Son of Oscar Wilde

by Vyvyan Holland

With its thirty-three previously unpublished Oscar Wilde letters and its poignant recollections of a man as spontaneous, humane, and sincere as he was prodigiously witty, Vyvyan Holland's memoir of his famous father has come to be regarded as a biographical classic in Wildean studies. Sharply observed, vivid, and dispassionate, it offers not only an unforgettable portrait of Wilde himself, his circle of friends, and his band of persecutors, but also a touching chronicle of Holland's own childhood, of the loneliness he experienced as the son of a remarkable, notorious father and of his emergence from the shadows of cruel injustice and dark scandal.
"Fascinating for the light it sheds on Wilde's Oxford days and on his domestic life." - Atlantic Monthly
"A strange chronicle . . . of considerable literary value." - New Yorker
"Mr. Holland's vivid glimpses of the aftermath of that cause célèbre of the Nineties [do] a valuable service of his father's memory." - Saturday Review
"An essential addition to Wildeana by a witness uniquely qualified to testify" - Library Journal
"A biographical tour de force" - Observer

Genres: Nonfiction, Biography, LGBT, Memoir, Classics, British Literature, Queer

240 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1954

About the author

Vyvyan Beresford Holland was an English author and translator. He was the second-born son of Irish playwright Oscar Wilde and Constance Lloyd, and had a brother, Cyril.

Reviews

[Chrissey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Okay. Everyone surely knows by now that I LOVE Oscar Wilde. No one writes like he did. He was one of a kind. But that does not change the fact that his life brought a lot of misery to his family. Not that he meant it to, but still it did. This book was written by his son and brings a great new perspective to the story of O.W.. His children were never allowed to have a proper childhood, having to hide their identity and living in constant fear that someone, anyone, would find out who they really were. It is a rather tragic story, but fascinating nonetheless. I had read the biography about Constance (Oscar's wife) before and found her to be an incredible person and I would say the same about Vyvyan. I do love reading about this family, understanding the man behind the literature. It makes me love it even more!

[Ana B · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nowadays it feels like Oscar Wilde and I are engaged in a never-ending game of tag; a game in which I always seem to be "It", tirelessly chasing after him while he constantly escapes my grasp, urging me to run a little faster, a little further, mocking me when I triumphantly exclaim "This is it! I've got him!" only to be met with thin air and another layer of humanity staring me right in the face. Because that's the thing about Oscar - we're on a first-name basis by now -, he's filled to the brim with raw, vulnerable, flawed humanity. "Well, he was human, after all", you say, and yes, I know, I know he was but the thing about Oscar Wilde is that he's so shrouded in mystery and myth, like a Victorian Alexander the Great, who is not just The Alexander but An Alexander, malleable and unreachable and always at the mercy of those who never knew him but like to think they do. I never knew Oscar, though I wish I had, but I like to think I do, because that's human nature and that's what happens when you feel like life (or death?) cheated you out of something(one) that feels so very necessary & so in tune with who you are. I reckon that's probably how Oscar himself felt about Alexander. How Alexander felt about Achilles. I've read everything Oscar Wilde ever wrote. I've read a lot of book about Oscar Wilde, about his family and his sexuality and his library and his relationships and his engagement with Ancient Greek culture. Every time I finish one of these books I am ashamed at ever having thought I knew who Oscar Wilde was before reading said book, before discovering whatever facet of him those pages unearthed for me. And that's when the "This is it!" moment hits me, but it departs as swiftly as it arrived, and leaves in its wake yet another layer to Oscar's humanity, another side to him that I wasn't aware existed (or that I never thought I'd be privy to, as is the case with this particular book), and once again, for what feels like the umpteenth time, I am left speechless by the intensity of the love I bear for a man I've never known, but wish I had, and sometimes like to think I do.

[Osred · Rating 4 out of 5]

Admirers of this sweetly sad book may be interested to know more about Vyvyan's second wife, Thelma (nee Besant). Thelma was a girl from Melbourne, Australia, born in 1910. As a young woman she worked at the Hill of Content bookshop, which still exists in Bourke St, Melbourne. For twelve years she served as beautician to Queen Elizabeth.

In 1943 she married Oscar Wilde's only surviving son, and in 1945 she gave birth to Oscar's only grandson, Merlin. The Hollands lived in Melbourne from 1948-1952. Vyvyan died in 1967. Thelma died in 1995.

In 1981 the Australian satirist Barry Humphries (think "Dame Edna Everage"!) met Thelma at a party in London. Thelma congratulated Barry on naming his son after her father-in-law, but Barry at first had no idea what she was talking about. She then explained who she was, and after they became friends she insisted to Barry that her father-in-law had not been a homosexual. All of those claims against him were, she said, "ghastly" "hearsay" and "slander".

[Christine · Rating 5 out of 5]

“On the loom of Sorrow, and by the white hands of Pain, has this my robe been woven.”

Oh man. I laughed, I cried, I sighed, I gasped, I cried some more. This is a raw and insightful glance into the life Wilde and his family were forced to live after his downfall. My heart aches for Vyvyan and Cyril, such a childhood should never be had, although the earlier memories made me smile as much as the later ones with Robbie Ross did. How I wish Robbie had found his way into their lives sooner— but he tried, and he eventually succeeded, and for that I’m glad. I’m glad there were moments of joy scattered throughout. Thank you Robbie, Mrs Carew and friends, your influence and love was palpable through Vyvyan’s recollection of you, you can tell how much you meant to him. Thank you Vyvyan for writing this book. I’m still in tears this was beautiful.

Also “so much for Alfred Douglas” made me laugh. You’re right, Vyvyan, get his ass!

[Jennifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

GREAT BOOK! I loved it for its window into the world of family and Oscar Wilde. Even if you are not a fan (what kind of person ARE you?) this book is incredibly interesting for providing life for a boy growin up in the Victorian era, and the way of life at the time. however, this has got to be the MOST depressing book I have ever read. I mean that sincerely. I think the most important thing I took away from the book was hearing from a man's perspective what it was really like to live without your family, to have no parents. He makes it so real; it gave me a new appreciation for my family, and a new appreciation for the kids I work with now who are living the same way.

[Alex Sarll]

A book I somehow didn't know existed until I found it in Bridport Oxfam. On one level, it is necessarily not far from the misery memoir field - the edition above (not mine) even has the obligatory sepia child. But for all the occasional note of whininess, this is someone from an earlier generation less prone to complaining, which makes his complaints far more interesting. The thuggishness of old public schools, the hypocrisy of the late Victorians and Edwardians - we take these things for granted now, but a first-hand account of their small yet no less painful injustices as made manifest in one boy's life is still a somewhat harrowing read. And, while he's not on his father's level*, it helps that Vyvyan can write.

