robbie Ross
section_title: Oscar Wilde
hierarchical_section_title: Robbie Ross / Biography / Oscar Wilde
caption_attribution_description: English: Robert Baldwin Ross
context_page_description: Robert Baldwin Ross was a Canadian journalist, art critic and art dealer, best known for his relationship with Oscar Wilde, to whom he was a devoted friend, and literary executor. A grandson of the Canadian reform leader Robert Baldwin, and son of John Ross and Augusta Elizabeth Baldwin, Ross was a pivotal figure on the London literary and artistic scene from the mid-1890s to his early death, and mentored several literary figures, including Siegfried Sassoon. His open homosexuality, in a period when male homosexual acts were illegal, brought him many hardships.
context_section_description: Ross found work as a journalist and critic but he did not escape scandal. He is believed to have become Oscar Wilde's first male lover in 1886, even before he went to Cambridge. In 1893, a few years before Wilde's imprisonment, Ross had a sexual relationship with a boy of sixteen, the son of friends. The boy confessed to his parents that he had engaged in sexual activity with Ross and also admitted to a sexual encounter with Lord Alfred Douglas while he was a guest at Ross's house. After a good deal of panic and frantic meetings with solicitors, the parents were persuaded not to go to the police, since at that time their son might be seen as equally guilty and face the possibility of going to prison.
  On 1 March 1895, Wilde, Douglas, and Ross approached a solicitor, Charles Octavius Humphreys, with the intention of suing the Marquess of Queensberry, Douglas’ father, for criminal libel. Humphreys asked Wilde directly whether there was any truth to Queensberry’s allegations of homosexual activity between Wilde and Douglas, to which Wilde replied “No.” Humphreys applied for a warrant for Queensberry’s arrest, and approached Sir Edward Clarke and Charles Willie Mathews to represent Wilde. His son, Travers Humphreys, appeared as junior counsel for the prosecution in the subsequent case of Wilde vs Queensbury.
  Following Wilde’s imprisonment in 1895, Ross went abroad but he returned to offer both financial and emotional support to Wilde during his last years. Ross remained loyal to Wilde and was with him when he died on 30 November 1900.
caption: Robert Ross
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