Vyvyan HollandCritiques
Auteur de Son of Oscar Wilde
Critiques
Ce site utilise des cookies pour fournir nos services, optimiser les performances, pour les analyses, et (si vous n'êtes pas connecté) pour les publicités. En utilisant Librarything, vous reconnaissez avoir lu et compris nos conditions générales d'utilisation et de services. Votre utilisation du site et de ses services vaut acceptation de ces conditions et termes.
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.