Beyond that - there is an interesting injury-to-the-arse motif in Vyvyan's life, none of which can be deliberate given the perpetrators are all unknowing for one reason or another of his father's crime, and that wasn't even Oscar's preferred MO, but it does still make one wonder about fate's sense of humour. There are memories of Firbank (to whom apparently only my own alma mater, Pembroke, would have been less suited than Vyvyan and his' college, Tit Hall - sadly, this comment is left without further explanation) and a passing mention that, like all the best people, Vyvyan had an Arthur Machen phase. There are the obligatory scenes of Wilde engaged in non-Wildean pursuits - mending a toy fort, golfing, swimming in rough seas. There is, ultimately, another in the endless series of facets to one of the great tragedies of literary history, and one which could so easily, and in so many ways, have been avoided - but as Stoppard suggests in The Invention of Love, perhaps all of us are better for it not having been avoided. All of us, at any rate, except Wilde's wife and children.

*Though in the appendix are several of Oscar's undergraduate letters, and his less polished style is a revelation - not in a good way. Especially when he describes a much-loved book as "simply 'intense' in every way", the FMF.

[naja mohamed · Rating 5 out of 5]

يا لها من حياة قاسية، كيف يتحمل قلب صبي مِثل هذا الألم، وكيف يتعايش مع هذا القدر من المعاناة.
كسر الكتاب قلبي في أكثر مِن موضع، لكن محاولة الصبي للانتحار حطمته بحق!
أنظر إلى نفاق البشر المتستر بالدين، والحكومات التي لا تقل شرًا عنهم

لا بد من الإشارة إلى الترجمة البارعة، واللغة البليغة، وقد شدتني المقدمة للغاية، مع أنني لا أحب المقدمات، إلا أنها دراسة متكاملة بحد ذاتها.

[Linda · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quite an eye-opener; while I knew that Oscar Wilde was imprisoned etc; because of his homosexuality, I did not realize the devastation on his family. Wilde's son, Vyvyan tells how his identity was stripped and he had to leave the country, growing up in a variety of schools with harsh environments.

[Aljoory Ali · Rating 4 out of 5]

لا ارى انه من المنطق ان اقيم حياة ڤايڤان

[Rosie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ultimately a tragic story. Vyvyan and his elder brother Cyril had a very difficult adolescence, and their paternity and the way they were treated for it had a permanent effect upon their lives. It was really, really interesting to read. It gave yet another perspective on the events of Wilde’s life, and it painted a portrait of a more human side to Wilde. I was shocked especially by the way the author talks about Frank Harris and his biography of Oscar Wilde, in a completely disparaging and derogatory tone. It seems it’s not as accurate as I thought it was? I have included below the quotations which mention Frank Harris, as I consider them quite fascinating.

Quotations:

“That my mother was a very beautiful woman, and that she and my father were a devoted couple, are facts beyond dispute. Frank Harris’s description of her as ‘a lady without particular qualities or beauty’ leads me to believe that, as was his custom, he tried to exercise his charm upon her without success. He always disparaged women who did not succumb to his very distasteful advances, persuading himself that they must be very stupid and therefore, by a logical conclusion, ugly. I knew him when I was a young man, and I thought that he was the most sinister and repulsive person that I had ever met. His book about my father has already been exposed as a concatenation of lies, and it should join his other books of reminiscences in the dustbin.” (33) So heated! I’d like to know which parts are lies, anyhow—considering I just read it and took him at his word! I mean, Bernard Shaw seemed to believe in its verity, and Robert Ross to a certain extent.

“In my birth certificate, my father’s profession is given as ‘author.’ The declaration was made by my mother; my birth was not registered for some weeks after I was born, as my father and mother each thought that the other had seen to the matter. When the time came, no one could remember the exact date on which I had been born, though everyone was sure that it was during the first five days of November; so eventually the 3rd was selected, as being the mean date. My mother’s brother once told me that the real reason for the apparent confusion was that I was actually born on November 5th, but that this fact was suppressed, in order to avoid any possible connection between the Aesthetic Movement and Guy Fawkes day. Be that as it may, one great advantage that I derive from this uncertainty is that I am completely immune from the importunities of astrologers as, far from being able to tell them the exact hour of my birth, I cannot be certain of even the exact day.” (36-7)

“Before I proceed with my narrative, I want to emphasise two things. One is that, although by the age of eleven I knew my father had been in trouble, I was quite unaware of the nature of the offences with which he was charged until I was eighteen. The other is that after reading R.H. Sherard’s The Story of an Unhappy Friendship I was so depressed that I decided to read no more books about my father, no matter who wrote them; and to that resolution I adhered for many years. Even now I have read very few. People have often blamed me for this attitude, but it was simply a form of self-protection. I have so often been approached by well-meaning people intending to write about my father and been asked to give them information, and I have always given the perfectly genuine answer that I was far too young at the time of my father’s trial to know anything about what happened, and that in any case I probably knew less about it than anyone else in the world. So much so that when, at the age of twenty, I was asked by Sir Coleridge Kennard to meet Robert Ross, the name meant nothing to me. I was very much embarrassed at his emotion when I met him, because at that time I had no idea of where he came into the story, or of how much he had done and was still doing for my father’s memory.” (60)

“It was a nightmare journey for both of us, but particularly for Cyril, in view of what he had discovered [the truth about their father] in Ireland. He wanted to shield me and keep me in ignorance of the truth, so that I should not suffer as he did. The only person with whom he ever discussed my father was my mother. This self-enforced reticence turned him, while yet a child, into a taciturn pessimist.” (63)

“I think I must have been very different from other boys, since never in the whole of my childhood did I feel a desire to inflict pain or suffering on anyone who had done me no harm, or to kill birds or little furry creatures. I have a very deep respect for life, and I am sure that people who go about slaughtering anything that moves do so out of motives of jealousy, because they know they cannot create life themselves.” (92) This is interesting, because that last sentence there is actually a feminist theory that attempts to explain men’s violence.

