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Robbie Ross: The Earnest Friend. - Review - book review
Contemporary Review, May, 2001 by Richard Whittington-Egan
Robbie Ross: Oscar Wilde's True Love. Jonathan Fryer. Constable. [pound]18.99. 278 pages. ISBN 0-09-479770-6.
Posterity's all-embracing determination concerning Robbie Ross is that he was a true-blue friend and true-blue, bred-in-the-gland Uranian, well and early primed in the importance of being earnest. Moreover, if it is achievement that one seeks for biographical justification, then it was without quibble or question his quite remarkable feat at the tender age of seventeen, not, strictly, so much to seduce as to introduce the thirty-one-year-old Oscar Wilde to the proper -- or improper -- exploitation of his own true sexual disposition. That, and his extraordinary capacity for self-sacrificing friendship, loyalty and sweet-natured nannying, have been his quadruple of acclaimed lifetime's high-lights.
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It is pointless to assert that it is his grade accomplishments as a journalist, passing success as art gallery owner, or crowning glory as Pictures and Drawings Valuer for the Inland Revenue that elevate him to the ranks of the biography worthy. Away with these pretentious pretences! The sole substantial -- and it is substantial -- reason to embalm Robbie's short life -- and it was short, forty-nine years, only three years more than Oscar's -- between hard covers is the heartening record of unselfish, unswerving loyalty to Oscar, in life, in carcere et vinculis, and after death.
There have been two previous studies -- Robert Ross: Friend of Friends, edited by Margery Ross (1952), which consisted of letters to him together with extracts from published articles, and Wilde's Devoted Friend by Maureen Borland (1990). Mrs. Borland elected to curtail her account of the years leading up to Wilde's death in 1900, and to concentrate mainly upon the events of the succeeding eighteen years and the major role that Ross played in the aftermath. These included the publication of De Profundis, the issue of a twelve-volume edition of Wilde's collected works, and Ross's enormous travail for the benefaction of Wilde's orphaned sons. The balance of Jonathan Fryer's biography tips towards the years with Oscar.
Nurturing resentments past of Robbie's terminal closeness to Wilde, and resentments present of how he had contrived to endear himself to Oscar's two boys, Lord Alfred Douglas erupted into full-flowering hatred of his erstwhile friend. There is a horrid sense of deja vu in the spectacle of Lord Alfred's hounding Robbie as, two decades before, the scarlet screaming marquess had hounded Bosie's 'posing sodomite' lover. In the event, Robbie was luckier than Oscar. The Department of Public Prosecutions, registering the paucity of substantive evidence that Ross had indulged in 'gross indecency', decided not to pursue the matter. But, never really strong, Robbie found that all these trials and tribulations, persecutions and prosecutions, had taken their toll on him. The heart that never failed anyone else failed him, and on October 5th, 1918, Robert Ross died. He was cremated.
On November 30th, 1950, the fiftieth anniversary of Oscar Wilde's death, his devoted friend's ashes were placed in the cavity which had been prepared for them in Wilde's tomb in Pere Lachaise. Jonathan Fryer, who has already written well of the friendship of Andre Gide and Oscar, has here admirably matched his previous achievement.
COPYRIGHT 2001 Contemporary Review Company Ltd.
COPYRIGHT 2001 Gale Group
