By the time the Sickerts left Bedford, the deficiencies of the Reading boarding school were proving impossible to ignore, and Walter made the move to London along with the rest of the family. The relocation was a happy one for all. The Sickerts found old friends and connections. Their house became a sociable and lively place. The confraternity of painters came forward to welcome Oswald, among them several artists whom he had known from his days at Altona, Munich, and Paris. The sculptor Onslow Ford had worked at Munich and had married a friend of the Sickerts there.22 Frederic Burton, a student at Munich in the 1850s and now a successful and fashionable practitioner, called on the family. (Oswald was shocked, on entering the room, to discover one of his sons – almost certainly Walter – showing Burton through a bound volume of the Fliegende Blätter, pointing out the paternal drawings.)23 Hugh Carter, an artist who had spent time at Altona and married a girl from Hamburg, turned out to be a near neighbour at 12 Clarendon Road.24 The Sheepshanks name carried a weight and prestige in London that it rather lacked in provincial Bedford. In the capital, the achievements of the Revd Richard Sheepshanks and the munificence of his brother John were established facts. And this family fame reflected faintly on the Sickerts, giving them both a glow of glamour and – more importantly – a ‘social position’.25 Although Anne Sheepshanks was living out of London, the many friends she had in town provided a supportive structure for the young family. It was almost certainly through the influence of her friends the de Morgans that, in October 1870, Walter was enrolled (after a brief stint at a London ‘Dower School’) at University College School in Gower Street.26
Mrs Sickert conformed to what she considered were the established modes of English life. She took the children to church on Sunday mornings, walking them off to St Thomas’, Paddington, a little iron church off Westbourne Grove.27 It was a temporary structure, but the vicar, the Revd John Alexander Jacob, had a reputation as a preacher (his Building in Silence, and Other Sermons was published by Macmillan in 1875). Oswald Sickert did not attend, although, as a ‘tolerant minded agnostic’, he accompanied the family as far as the corner nearest the church and often met them coming out. The young Sickerts’ own involvement with proceedings was only slightly more engaged. Although they learnt the ‘Collect for the day’ and were taught their catechism by Mrs Sickert, their approach was so formal that, when asked ‘What is your name?’ they were liable to reply, ‘N or M as the case may be’.28 Walter showed no inclination towards the spiritual side of life. But churchgoing did have its social compensations. The Carters attended St Thomas’; and the Sickerts as they trooped up Holland Walk would also encounter the Raleighs, a lively family of one boy and five girls, children of the Revd Alexander Raleigh, who lived nearby.29
The move to England had a particular impact upon Oswald Sickert’s position. From being a cosmopolitan figure in a cosmopolitan milieu, he found himself a foreigner in an essentially English one. English, though he spoke it perfectly, was not his native – or even his second – tongue. Moreover, he no longer had a job or an income. Mrs Sickert wanted to make over to him the allowance that she received, but the terms of her trust made that impossible. Instead she drew her cheque every month and then handed over the cash to her husband, ‘so that she might have the pleasure of asking him for it, bit by bit’. Helena vividly recalled the playing out of this little charade: ‘It was her luxury to pretend he gave it to her, and his eyes would smile at her as he drew out his purse and asked, “Now how much must I give you, extravagant woman?” And she would say humbly, “Well, Owlie, I must get some serge for the little ones’ suits, and a new hat for Nell, and I want to bring back some fish. Will fifteen shillings be too much?” So she would get a pound and think how generous he was.’30 The fiction was a happy one but it could not quite obscure Oswald’s new, dependent status.
There were, in theory, some advantages to his new condition. Freed from the necessity of hackwork, he could rededicate himself exclusively to painting. London was a not unpropitious place for such a project. Compared to Munich, where the Kunstverein had exercised a virtual monopoly on exhibitions, there were several exhibiting groups and even a few commercial art galleries at which he could show. There were art collectors too. The example of John Sheepshanks had inspired several imitators, as the wealth generated by Britain’s ever expanding industrial and commercial imperium sought expression and dignity through art. With such patronage, artists were beginning to grow rich. The new mansions of Holland Park, with their lofty studio-rooms, were monuments to the fortunes being made in paint.31
Although Oswald had a painting room in the house, he soon took on a separate studio in Soho Square as well. Soho was some distance from Notting Hill, but it was close to Gower Street, and Oswald would walk the three and a half miles to UCS each morning with his eldest son. The link between them was reinforced. Walter would show off to his father. One of the challenges he undertook was to learn by heart the exotic polysyllabic name of the Indian Maharaja whose tombstone stood in the churchyard they passed each day. (Over seventy years later Sickert was still able to rattle off the name: Maharaja Meerzaram Guahahapaje Raz Parea Maneramapam Murcher, KCSI.)32 He was initiated, too, into his father’s professional world, accompanying him to buy materials at Cornelissen, the artists’ supply shop in Bloomsbury.33 The daily excursions into town, however, also made Walter aware of his father’s semi-alien status in their new home. Whenever they passed the shop of the friendly local cobbler, the man, ‘thinking in the English way, that it was necessary to shout and explain things to all foreigners, however well they spoke English’, would point at his display of porpoise-hide bootlaces and ‘roar at the top of his voice, “Papooze’s ‘ide!”’34 Perhaps it was the embarrassment of this daily performance that first inspired the slight note of protectiveness that came to colour Sickert’s view of his father – a protectiveness always mingled with real admiration, piety, and affection.35
The family maintained a European perspective. From the summer of 1870 onwards the unfolding drama of the Franco-Prussian war consumed their attention. Walter followed the rapid succession of French defeats in the pages of the Illustrated London News. It was a conflict that touched the Sickerts with painful closeness, setting familiar Germany against beloved France. Their sympathies lay entirely with the French. It was torture to Mrs Sickert when Dieppe was occupied by Prussian troops in December, and for Oswald when Paris fell at the beginning of the following year. French refugees became a feature of London life. Amongst the self-imposed exiles were several artists: Claude Monet came, and Camille Pissarro. The general exodus also brought a German painter – Otto Scholderer. After training at the Academy in Frankfurt, Scholderer had gone to Paris in 1857 and enrolled