Constituency : Sutherland 1867- 74
Lord Ronald took over from David Dundas unopposed in May 1867 when he was just 21.
Ronald was the youngest son of the Duke of Sutherland. He was educated at Eton and Cambridge.
Politics took up a short proportion of Ronald's career. He observed something of the Franco-Prussian War in 1871. He never spoke in Parliament and made way for his nephew Cromartie in 1874.
In 1875 Ronald moved to Paris to take up sculpting. He was responsible for the statues of Shakespeare and four of his characters at Stratford-upon-Avon financed by his own money .He did a sculpture of Marie Antoinette and wrote biographies of her and Joan of Arc. After the Shakespeare work was inaugurated in 1888 he declared himself retired from sculpting having achieved all his ambitions.
Ronald was known in society as an active homosexual although he sued the journal Man of the World for hints about this in 1879. He has been suggested as the model for Henry Wotton in The Picture of Dorian Gray. When he took up with the journalist Frank Hird, Wilde quipped that "Frank may be seen but not Hird ". In 1878 he went to Australia in a vain attempt to find a friend he felt had been unjustly treated. In 1884 he had to apologise to a sentry at Buckingham Palace after striking him with a stick when told to move on.
He died in 1916 aged 70.
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