I think I could recommend you a boy.
(G. F. Maclear to Reginald Poole)
Within the family, Walter’s spirit and his domination of his younger brothers were beginning to cause some anxiety. It was decided that he needed a more challenging environment than could be provided by the little school in Pembridge Villas and that he needed to be separated from his brothers, or, rather, they needed to be separated from him. (Helena, whose health was causing some concern, had already been sent away to school at Miss Slee’s now somewhat reduced establishment in Dieppe.1) After the matter had been inquired into with obvious thoroughness, the boys were divided up between three of London’s leading public schools. Robert went to UCS, and Bernhard to the City of London School (where it was hoped that the formidable Headmaster, Dr Abbot, would ‘cure him of laziness’). Walter was enrolled at King’s College School. He arrived – aged fifteen – for the autumn term of 1875.2
The school was then housed in the basement of the east enfilade of Somerset House, next to King’s College itself. It was essentially a day school, though a few of the 550 pupils ‘boarded’ at the houses of the married masters. The main entrance was on the Strand, where, opposite the gates of St Mary-le-Strand, a broad flight of steps ran down to an inaptly named concrete ‘playground’ in which no games were ever played. Although the school dining room looked out over the river, and at least some of the classrooms were large high-ceilinged spaces level with the street, the principal flavour was one of subterranean gloom and confinement. The place was sometimes referred to, with as much truth as humour, as ‘the dungeon on the Strand’3. The first – and defining – feature of the school was a long, narrow, and dimly lit vaulted corridor off which most of the classrooms led. Dark, even during summer, it was lit by a line of gas lamps that lent their own particular aroma to the inevitable institutional scents of floor polish, cabbage, and unwashed boy. From 11.15 to 11.30 a.m. and from 1 to 1.30 p.m., and at the end of the day’s work, the corridor was generally ‘a pandemonium of yelling, shouting and singing’. Some of the bigger and ‘lustier fellows’ of the Lower School would sometimes amuse themselves by linking arms and rushing down the passage, ‘to the extreme discomfort of those who failed to get out of their way in time’.4 For Walter, however, the site was fraught with positive familial associations. It was in the basements of Somerset House that Richard Sheepshanks had carried out his comparative measurements to establish the new official yard.
At King’s College School in the 1870s the syllabus was rigorously limited. In the ‘Classical Division’ to which Sickert belonged the concentration was on Latin and Greek. The study of these was supplemented by courses in mathematics, English literature, French, and divinity. German and drawing were offered as optional extras, and a ‘course of lectures on some branch of experimental science’ was provided as an afterthought.* It was a system that Sickert came to appreciate. Many years later, when visiting St Felix School, Southwold in the late 1920s to give a lecture on art, he was amazed at the number of subjects being taught. There were at least nine different ones included in the weekly timetable. ‘Tiens!’ he exclaimed. ‘Three subjects are enough. Latin, English and Mathematics. Then the pupils may leave school knowing a little about something which would give them confidence which is so necessary for their future studies, instead of nothing about anything at all.’5
The school, presided over by the long-serving Revd G. F. Maclear, had established an excellent academic reputation. There were many good and several excellent teachers. Sickert’s form master was the genial Dr Robert Belcher. Walter soon began to flourish under his tutelage. He already had some grasp of both Latin and Greek, but this deepened under the regime of close reading, ‘prose writing’, and Greek verse composition. Walter developed a real familiarity with – and enduring love for – the language and literature of classical antiquity. Without laying claim to being a scholar, he continued to read – and to misquote – the classical authors with relish throughout his life. His particular favourite was the clear-sighted, unsentimental epigrammist Martial.6
Sickert, so he claimed, was also ‘naturally and from heredity interested in mathematics’. He would work out geometry propositions on his daily walk to school.7 But it was in the modern languages that he really excelled. His polyglot upbringing (and the fact that most of his contemporaries ‘took neither French or German classes very seriously’8) gave him ample opportunity to shine. He won the Upper School French Prize in Michaelmas 1876, and the Upper School German Prize the following term. And at the annual prize-giving, at Christmas 1877, he carried off the Vice-Master’s German Prize.9
Art was not one of the strengths of King’s College School. Although the great watercolourist John Sell Cotman had taught drawing at the school in the 1830s, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti had briefly been a pupil, they had left no enduring legacy. Art was not part of the curriculum and could only be taken as an extra option at the extra cost of a guinea a term.10 There is no evidence to suggest that Walter ever studied it. Not that he needed the structure of formal classes to stimulate his interest. He drew incessantly, and achieved some recognition for his work amongst his schoolfellows. On one memorable occasion when he was caught drawing caricatures in class, the form master, instead of punishing him, framed the confiscated picture.11
Class work, it seems, only ever absorbed so much of Walter’s attention. He was undaunted by the wider stage of his new school, and soon surrounded himself with new friends, among them the school’s leading scholar, Alfred Pollard, and Alfred Kalisch (who became the music critic for the Daily News).12 Sickert’s energy and liveliness were captivating, and so were his emerging good looks. One former classmate recalled that even as a schoolboy he had the glamour that attaches to the ‘extremely handsome’.13 He delighted in doing the unexpected. One of the Japanese boys from Mr Hunt’s school had also moved to KCS and Walter greatly surprised and impressed his new schoolmates by addressing him in Japanese.14
Amongst his other pranks was a scheme to undercut the school tuck shop by setting up his own doughnut stall at break time. KCS pupils had long been complaining at the quality of the fare provided by Mr Reynolds – the local baker who ran the tuck shop – and at ‘the enormous profits’ that he made from his monopoly. Like many of Sickert’s later commercial ventures, the doughnut stall was not a financial success and was closed down by the authorities. He sometimes claimed that the scam led to his expulsion from the school, but this was an exaggeration.15 The headmaster was, on the whole, indulgent of Walter’s irregularities.16 He was mindful perhaps of his contributions to other areas of school life.
Dr Maclear took a particular interest in the end-of-year performances put on as part of the Christmas prize-giving. A mixed programme was presented with scenes not only from Shakespeare and the other English classics but also from Greek, Latin, French, and German dramas