3-100-776 - "Royal Academy of Arts, London"/Heritage Images

Reproduction of a photograph of Master Cyril Wilde, c1893. Cyril Holland (né Wilde; 1885-1915) was the elder of the two sons of Oscar Wilde and Constance Lloyd. 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. However, after Wilde's well-publicized trials in Britain, conviction in 1895, and imprisonment for gross indecency, Constance took the children to Switzerland. She began using the surname Holland for both the boys and herself in order to protect them from public scrutiny. Oscar Wilde died in 1900; neither of his sons saw him again after he went to prison. Holland joined the Royal Field Artillery and when the First World War began, he was posted to British forces on the Continent. He participated in the battle for Neuve-Chapelle, where he was killed in France by a German sniper on 9 May 1915, during the Battle of Festubert. From "Photographic portraiture: an interview with Mr. H. H. Hay Cameron," in "The Studio", 1893, Vol. 2.