“My grandfather, Sir William Wilde . . . is credited with having invented the operation for cataract, and has been called ‘the father of modern otology.’” (17-18)

“This incident seemed to bring back my sense of disaster in a great wave. I realised that we had had a narrow escape from imminent danger. I wonder how many people understand what it is like to be in such a position. To be an illegitimate child is a simple condition compared to the one in which we found ourselves—there are, after all, so many thousands of illegitimate children in all walks of life. But we had known what it was to have our father feted and admired, and now to have to deny him and to lock up all knowledge of him in our hearts was a terrible burden for children to bear. The thought that at any moment an indiscreet remark or a chance encounter with someone from our former lives might betray us was a sword of Damocles constantly hanging above our heads. From that summer day in Bevaix a year before, when we were called into the dining-room to sign our new names, we had been supposed to leave behind us everything even remotely connected with our former lives. All the friends, places, and objects with which we had been familiar had to be obliterated from and torn out of our minds, as Cyril tore our names from our cricket flannels. My mother’s advisers were, of course, foolish, since it was clearly impossible that the secret could be kept for ever. All my mother’s numerous family knew that we had taken the name of Holland, and some of them were bound to talk. I think that their immediate concern was to protect themselves; the problems of the future were for our own solution when the time came. If there was ever a secret that was bound to develop into a secret de polichinelle, it was that one.” (95)

“My mother was always afraid that, with our two rather unusual names of Cyril and Vyvyan, our identity might be discovered, particularly as my father’s works were still widely read in literary circles, and our names appeared as the speakers in one of the dialogues of Intentions.” (107) I was wondering about that! So the children came first, then their names were used in Intentions?

“On his [Oscar Wilde] arrival in France he assumed the name Sebastian Melmoth, after the central figure in Melmoth the Wanderer, a book written by his great-uncle, Charles Maturin; and under this name he took rooms at the Hotel Sandwich in Dieppe.” (125) I was wondering the story behind his assumed name.

“But one day, at the beginning of April, I received a long letter from her [his mother] in her own handwriting, which must have cost her a prodigious effort [because she had developed paralysis in her right arm]. In it she mentioned my father. She wrote: ‘Try not to feel harshly about your father; remember that he is your father and that he loves you. All his troubles arose from the hatred of a son for his father, and whatever he has done he has suffered bitterly for.’ This was her last letter to me [before she died].” (130)

“While my own efforts were being devoted to gaining entry into a Catholic school, those of my mother’s family were being directed towards obliterating all memory of my father from the minds of both Cyril and myself; and at the same time towards destroying all evidence that might conceivably connect us with the family of Wilde.
The first step in that direction was to give us to understand that our father was dead. We were not told this in so many words, as that would have been a lie and I do not suppose that anyone in the family ever told a deliberate lie. But the impression was conveyed and we accepted it as fact. And it was once more impressed upon us that we must never mention our father’s name to anyone, particularly in connection with ourselves.
The next move was to separate us from each other. It is much easier to keep a secret by oneself than to share it with someone else. One becomes careless and is apt to blurt out indiscreet remarks.” (137)

“By the beginning of 1899 I was convinced that my father was dead, though in fact in February 1899 he made a special journey to Genoa to visit my mother’s grave. Robert Ross told me in later years that he was continually wondering where we were and asking after us. We were completely hidden. No inquiries as to our whereabouts were ever answered. None of my father’s friends knew where we were.” (149)

“Once more I felt that everyone’s hand was against me, and I began to think that there must be something monstrous about my family that caused me always to be in disgrace. And as I drew near the house in which I was staying, my footsteps dragged until finally I came to a full stop.
There had been a light snowfall in the morning, but now it had begun to snow in real earnest. So I wheeled my bicycle past the house and started walking, with no particular idea of what I was going to do. Presently the road ran through a wood, and I decided that I would get away from all my troubles and not try to carry on the struggle. I had read, probably in one of Jack London’s books, that people who lay down in the snow and went to sleep never woke up again, but died quite painlessly. And with this in the back of my mind, I left my bicycle against a tree and wandered into the wood. When I thought I had gone far enough to be lost, I found a place in a clearing where the snow had drifted against a low bank and I lay down on it and closed my eyes and reviewed my life to date. I thought of the Tite Street days, and of my wanderings. But most of all I thought of my parents and of the enigma of my father and pondered over the misery of being an unwanted orphan. I did not seem to feel the cold and eventually I fell asleep.
Actually, before I arrived at the General’s house and was refused admittance, they had already telephoned to my cousin to stop me coming. Unfortunately, as I had already started, I knew nothing of this, although I think they might have told me on my arrival and so saved me from considerable mental anguish, but it did not seem to occur to them. When time passed and I did not return, my hosts began to be worried, particularly as the snow was now falling more heavily than ever. And when a couple of hours went by without my appearing, they thought that something should perhaps be done about it, and search parties set out to find me.
It did not take very long to get on my tracks, as my bicycle leaning against a tree by the roadside led them practically straight to me. I was found and taken home and put into a warm bath. I had gloves on my hands, which did not, therefore, suffer. But my ears, exposed to the air, were slightly frost-bitten and I got a chill in the inner part of my left ear which turned to a mastoid, for which I had an operation on the day of Queen Victoria’s death. . . . My illness had left me deaf in one ear.” (155-6) A suicide attempt?! At about 14 years old! How tragic.

“I saw a great deal of Robert Ross and of Mrs. Carew during these months, and I met most of the literary and artistic figures of the time. Among those with whom I formed friendships were Henry James, Thomas Hardy, Sir William Richmond, H.G. Wells and Arnold Bennett. I found myself at last in the literary milieu to which I had always wanted to belong. Particularly did I make friends with H.G. Wells, whom I saw constantly throughout the rest of his life.” (191) Wow!

“In about 1929 I received a letter from an American author who was contemplating writing a book about Frank Harris; he wanted my own opinion about Harris’s Life and Confessions of Oscar Wilde. I replied that I knew nothing whatever about the matter, but that I had heard Robert Ross say that, although it was a thoroughly bad book, written with the sole object of glorifying Harris himself, it did, on the whole, contain some elements of truth. I think Robert Ross meant that Harris had put Alfred Douglas into his proper perspective. Unfortunately I now no longer possess a copy of my letter. Six months later I received an infuriated letter from Alfred Douglas. [T]his and one other letter on the same subject constituted the only correspondence I ever had with Douglas . . . The first and only time that I met Alfred Douglas after 1895 was shortly before the last war, at the coming-out ball of his great-niece, Lady Jane Douglas. We chatted on general subjects for about five minutes and then pared. I never saw him again.” (193) More trashing of Frank Harris! How fascinating. Now I don’t know whether to trust what I read!

“More books have been written, in more languages, about Oscar Wilde than about any literary figure who has lived during the past hundred years. [Is this true? If so, that’s impressive.] But as people recede further and further into the past, they are apt to assume the aspect of effigies from which all humanity has departed; and when other people write about them they hack them about to make them fit into a pattern of their own making until no flesh and blood remains. This is especially true of Oscar Wilde. Most of the people who have written about him have treated him like a beetle under a microscope, to be examined and dissected and analysed as a psychological problem—not as a human being at all. If they have mentioned any human qualities it has always been in parentheses, as it were, and almost on a note of surprise and deprecation. And yet the most outstanding aspect of my father’s character was his great humanity, his love of life and of his fellow-men and his sympathy with suffering. He was the kindest and gentlest of men, and he hated to see anyone suffer. None of his biographers, not even Frank Harris [LMAO], has suggested that he ever did a mean or an unkind act. Many stories are told of how he helped people in distress, even when he was himself in want.” (198-9)

“As one result of the secrecy with which I was surrounded in my childhood, I have suffered all my life from embarrassing shyness. Because of my anomalous and often awkward position it is difficult for me to make friends. Difficult more for the prospective friends than for myself. I always have to be explained—almost apologised for. Men, particularly men of the Anglo-Saxon races, are innately conventional. Women usually take a wider view; consequently I have always felt more at ease with women than with men. As much as women are capable of being understood, I understand them; and I know that they understand me.” (201-2) I dislike the first part of that last sentence, but otherwise, this is an illuminating paragraph.

