Robert Ross

Robert Ross stood by Oscar Wilde when almost nobody else did, cleared his estate's debts, and spent his own last years being sued by Lord Alfred Douglas. He was born in Tours to a Canadian family - his grandfather had been a premier of Upper Canada - and came to England as a boy. He met Wilde at seventeen and later said he was the first man Wilde had a physical relationship with. He was a working art critic and dealer of real judgement, an early champion of the post-Impressionists in England. When Wilde was arrested Ross was one of the few friends who neither fled nor disowned him; he visited the prison, met him on release, managed what money there was, and was at the deathbed in Paris. As literary executor he bought back the copyrights, paid the creditors in full, brought out the collected works, and deposited the manuscript of De Profundis in the British Museum sealed for fifty years to keep it out of Douglas's reach. Douglas pursued him through the courts for years. He died at forty-nine and his ashes were placed in Wilde's tomb. He was appointed a trustee of the Tate and was offered but declined the directorship of the National Gallery of Canada. Douglas s campaign against him culminated in a criminal libel prosecution that Ross withdrew from in 1915 in exchange for costs, after which three hundred friends including Bernard Shaw signed a public tribute and raised a testimonial fund for him. He served in the Ministry of Information during the war and helped Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, who both wrote about him with affection. His transfer to Wilde s tomb at Pere Lachaise took until 1950.

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