Franny Moyle by Constance: The Tragic, Scandalous Life of Mrs. Oscar Wilde Page A

particularly proud of.
    The Wildes’ generosity towards young men culminated in them taking in a seventeen-year-old boy, Robert Baldwin Ross, at around this time. Robbie Ross was a young Canadian who, since the death of his eminent father, had been brought up by his mother in Europe. On his mother’s side there were distant Irish connections which mayhave been the source of his introduction to Oscar and Constance. But Robbie’s elder brother Alec, a founder and secretary of the Society of Authors, was also moving in London’s literary circles and may have been the point of introduction. Whatever the connection, they were sufficiently friendly for Mrs Ross to ask if Robbie could lodge at Tite Street while she took a two-month sojourn on the Continent.
    The stay must have proved a revelation for the young man, who had strong artistic leanings. Robbie was charming, intelligent and erudite. Both Constance and Oscar adored him, and in the fullness of time he would become one of Constance’s closest male friends. One can imagine the Wildes indulging him with trips to galleries, talks and the theatre.
    Robbie also proved a revelation to Oscar. Despite his young age, he was a practising homosexual. If Marillier had revealed to Oscar that there was an empty niche in his life, Robbie was the young man who actually filled it for Oscar. The two began a physical relationship.
    Robbie shared Oscar’s fascination with the underground world of vice and deviancy. Despite his youthfulness, he seemed to have been bold in his exploration of the opportunities there were for homosexual experiences in London at this time. During the day Robbie attended a crammer in Covent Garden that was intended to prepare him for entry to Cambridge. But at least some of his leisure time was, it seems, spent in cruising the public conveniences and alleys around Piccadilly in search of sexual encounters. Robbie was well known to the police. And this does add just a touch of credibility to a story told by Frank Harris that Oscar and Robbie had actually encountered one another in a public lavatory, where Robbie had importuned the older man. 26
    Robbie’s introduction of Oscar to full homosexual sex could not have been worse timed. Although it was perhaps inevitable that Oscar would eventually explore this facet of his character, by doing so after 1885 he was committing a crime. In 1885 acts of gross indecency between males, even in private, were deemed criminalthanks to a new clause in the Criminal Law Amendment Act passed in that year.
    At some level Constance sensed Oscar’s infidelity, although she misattributed the object of his affection. Before they married, Constance had sworn that she would never be jealous, but just two years into the marriage she had begun to have doubts and was becoming resentful. In his capacity now as a drama critic Oscar was often away from home. Constance suspected Oscar of having developed an infatuation for an actress whose performances she considered he was following with rather too much interest. There is an anecdote of a dinner party at which Constance made a cutting reference to Oscar’s current infatuation. When asked what he had done over the last week, Oscar, who had in fact been reviewing the actress in question, offered a typically obfuscating response. He ‘had seen an exquisite Elizabethan country house, with emerald lawns, stately yew hedges, scented rose gardens cool lily ponds … and strutting peacocks’. Constance rather bitingly added: ‘And did she act well, Oscar?’, her suspicion being that ‘The nearest he had got to a Tudor mansion that week was the Blank Hotel in Birmingchester, whither he had pursued the fair but frail leading lady.’ 27
    Another event almost certainly contributed to Constance’s insecurity around the time of Vyvyan’s birth. Her brother became involved in another personal scandal that both alarmed and frightened Constance.