“I do not try to defend my father’s behaviour; but I do think that the penalties inflicted upon him were unnecessarily severe. And by that I do not only mean the prison sentence; I mean the virtual suppression of all his works and the ostracism and insults which he had to endure during the few remaining years of his life. The worst aspects of Victorian hypocrisy have now disappeared, and today my father would not have been hounded to his death as he was fifty years ago. The self-righteousness of that age was really camouflage to disguise its own hypocrisy, and the people who were loudest in their condemnation of my father were often those whose own lives could least bear investigation. Nothing makes the transgressor so indignant as the transgressions, of a different kind, of his fellow-men; except, perhaps, transgressions of the same kind.” (203)

“In these pages I have tried to show what it is like to be the son of Oscar Wilde. On the whole my life has been one of concealment and repression. My descendants will not suffer as I have done, as they become more and more remote from the actual tragedy. As ancestry recedes into the past it becomes more and more impersonal; more than one great English family views with equanimity the fact that an ancestor many generations back was executed at Newgate or at Tyburn for sexual aberrations.
It was a cruel irony that Oscar Wilde should have been singled out by fate to suffer for all the countless artists who, both before and since his day, have shared his weakness.” (205-6)

“I send you this letter and a Book together—I wonder which you will open first.
It is Aurora Leigh—which I think you said you had not rad.
It is one of those books that, written straight from the heart—and from such a large heart too—never weary one: because they are sincere. We tire of art but not of nature after all our aesthetic training. I look upon it as much the greatest work in our literature.
I rank it with Hamlet and In Memoriam: so much do I love it, that I hated the idea of sending it to you without marking a few passages, I felt you would well appreciate—And I found myself marking the whole book. I am really very sorry—it is like being given a bouquet of plucked flowers instead of being allowed to look for them oneself.
But I could not resist the Temptation as it did instead of writing to you about each passage.
The only fault is that she overstrains her metaphors till they snap—and although one does not like polished emotion, still she is inartistically rugged at times—as she says herself she shows the mallet hand in carving cherry stones.” (221, a letter from Oscar Wilde to William Ward dated 25 July 1876, when he was an Oxford student)

[Bookscorner_bh · Rating 5 out of 5]

نبذة ومراجعة:-

مُترفِّعاً عن المغالاة أو المواربة؛ يُعرِّج الابن الأصغر للكاتب الإيرلندي أوسكار وايلد، على فصولٍ من حياته، والتي شكل اختفاء والده المفاجىء منها المنعطَف الأبرز فيها؛ واقعةٌ تكتنفها ضبابية مُفتعَلة جعلت منها أُحجية معقدة بالنسبة لفايفيان بصفة خاصة، فرضت عليه وأخيه حالة من التقوقع والعُزلة الإجبارية، عسى أن تخطئهما سهام الازدراء والنبذ؛ تطوى سنوات طفولتهما ومراهقتهما في كبت وشتات واغتراب.

أُدرِجت ألعابهما في قائمة مزادٍ علني جزاءً لوالدهما عن سلوك أدانه به القضاء، بعد محاكمةٍ وصفها البعض بأنها غير عادلة.

مُنِحا اسمين بَديلَين تطلُّعاً لتمكينهما من تسجيل انطلاقة جديدة، لكن ذاكرتهما كانت عصيّة على الاستجابة لذلك سيما مع استحالة ملأ الفراغ الذي خلّفه تنحية والدهما عن حياتيهما، ما أضفى على شخصيتيهما قدر من الهشاشة؛ لكن فايفيان - رغم ك�� ذلك - نجح في الوصول إلى مرحلة متقدّمة من السلام النفسي، تمكّن من انتزاع انتصارات حقيقية سواء في العثرات المنخفضة أو المنحدرات الشاهقة، ولم يوفر جهداً في سبيل التشبُّث بكل ما يمت لوالده بِصِلة.

كما لم يغفل فايفيان عن استدعاء عدد من الوقائع التي أفرزت انطباعاً لديه في اتجاه ما، مبيناً كيفية انعكاس الظروف المرافقة لميلاده على ثقل حضوره في كيان ووجدان والده، كاشفاً عن جذور معاناته من رهاب الأماكن المغلقة، وملابسات تخلٍّيه مُكرَهاً عن حلمه بدراسة الطب.

نص ينضح بالكثير من القيم الإنسانية والتجارب الملهمة، تتدفق كلماته صدى لصرخات صامتة تنحشر في حناجر آباء وأبناء شُيِّدَت بينهم جدران وقُطٍّعت كلّ سبل التواصل بينهم، أولئك الذين تجرّعوا مرارة اليُتم قبل أن يعدم آباءهم الحياة. فضلاً عن رصيد من معلومات تفصيلية عن المشهد الثقافي، الواقع الاجتماعي، الاتجاهات الدينية، وهيكليّة نظام الحُكم في انكلترا آنذاك.

نصٌّ ينبىء عن موهبة فذة لدى الكاتب ومهارة عالية لدى المترجم، ثراء لغويّ وسرد يخطف الحواس.

----

اقتباسات:-

"الخوف والإحباط يحطمان سلام العقل أكثر من أيّ عملية عقلية أخرى". (306).

"الكلمات بوسعها تثبيت الأفكار، المفاهيم، يمكن توظيفها في المنطق، في العلم، لكنّها تفشل بالإمساك بجناح الحياة، تفشل في إعطاء أكثر من لمحة من شيء من الشعور الفني". (223).

"على الرغم من كون أسى الطفولة هو أحيانا أشد وطأة وأقسى ألما ممّا نتعرض له عند نضجنا بعد أن يكتسب المرء قدراً مُعيناً من الفلسفة، فإن قوة المقاومة لدى الطفل كبيرة أيضاً". (168).

---

إحصائيات:-

عن منشورات تكوين والرافدين للنشر والتوزيع، صدرت الطبعة الأولى في يوليو 2023، ترجمتها رغد قاسم. يقع الكتاب في 429 صفحة، يضم فهرسا للمحتوى، مقدمة الترجمة، مخطط زمني لحياة أوسكار وايلد، 8 فصول، 5 ملاحق، ونبذة عن المترجم. كما أرفق عدد من الصور الفوتوغرافية، فضلاً عن هوامش إثرائية.

