Wine and Wit by Alec Waugh

Drink and Be Merry, by Vyvyan Holland. British Book Centre, $6.25.

AMONG MUCH that is unpleasant, a great many agreeable things have come to pass since 1945; not least among them is the emergence as a writer of Oscar Wilde’s second son—Vyvyan Holland, now in his eightieth year. Through the Twenties and the Thirties, he led a life that can best be described as one of active retirement. During World War I he lost his wife, tragically in a fire. After a long period in the trenches, as a gunner, he returned to civilian life with a whole skin, an O.B.E. and the resolve to make the most of the life that had been spared him. As he was drawing a comfortable income from his father’s books and plays, he was perfectly placed to do just that. He was a man of many interests; a philatelist, a gourmet, a collector, a sound golfer, an assiduous appreciator of feminine attractions. He was bilingual and found occupation for his leisure translating French novels—including those of Paul Morand. He was without ambition. He had an acute dislike of personal publicity. He detested notoriety as much as his father had reveled in it. On the title page of his translations, he sometimes reversed his own initials, appearing as H.B.V. He read to a London dining club, “Ye Sette of Odde Volumes”, a couple of excellent papers on “Bores” and “The Courts of Love” which were privately printed for the members, but when his friends urged him to attempt a larger task he would shrug and mumble something inaudible out of the corner of his mouth. It is natural for the son of a highly successful writer to be diffident about following in the same profession and inviting comparisons, but Holland carried an affection for anonymity to an extreme. He rarely talked about his father.

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Alec Waugh

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Drink and Be Merry, by Vyvyan Holland. British Book Centre, $6.25.

AMONG MUCH that is unpleasant, a great many agreeable things have come to pass since 1945; not least among them is the emergence as a writer of Oscar Wilde’s second son—Vyvyan Holland, now in his eightieth year. Through the Twenties and the Thirties, he led a life that can best be described as one of active retirement. During World War I he lost his wife, tragically in a fire. After a long period in the trenches, as a gunner, he returned to civilian life with a whole skin, an O.B.E. and the resolve to make the most of the life that had been spared him. As he was drawing a comfortable income from his father’s books and plays, he was perfectly placed to do just that. He was a man of many interests; a philatelist, a gourmet, a collector, a sound golfer, an assiduous appreciator of feminine attractions. He was bilingual and found occupation for his leisure translating French novels—including those of Paul Morand. He was without ambition. He had an acute dislike of personal publicity. He detested notoriety as much as his father had reveled in it. On the title page of his translations, he sometimes reversed his own initials, appearing as H.B.V. He read to a London dining club, “Ye Sette of Odde Volumes”, a couple of excellent papers on “Bores” and “The Courts of Love” which were privately printed for the members, but when his friends urged him to attempt a larger task he would shrug and mumble something inaudible out of the corner of his mouth. It is natural for the son of a highly successful writer to be diffident about following in the same profession and inviting comparisons, but Holland carried an affection for anonymity to an extreme. He rarely talked about his father.