Cyril Holland (born Cyril Wilde, 5 June 1885 – 9 May 1915) was the older of the two sons of Oscar Wilde and Constance Lloyd and brother to Vyvyan Holland.
Life
According to his brother Vyvyan Holland's accounts in his autobiography, Son of Oscar Wilde (1954), Oscar was a devoted and loving father to his two sons. Their childhood was a relatively happy one. However, after Wilde's very public trials, conviction in 1895, and imprisonment for gross indecency, their mother Constance chose to take the family out of the spotlight.
She took the surname Holland for both the boys and herself in order to protect them from public scrutiny. She moved with the boys to Switzerland and enrolled them at Neuenheim College, an English-speaking boarding school in Heidelberg, Germany. Oscar Wilde died in 1900; neither of his sons saw him again after he went to prison. When he was released, he went to France and never lived in England or Ireland again.
From 1899 to 1903 Cyril attended Radley College, a private school then in Berkshire. After leaving school, he became a gentleman cadet at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich.