----

نص مشابه:-
النسيان. إكتور آباد فاسيولينسي.
أبي فيودور.

[Dr G · Rating 4 out of 5]

In many regards, this is an extremely important book – certainly for Wilde scholars and afficionados – and perhaps, more generally, also for people considering the impact of adult decision-making on the young people about whom the decisions are made.
Having said that, I think the writing style is pretty average. So I recommend it for what it does to complete the story of Oscar Wilde, not for any literary qualities.
Oscar Wilde graduated with a double-first from Oxford in 1878, also winning the Newdigate Prize for poetry in that year. He toured North America, giving public lectures in 1882. He married Constance Lloyd in 1884 and they had sons, Cyril in 1885, and Vyvyan in 1886. At around 1886 he seems to have been initiated into homosexuality by Robbie Ross. He was also becoming an adherent of aestheticism. Throughout this period he wrote a number of stories and journalism articles and some best-forgotten plays. In 1891 he was introduced to Lord Alfred Douglas, the boyishly epicene “Bosie”. He became enthralled to Bosie, living an extravagantly luxurious lifestyle and paying for it all himself. More to the point, the couple engaged in flamboyant sex, with each other, and with rent-boys. In the mid-1890s, Bosie’s father, the 9th Marquess of Queensberry, became aware of the relationship with Wilde and, a true “man’s man” (he was the individual who promulgated the rules for “ethical” boxing), was horrified by the damage this would do to the family reputation. After a number of altercations with both Wilde and Bosie, the Marquess left his card at Wilde’s club: “For Oscar Wilde posing Somdomite”. Bosie, as mentally unstable as his father whom he hated venomously, bullied Wilde into pursuing the Marquess on a charge of libel. The case excited great salacious interest throughout Britain; the trial resulted in no verdict but a retrial found against Wilde. Queensberry’s lawyers had used investigators to track down a number of young male prostitutes who testified, after inducements, that Wilde had had sex with them. This testimony was forwarded to Scotland Yard and resulted in Wilde’s trial for gross indecency, his conviction and his sentencing to two years’ imprisonment with hard labour in 1895.
Son of Oscar Wilde is written by Wilde’s second son, his first son having died in the 1914 war, and begins with a recounting of Oscar’s genealogy as well as a brief introduction to his life and, especially, his achievements.
Constance’s family had never been impressed with Wilde as her husband and they now quickly persuaded her to change her name, and move with Cyril and Vyvyan, to Europe. All three thereafter used the surname Holland, and Vyvyan Holland is the author of this book.
He writes of his mother’s family, “They were incurably middle-class and lived their lives by the strictest conventional code, so that my father’s notoriety and flamboyance must have offended all their instincts, particularly as my parents were married when the aesthetic period was at its height.”
Vyvyan writes fondly of his mother: “Throughout my early years there was one person who always made me happy, and that was my mother, whom I adored. I knew that she loved me too, but I was always conscious of the fact that both my father and my mother really preferred my brother to myself;… I was not as strong as my brother, and I had more than my fair share of childish complaints, which probably offended my father’s aesthetics. I was more sensitive than Cyril, who was a tough little animal with higher spirits than I possessed.”
“My mother was not stupid by any standard; she was a woman of considerable culture. She spoke French and Italian fluently, and much of her reading was done in those languages. She may not have had much sense of humour, but then she did not have very much to laugh about.”
Vyvyan also writes very fondly of his father: “It was only during these early years that I knew my father; after 1895 I never saw him again… Most small boys adored their fathers, and we adored ours; and as all good fathers are, he was a hero to us both. He was so tall and distinguished and, to our uncritical eyes, so handsome. There was nothing about him of the monster some people who never knew him and never even saw him tried to make him out to be. He was a real companion to us, and we always looked forward eagerly to his frequent visits to our nursery. Most parents in those days were far too solemn and pompous with their children, insisting on a vast amount of usually undeserved respect. My own father was quite different; he had so much of the child in his own nature that he delighted in playing our games. ” This, of course, was written many years later, when Holland knew all there was to know of Wilde’s life.
The story then moves to 1895 and the time of the trial and Oscar’s imprisonment, then 1897 and his release, bearing in mind that the boys had been born in 1885 and 1886 and so were very young throughout this period.
The boys were immediately withdrawn from their school; Holland wryly states that he does not know what his father’s plans were for their next school: “I am rather afraid that they would have inclined towards Eton.” At this stage Wilde’s name was covered over on signage at theatres and bookshops. And his books and plays were soon withdrawn altogether.
“I knew my father had been in trouble, (but) I was quite unaware of the nature of the offences with which he was charged until I was eighteen.” At eighteen he read the first of the biographies, by Robert Sherard, one of Oscar’s friends. “I was so depressed that I decided to read no more books about my father, no matter who wrote them; and to that resolution I adhered for many years. Even now I have read very few.”
Cyril’s situation was different. He saw, at the time of the trials, a placard which indicated the stark truth. He was very gallant and never revealed the information to Vyvyan. Vyvyan’s assessment is that this suppressed knowledge was damaging to Cyril who, thereafter, was an unsmiling “taciturn pessimist”.
The boys were sent to Baden in the company of a less-than sympathetic or conscientious nursemaid. Two motives were in place at this time: first to protect the boys from the scandal (although that was already too late for the sharp-eyed Cyril), and secondly, their mother was trying to circumvent the Marquess’s wish to twist the knife as painfully as possible, as he forced a bankruptcy sale on all Wilde’s belongings, including the contents of their home. Holland notes that, as they were whisked to Europe, they were without any of their toys. “The sale consisted of 246 lots; number 237 was ‘A large quantity of toys’; they realised thirty shillings.”
Initially, their life involved a wonderful time, fishing, tadpoles, lizards, wandering. They moved to Switzerland, Italy and back to Germany. Constance felt the need for adult protection and this was to come from her own family. The boys were told that from then on, their name was Holland, and they were never to mention the name Wilde.
Oscar’s mother, Speranza, died in 1896 and the vulnerable but honourable Constance chose to tell him herself, travelling back to England and to the prison. “‘Where is Father?’ I asked. ‘Why don’t we ever see him now?’ This was the question my mother had been dreading for months. She replied: ‘He has not been very well. He has had a great deal of trouble.’ I was afraid to ask any more; but the vague misgivings with which I had been assailed at Bevaix when our names were changed seemed to take a firmer hold upon me. I was conscious only of the heavy load of despair that was weighing upon my mother, and I wished that I could bear part of it for her.”
Holland expounds: “To be an illegitimate child is a simple condition compared to the one in which we found ourselves – there are, after all, so many thousands of illegitimate children in all walks of life. But we had known what it was to have our father fêted and admired, and now to deny him and to lock out all knowledge of him in our hearts was a terrible burden for children to bear. The thought that at any moment an indiscreet remark or a chance encounter with someone from our former lives might betray us was a sword of Damocles constantly hanging above our heads.”
The various European schools to which they were sent had endemic bullying and severe corporal punishment, as so many schools did at this time; although the boys’ true identities were not known, their Englishness still made them outsiders and thus victims of bullying and ostracism. “My brother did not seem to mind this roughness; he had already started on his determined mission in life to rehabilitate the family name by sheer force of character and overcoming all weaknesses and obstacles.” Matters worsened for Vyvyan who now felt alienated from his elder brother: “My brother, who with his superior physique and knowledge was a hero to me, began to lose interest in me and, I thought, actively to dislike me.”
