Life
From Vyvyan’s accounts in his autobiography, Son of Oscar Wilde, Oscar was a devoted and loving father to his two sons and their childhood was a relatively happy one. Nevertheless, after Oscar’s infamous downfall, Constance chose to take on the surname Holland for both the boys and herself (the Holland name having been part of her own family heritage). She took the boys to Switzerland and then enrolled them in an English speaking school in Germany. Vyvyan was unhappy there. Because of this and to improve security, Vyvyan was moved to a Jesuit school in Monaco and subsequently attended Stonyhurst College also run by the Jesuits. However, Cyril remained at the school in Germany. After Constance’s death in 1898, her relatives sought legal counsel to prevent Oscar Wilde from seeing his children again.
From 1899–1903, Holland attended Radley College. After leaving school he became a Gentleman Cadet at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, and was commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant, Royal Field Artillery, on 20 December 1905. He was promoted to Lieutenant on 20 December 1908, and served in the UK until he was posted to India, where he served from September 1911 until 1914, with No. 9 Ammunition Column, RFA at Secunderabad, India in August 1914. He was promoted to Captain, on 30 October 1914.
Read more about this topic: Cyril Holland
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