Vyvyan Holland (1886–1967)

On an April morning in 1895, two boys, nine and eight, are hurried out of London in the care of a French governess they didn’t know to flee across the Channel to Paris and then on to relatives, also unknown to them, in Switzerland. Their mother, they were told, would join them when she could.
So begin the peregrinations of the two, recounted here in the recollections of the younger boy. The boys are shunted off to private schools, first together in Germany, then separately. It is a case study in how not to treat the children who are the inconvenient collateral damage of a scandal. The boys are told they must never tell who their father is and, before long, are presented with documents informing them they had taken on new names.
It was a couple of years before Vyvyan learned that his father, Oscar Wilde, had been imprisoned, and had come of age before learning the charges on which he had been sent up—a discovery that relieved him after years of wondering if his father was a murderer or embezzler.
He was also only dimly aware that his father had been a writer. The first Wilde book he saw was at a relative’s house, a collection of fairy tales. As he read, Vyvyan recalled the stories. He remembered his father had told them in happier days in their Chelsea home but didn’t know that their father had written them.
His mother died before he came of age; at about that time, his father was released from prison, but Vyvyan wasn’t told that by the relatives who insisted they were only doing what was best for him. When Oscar Wilde died, the fourteen-year-old Vyvyan was informed by the rector of his school. He had assumed his father was already dead, not knowing that Oscar’s persistent attempts to contact his sons were rebuffed.
The two boys dealt with the unmentioned shame of their origin in different ways. The elder, Cyrill, became hyper-masculine to prove there was no inherited taint; he excelled at sports, joined the army, and met the hero’s death he sought in France in 1915. Vyvyan was in the same battle line at the time, three miles away, but didn’t know of his brother’s proximity.
Vyvyan’s own response was to own up to his father’s legacy and to cultivate friendships with literary figures who had known him. The story is told with a lack of bitterness. There is even a trace of diffidence, which corresponds to Holland’s self-description as being very shy. While the ordeal clearly affected him deeply, this memoir is also a testimony of the resiliency of the human spirit.… (mer)

This is a very interesting book. It's the story of what happened to the Wilde family from a different perspective - which is to say, the perspective of a small child who was basically shielded from knowing any details about what was going on with his father.

For no reason he could fathom, Vyvyan Wilde and his brother are packed off to Switzerland one day with scant belongings, beginning a period of exile in Europe that lasted for several years. His name is changed, he's told basically to forget his father ever existed and never tell anyone about him. He never saw his father again, and his mother, too, only lived for a few years after that.

From that perspective, it's a quite sad book, but it's quite interesting too because it is a glimpse into the mindset of the period - and also a *literal* glimpse *at* the period, because Wilde actually does spend a lot of time describing the way places he stayed looked, clothes he wore, etc.

(An interesting tidbit for my Catholic friends: Oscar Wilde blamed his "moral obliquity" on the fact that his parents wouldn't let him convert to Catholicism! He finally did convert shortly before his death. His son, Vyvyan, the author of this book I'm reading, wound up converting on his own while still a child because the religion just intensely attracted him. So, there you have it!)

This book is a good read as both a historical document and an autobiography. If you're interested looking at the story of Oscar from a perspective that was simultaneously extremely close to it and very far away - I recommend this book.… (mer)