Vyvyan started to take an interest in Catholicism – presumably knowing nothing of his father’s interests in the same direction – and eventually was enrolled at a Jesuit school where he was far more comfortable, and where he developed an adolescent’s increasingly obsessive fanaticism.
Oscar was released on May 19th, 1897. Constance’s family persuaded her to “let an interval elapse before she saw my father. She should have returned to England and taken charge of him, instead of leaving him to his own devices. But what her family really wanted was for her to sever connection with him once for all; they succeeded admirably in this for my father and mother never met again.” The other outcome was that, despite a plethora of initial good intentions, and without Constance’s guidance, Oscar soon reverted to damaging behaviour.
Quite soon after, Constance died from complications following an ill-advised operation. This left the brothers effectively orphans since, as far as they knew, their father was already dead, and their mother’s family adhered to this story. Impressively, not long before her death, she told them. “‘Try not to feel harshly about your father; remember that he is your father and that he loves you. All his troubles arose from the hatred of a son for his father, and whatever he has done he has suffered bitterly for.’”
Cyril subsequently explained that his response to the whole saga was that “‘My great incentive was to wipe that stain away; to retrieve, if may be, by some action of mine, a name no longer honoured in the land. The more I thought of this, the more convinced I became that, first and foremost, I must be a man . There was to be no cry of decadent, of effeminate aesthete, of weak-kneed degenerate… For that I have laboured; for that I have toiled…. I ask nothing better than to end in honourable battle for my King and Country.’”
Ultimately, he did just that. He was commissioned as a 2nd lieutenant in the Royal Field Artillery, serving in Britain then India, then in France in World War I; by then a captain, he was killed by a sniper in 1915, a little before his thirtieth birthday. Interestingly, for all his search for machismo, he was apparently not “one of the boys” amongst his fellow-officers, eschewing their small, blokey talk, and, rather, visiting art galleries.
Meanwhile, Vyvyan had been enrolled in an English Jesuit school, where his piety led him to dream of ordination until the Jesuits discouraged him, presumably worried about the genes he carried.
The strength of his sense of displacement is ruefully described: “One of the stultifying things about having no parents is the perpetual consciousness that there is no one to whom you are the most important person in the world. There is no one who, if you died, would shed a single tear or, indeed, give you another thought. I was in fact constantly in my father’s thoughts, but, as I was given to understand that he was dead, I could not know about that.” However, as a fourteen year old, he was suddenly informed that Oscar had just died.
Eventually, Oscar’s old friend, Robbie Ross, managed to make contact with a fifteen and a half year old Cyril who replied but without informing Vyvyan: “‘ I am glad you say that he loved us. I hope that at his death he was truly penitent… It is hard for a young mind like mine to realise why all the sorrow should have come on us, especially so young. And I am here among many happy faces among boys who have never really known an hour of sorrow and I have to keep my sorrow to myself and have no one there to sympathise with me although I am sure my many friends would soon do so if they knew. But when I am solemn and do not join so much in their jokes they stir me up and chide me for my gloominess./It is of course a long time since I saw father but all I do remember was when we lived happily together in London and how he would come and build brick houses for us in the nursery./I only hope that it will be a lesson for me and prevent me from falling into the snares and pitfalls of this world.”
Vyvyan gained admission to Cambridge, though not directly from school. The attempts of his mother’s family to extinguish any connection with Wilde inevitably collapsed. He came across The Ballad of Reading Gaol; “slowly the beauty and force of the poem came home to me and I felt a great urge to read more of my father’s writings.” He started telling close friends about his true identity, and connections from his father’s world appeared. “I found myself, within the space of a few days, no longer the friendless, haunted creature I had been for years, but in the midst of well-wishers in the literary and artistic world of London./ Robert Ross began to take me round to see my father’s old friends and I started to learn something about Oscar Wilde and his charm.”
There are so many paradoxes in this whole sad story. One is that Cyril discovered the truth about his father’s charges while still young and protected his brother from the knowledge. Cyril’s response was deliberately to reject any comparable behaviour and to aspire to the contemporary image of manliness. So Cyril rejected his father, whereas Vyvyan did not learn of the full story until he was more mature, and he was then more sympathetically inclined towards Oscar’s memory. Yet Oscar, in De Profundis referred to Cyril by name twice and never to Vyvyan.
Vyvyan Holland concludes his book with a powerful comparison of his real father with what has since been written of him: “If they have mentioned any human qualities it has always been in parentheses, as it were, and almost on a note of surprise and deprecation. And yet the most outstanding aspect of my father’s character was his great humanity, his love of life and of his fellow-men and his sympathy with suffering. He was the kindest and gentlest of men, and he hated to see anyone suffer.” Holland continues with a lament of how he, himself, was managed as a boy and youth: “When I was parted from my father for ever I passed through the stages of fear, perplexity and frustration. Fear and frustration are more destructive to peace of mind than almost any other mental processes; and as I connected these with my father I gradually began to think of him with dislike, whether I thought of him at all. And this feeling, fostered by the attitude of my mother’s family, increased as I approached adolescence./My fear was for what I might one day discover. My frustration came from having it constantly dinned into me that I was different from other boys; that I was a pariah who could not take his place within the framework of the world, except, perhaps, in some remote corner of it./ Fear and frustration are two obsessions of which it is terribly hard to rid oneself. And if I have learnt nothing else in the course of my life, I have learnt that it is impossible to hide one’s head and to be happy at the same time, that it is better to sail under one’s true colours and to face all comers bravely and resolutely. And I think that this is what our family should have made us do”. This is far more insightful than Wilde’s own reflections in De Profundis which he litters with claims of his personal genius.
Son of Oscar Wilde has a series of appendices of invaluable additional documents, including an extract from Oscar Wilde: An Oxford Reminiscence by one W.W. Ward: “Deliberately he had cultivated, as it seems to me, moods and feelings and appetite and states of thought so warring and so contradictory that at length the mould of sanity and self-control broke. He had made his mind a stage on which incongruous scenes continually shifted, across which strange characters, each the protagonist of the moment, passed and repassed in a carnival of mad confusion, while he himself sat, as he fondly thought, a passive spectator in the stalls and watched the play proceed – with appropriate emotions. He had turned his mind into a laboratory in which he might test his own experiences and he fell victim to his own experiments….And so with a certain reverence he lifts to his lips the cup of bitterness; slowly he drains it to the dregs; drop by drop he rolls the wine of humiliation over his tongue to taste to the full its exquisite flavour; he becomes an epicure of suffering, an arbiter miserarum . He treads the thorns of his Via Dolorosa more vibrant with discriminative sensibility, more critically recordant than ever he walked down the Primrose Path to the sound of flutes.”
Part of the lamentable story of Wilde’s sons’ lives comes down to a contemporary set of “values” related to proper sexual behaviour, to disgrace and reputation, and, most importantly, to the treatment of children, and these should be separated from considerations of Wilde’s behaviour and actions, which have received considerable examination in other places. This book is a powerfully cautionary tract warning against impulsive judgmentalism and unthinking mismanagement of children.

