While his former classmates engaged his intellect and wit, he had other friends entertaining more than just his mind. He refrained from publicly disclosing his homosexuality while alive. After his death Cassandra Pybus announced it in "The Devil and James McAuley" and Michael Ackland reiterated it in "Damaged Men", though Sasha Soldatow was the first to publish the secret about Stewart's private life in 1996. Most of his friends were aware that Stewart made his way to the bohemian inner suburb of Kings Cross to discuss modern art, though, at the time, many were probably unaware that he also went there to pursue sexual relations with artists William Dobell and Donald Friend. Discretion about his sexuality was exercised after the final years of high school when accusations about his sexual orientation were made, forcing him to shelter his private life from scrutiny by developing a poetic persona as his public face. It is within this environment of intolerance that he had to appear as if poetry, not marriage and raising a family, was his main priority.