Also staying in Gower Street in 1879 was the New Zealand politician and landscape painter John Crowe Richmond, together with his family. He was over in London not least so that his younger daughter, Dorothy, could gain a good art education. ‘Dolla’ Richmond, as she was known, had started attending the Slade, and was already achieving a reputation there – amongst the tutors as an artist, and amongst her fellows as both a beauty and a devotee of Henry Irving.49 On these two latter fronts she was thought to rival even the lovely Margery May. Sickert, when they met, was very much attracted to her, and they began a bantering, flirtatious friendship. But then it was a period for bantering flirtatious friendships, and Sickert’s was not exclusive.
His attention was drawn, too, by the Cobden sisters, who were friends of the Richmonds, the Leigh-Smiths, the Robinsons, and several other Gower Street worthies.50 Ellen, Jane, Annie, and Maggie: the four, unmarried daughters of the late Richard Cobden were something of a social phenomenon. They were young, beautiful, bright, and – in almost every sense of the word – independent.* Their father, the great apostle of Free Trade, founder of the so-called Manchester School, and scourge of the protectionist Corn Laws, had been the recipient of two large subscriptions from a grateful public during his lifetime, and at his death in 1865 he had divided up the greater part of his estate between his daughters. They were well provided for.* When, in 1877, the death of their mother had left them orphans, they had set up home together at 12 York Place, towards the northern end of Baker Street. Ellen, the eldest girl, was then 29, Jane 26, Annie 24, and Maggie – the ‘baby’ of the family by some way – just 16.
It was a cultured, vivacious household, and also a political one. The sisters remained proudly conscious of their paternal heritage and kept in close touch with their father’s old friends and allies. They espoused advanced causes with great practical energy. They were suffragettes, ‘ere ever the Suffragist movement began’;51 they believed passionately in Irish Home Rule; they supported Free Trade; and they worked to relieve the lot of the London poor. They became friendly with William Morris perhaps more on account of his radical principles than his artistic tastes. Their ardent idealism, however, did not make them solemn. They were sociable and humorous, fond of fun.
The liberal journalist (and Parnellite MP) T. P. O’Connor rated them ‘as beautiful a bevy of fair English girls’ as ever he had seen, with their ‘glowing rosy complexions, large, deep, soft, candid dark eyes’ – eyes which, he considered, held ‘something in the expression that revealed and yet half hid profound possibilities of emotion and compassion’.52 The term ‘bevy’ seems well chosen: there was a certain plump, partridge-like quality about them all. But, despite this point of similarity, they were never in any danger of being mistaken for each other: their colouring was in different shades, and so were their characters. Maggie was spirited and skittish with ‘a peculiar gypsy beauty’; Annie, dark, capricious, artistic, and – so her sisters thought – hard to please; Jane, with her fair hair and firm chin, was the most forthright and practical of the forthright and practical family; while the gold-tressed Ellen had perhaps the most generous spirit.53 They guarded their individuality with care. It was a family rule that, except on special occasions, they did not attend events en bloc.54
Walter, though he almost certainly met them in Gower Street, soon became a visitor at York Place. There was much for him to admire, even to envy, in the life he found there – a world free from parental controls and financial constraints. And the sisters were all so pretty, so entertaining, and so entertained by him. Already rather smitten by Dorothy Richmond, he became rather smitten by all four of the Cobden girls as well – and by their dog, Topsy. And they, for their part, were all rather smitten by their young, self-confident, handsome admirer, with his thick golden hair and irrepressible enthusiasms. Some hint of Sickert’s distinctive charm and the impact it had upon the Cobden clan is contained in Ellen’s autobiographical novel Wistons. Its hero, Robin Yaldwyn – a barely disguised portrait of Sickert – is described upon his first appearance as being ‘more wonderful and more beautiful than it’s possible to imagine’ – like ‘a spirit from some world where no one had ever been unhappy’ whose quick sympathies and charm ‘made all who came into his presence happier’.55 He did everything, Ellen noted, in less conventionally romantic terms, ‘exquisitely, there was a fine personal stamp upon his smallest action, and he drew up his chair to the table, poured out his tea and buttered his toast in a way that gave distinction to tea and toast and table’.56 He was, too, ‘cheerfully interested in all that personally concerned him; his morning toilette completely absorbed him; he enjoyed washing his hands, brushing his hair; it would have pleased him to dress twice for dinner. Yet with all this love of detail there was nothing fussy or finikin about him.’*57 Ellen’s admiration for Sickert’s looks and manner was echoed by her sisters; and, bowered in such appreciative female company, Sickert was in no hurry to decide between its enticing possibilities: with generous indiscrimination he bestowed favours upon all of the Cobden girls.58
From this enchanting world he was, however, soon dragged away. Clearly he had not disgraced himself in the role of ‘Jasper’, for Rignold engaged him as a ‘General Utility’ actor – to play five small parts – in a touring production of Henry V.59 He chose (or, perhaps, was obliged) not to appear under his own name, adopting instead the self-effacing alias, ‘Mr Nemo’. The tour opened in Birmingham at the beginning of April 1880 to good reviews and ‘crammed’ houses, before moving – with a blithe disregard for geographical convenience – to Liverpool, Wolverhampton, Bristol, Leicester, and Manchester, playing a week at each venue.60 Rignold, who took the title role, had conceived the production on a grand Victorian scale, with elaborate period costumes and props. He made one entrance wearing full armour and mounted upon a horse. It must have been a considerable burden for the horse. Rignold, though small, was stout, and even out of armour made what Maggie Cobden described as a rather ‘solid’ king. His wife was almost equally solid; she appeared as Chorus in a white Greek dress and yellow frizzy wig.61 For the rest, the company was, according to Sickert, very much ‘in the Music Hall line’. Some of the actors had even begun their careers in the circus and did ‘tight-rope bizness’. Many of them had some difficulty in ‘getting sober by the evening’.62 What they made of their assured, well-connected, well-educated young Utility Player is not known, but Sickert already had a gift for making friendships across the conventional barriers of class and age.
At Birmingham, Sickert’s Lyceum companions, led by Margery May, came down from London to see him; the Cobden sisters also attended a performance.63 He received baskets of roses from admirers, and the Birmingham theatre critic, C. J. Pemberton, a friend of Ellen Terry, invited him to dinner. Pemberton was encouraging about Sickert’s performance, singling out his impersonation of ‘the old man’ taken prisoner by Pistol for special praise.64 It was Sickert’s favourite part, and he certainly made the most of it. The critic for the Liverpool Daily Post gave him a glowing review: ‘An admirable bit of acting was that of Mr Nemo as the Captive Frenchman. The spasmodic fright with which he sharply jerked his head to this side and that between his persecutor and his persecutor’s interpreter