[Henry Sturcke · Rating 3 out of 5]

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.

[Laura L. Van Dam · Rating 5 out of 5]

Atrapante y esclarecedora biografía de Oscar Wilde narrada a través de las vivencias de su hijo. Me sacó lágrimas en varias partes por las injusticias sufridas no solo por Wilde sino por su familia. Sus hijos fueron arrancados de la casa familiar, se les cambió el nombre y se los mandó a vivir al extranjero, con la vaga idea de que algo terrible había pasado. El saqueo de la casa, incluyendo sus libros infantiles y juguetes. El hijo mayor llorando mientras arrancaba de la ropa las etiquetas con su nombre con un cortaplumas. El bullying por parte de los adultos. La miseria repentina. Los parientes que se los pasaban de una casa a otra como paquetes molestos tras la muerte de la madre.

Terrible.

[Fionnbharr Rodgers · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful wee book and the foremost of biographies I would recommend to anyone who really wants to get a sense of Wilde as a man. His eldest son portrayed a clear image of the joyful man who wrote with a twinklingly humourous love for the world and the eye for colour of a rennaissance fresco painter. The idea of Wilde I come away from this book with is akin to Spike Milligan, born a few steps up the economic ladder.

This book adds another way in which Wilde was a mold-breaker of a fellow, specifically in that he was an active father (rare for the time and the class) who derived great joy from being with his children; there’s a beautiful story of him bringing home a little toy horse and trap with churns and, in discovering the trap could be detached and the churns filled, went downstairs for a jug of milk that they filled the churns with and played the thing all round the nursery til the milk was all round the floor, until the nurse came in and put a stop to things.

[Emma · Rating 3 out of 5]

definitely interesting, a portrait on the side of oscar wilde but very useful to understand more fully his story

[Paula Vince · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a fascinating autobiography, and its scope even makes it something of a bildungsroman, but true instead of fictional.

Oscar Wilde's younger son, Vyvyan Holland, tells of his own baffled lifestyle as a child fugitive, following his famous father's imprisonment. Young Vyvyan (what a cool name, especially for the Victorian era) knows that his father, once feted is now hated, but his mother, Constance, conceals the details from him. So does Vyvyan's brother, Cyril, who accidentally discovers the truth but wishes to shield his little brother from the disgrace he feels.

Poor Constance Wilde, fearing harsh public backlash on her innocent sons, rushes them across to the Continent to hide. She changes their surname from Wilde to Holland, after some of her distant relatives. This story is an excellent literary social artifact about the lifestyle of boys in the late Victorian era, and what is expected of them as they become young men in the turn into the twentieth century and Edwardian era. Vyvyan writes differently from his dad, but his detailed memory, wry humour, and interesting incident choices kept me scrolling pages. I was finding that in no time flat, another hour had passed.

He describes the emotionally harmful burden of being forced to deny their father, compounded by their mother's sad, premature death a few years later, while they were still only 11 and 13. Cyril swings reactively to create an identity nothing like their father's, scorning anything he perceives as arty or effeminate. And Vyvyan himself develops a lifelong case of social anxiety and shyness, resulting from his fear and confusion early on. The two boys are hidden victims whose budding personalities are shaped by what happened to the previous generation. Being child pariahs takes a huge toll on them.

Next, Cyril and Vyvyan are left at the mercy of Constance's extended family; a straitlaced bunch who were always offended by Oscar's flamboyant notoriety and hadn't wanted her to marry him in the first place. Rather than seeing their new charges as a couple of vulnerable young boys, they perceive a pair of tinder boxes who might explode in outrageous ways at any time. The brothers are forced to keep the secret of their paternity until one day when Vyvyan is nearly 21, their father's friends discover their existence. To these new faces, the boys are more like holy grails who'd been long sought.

That's one of the lasting impressions this book leaves me with. Same pair of kids, but polar opposite sentiments, depending on others' points of view. It was one of the tragedies of the early 20th century that Oscar's zealous attempts to meet up with his sons after his release from prison were met with a brick wall. Vyvyan had no idea that his father was being told, 'The boys are happier without you in their lives,' since he certainly wasn't thriving with his reluctant guardians. In fact, Vyvyan was led to believe that Oscar was dead.

The publisher's note, in this book published in 1954, refers to Oscar Wilde's 'sexual perversion' and 'misguided way of life.' What would these early readers think, and what would Vyvyan himself think, to see how far the social tide has turned!

Vyvyan is not afraid to call out the worst of Victorian hypocrisy, including the cruelty of some highly acclaimed folk of the time period. I fully agree when he says toward the end:

'I do not try to defend my father's behaviour but I do think that the penalties inflicted upon him were unnecessarily severe. And by that I do not only mean the prison sentence, I mean the virtual suppression of all his works and the ostracism and insults which he had to endure during the remaining years of his life.'
However, I disagree with these words written by Vyvyan in his Preface.

'This is not a very amusing and entertaining story. I think, however that it should be written as part of the whole story of Oscar Wilde.'
He sells himself short there, because in spite of plenty of reflective and serious subject matter, I did find this book on the whole, especially some of the antics he and Cyril get up to, to be vastly amusing and entertaining indeed. I'm sure it'll be up among my ten best books of the year.

[Una (EX) precaria tra i libri · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Essere figlio di Oscar Wilde” è un resoconto dolcissimo e molto sentito del difficile percorso affrontato dai figli dello scrittore dopo l’abominevole trattamento che gli riservarono in patria. Vyvyan, il più giovane dei due fratelli, racconta frammenti di vita col padre, l’esilio dopo la condanna del 1895, l’inesorabile operazione di anonimizzazione portata avanti dalla famiglia Lloyd (i parenti della moglie di Oscar) che cominciò con il cambio di cognome dei figli (in Holland, appunto) e avrebbe dovuto terminare con la cancellazione del padre dalla memoria dei due ragazzi.
Fortunatamente, una volta maggiorenne Vyvyan riuscì ad entrare in contatto con tutti gli amici dello scrittore e mise finalmente fine al lungo periodo di anonimato, vergogna, frustrazione che aveva caratterizzato la sua adolescenza.
“Una delle cose che disorientava di più nel non avere i genitori era la perenne consapevolezza che non ci fosse nessuno a considerarti la persona più importante del mondo; non c’era nessuno che, se tu fossi morto, avrebbe speso una singola lacrima o ti avrebbe dedicato un pensiero. Ero, in effetti, costantemente nei pensieri di mio padre, ma, poiché mi era stato fatto capire che era morto, non potevo saperlo.”
Ho apprezzato l’edizione proposta da La Lepre, con le foto color seppia in copertina, quarta di copertina e, soprattutto, il richiamo sul dorso.

[Anna Kravchuk · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's so astonishing how we manage to worship Sherlock Holmes stories where a box of matches tells the detective hundreds of important details about a man and simultaneously put people (especially major figures of the past) completely out of context. This book is THE context, the one that makes you rethink what you already know. It thoroughly demonstrates how the world surrounding Oscar Wilde worked -- how this world felt, thought, perceived things. A story of two lost yet creative and go-ahead boys who by the age of 12 experienced more than most do by the age of 50. A story of unbelievably stubborn loyal friends who kept looking for these children years after Oscar Wilde death and of no less stubborn family who made everything humanly possible to erase the memory of Oscar Wilde from these children minds and erase these children identities and the mere fact of their existence from the world. It's not about heroes and villains but about how ridiculously far things can go after they take a wrong turn.

[Iñaki Tofiño · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sad, very sad story indeed. Oscar Wilde's youngest son tells the story of his early life: how he remembers his father, how the mother and the two sons fled England right before Wilde's trial, how they traveled across continental Europe trying to find a place to settle, how the two brothers were separated and sent to different schools, how their mother died in exile, how he found out about his father's death and how he eventually went back to the UK and met people who had helped Wilde and cherished his memory. It is curious to realize that he never ever mentions any term related to Wilde's sexuality: all he wants to do is to restore his dignity as a great author. A coping mechanism, I suppose.
In any case, an interesting document that shows that Victorian morals and homophobia affected not only Wilde by his family as well.

[Meghan Hope · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was an incredibly fascinating read, to get to have the insight of what was considered to be one of the biggest scandals of the fin de siecle from the perspective of Oscar Wilde’s son. It felt pained at times, the way that society and Vyvyans own family wanted the memory of his father to go into oblivion and the everlasting impact it had on Vyvyan’s own life. I am so glad for those such as Robert Ross who helped rebuild and create the legacy that is Oscar Wilde and how he truly was a once in a generation talent. But also to be remembered not only as a caricature but as a loving, kind and funny man that he was.
I would most definitely recommend this!

[Faten Eassa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved the book. It was very hard to find,though. Read about Oscae Wilde through the eyes of his son who was 7 years old when he last saw his father. He yet recalls accurately particularities of this great writer in a way that nobody else can write. He did a great job that gives credit to Oscar Wilde the man, the father and loving husband. The book although written in the sixties is back to life thanks to the grandson Merlin Holand. I wish Merlin would do justice to Oscar Wilde take the name Merlin Wilde. It's about time.

[Anne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Insight into a childhood ruined by 'well meaning' relatives. Time and place are very strong. The author is very witty and apparently inherited his dad's talent for writing. I sort of learned a bit about Wilde in the process of reading this book, I guess it was about the son that is the book's purpose and it's made me curious to find out more. Rupert Everett's film taught me a lot I might rewatch that having read this book.

[ellie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was such a touching and new view on Wilde’s life and family. Vyvyan is a great writer and tells his story concisely and brilliantly. His son, Merlin, edified and updated the book with corrections and new information. I understood some of the pain and confusion Vyvyan wrote about concerning his parentage. I’ve loved Wilde’s writing for many years and find it always fascinating to dive deeper into his history.

[federica · Rating 5 out of 5]

Un nuovo punto di vista sulla vicenda di Oscar Wilde, quella del secondogenito Vyvyan, che ci fornisce una luce diversa della storia. Un bambino che improvvisamente si ritrova la vita stravolta e non ne comprende a fondo le motivazioni, sa solo che in qualche modo è "colpa" del padre. Un viaggio attraverso i suoi occhi di fronte al quale è impossibile rimanere insensibili.

[J T · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is hard to think of the intolerance of so-called intellectual society of that day. The author has given an honest and heart warming account of his life when affected by the hypocritical position of his society.

[Sara Petrolini · Rating 5 out of 5]

Un libro bellissimo, che gli appassionati dell'opera dello scrittore dovrebbero leggere. Permette di dare una dimensione in più al ritratto di Wilde, grazie a un racconto intimo e delicato, mai tinto di rancre o astio. Meraviglioso!

[Dylan Rock · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating insight into both the life of Oscar Wilde and his sum Vyvyan Holland. A must read for anyone with an interest in Wilde's life

[Silvia Argento · Rating 5 out of 5]

Libro magnifico. Per me che adoro Oscar Wilde fin da bambina è stato estremamente toccante, ma credo che per chiunque possa essere illuminante.

[Ogier · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating account mainly from the perspective of a boy, of life in what is called Le Belle Epoque as we follow the painful transition of the sons of Oscar Wilde from pampered progeny of one of the most gifted artists of his day to the ignominy of having to remove their name tags from their clothes to be replaced my an unfamiliar surname in a foreign land. Such was the revulsion of their class to the homosexual lifestyle of their father that in their first abode after leaving England, a Swiss hotel, they were shortly told to leave after it was known who they were. Eventually landing in Heidelberg and a boarding school for English boys, they discovered the school had no plumbing and each boy was given a "slops" pans for personal hygiene. Bathing was done in a pool where instructors and boys bathed together naked. Vyvyan--the younger of the two brothers, was so bullied he begged his mother to remove him from the school. He was then sent to a Italian Jesuit school in Monaco where when he bathed he had to ware a garment! While these aspects of their lives are secondary it shows the lifestyle of the period.
Eventually they returned to England and university still using their assumed name at the instigation of their relatives.
A final poignant note: Vyvyan's older brother Cyrus was killed in the First World War less than a mile from where Vyvyan was serving as a translator.