He was, as his friends acknowledged, a man who ‘wanted a good deal of variety’ in his love life,64 and he was prepared to seek it out. Some less friendly witnesses referred to him as ‘a coureur des dames’.65 The chase seems to have ranged over the full social scale. His extravagantly good looks – particularly his beautiful hair and his kind eyes – and his extravagantly good manners gave him an extraordinary charm ‘for all women – Duchess or model’.66 And though there is no record of his having seduced a duchess, tradition holds that he did bed at least some of his models.67 (Even in the 1880s, when he painted few figure pictures, he regularly engaged models; Jacques-Émile Blanche remembered them as being game for jolly outings down to the Star and Garter at Richmond, and elsewhere.68) Sickert also ‘sympathized’ with barmaids, wooing them – and bemusing them – with such impractical presents as gilt-edged editions of the classics.69 But though the line between artist’s model, public-house worker, and prostitute was an unfixed one in late-Victorian London, Sickert does not appear to have been drawn to this milieu during his early married life.70 Most of his affairs were, it seems, with women from his own social world. They came to Broadhurst Gardens where Ellen, ignorant of their true relations, met them ‘as friends visiting’. The infidelities either occurred elsewhere or when she was absent.71
Sickert treated his affairs lightly. He did not consider that they in any way compromised his marriage. He maintained always a perversely high regard for ‘blessed monogamy’, but believed it should be ‘reasonably tempered by the occasional caprice’.72 He was genuinely shocked at the idea that any unattached woman should wish him to leave Ellen for her – or, indeed, that any married woman might consider leaving her husband for him.73 He liked the excitement of being in love, so he fell in love often – though, as he once remarked, ‘You can’t really love more than 2 or 3 women at a time.’74 When a friend laughingly compared him to Shelley, ‘who thought “the more he loved the more love he had to give”’, Sickert answered ‘quite seriously, “Precisely, that is just it.”’75 But his conception of love was less exalted than the great Romantic’s: he regarded it as no more than a diversion, to be played at ‘like a quadrille’.76
Those mistresses rash enough to fall in love with him were almost invariably disappointed.77 They soon discovered that his real and enduring passion was reserved for his art. An affair, to him, was no more than a stimulating recreation, a rest from the business of picture making. And picture making for Sickert had its own almost sexual thrill. He characterized the starting point of any painting as the artist’s ‘letch’ to record a particular scene (and the success of the picture could be judged on the extent to which it communicated that ‘letch’ to the viewer).78 Throughout 1888 Sickert’s strongest and most recurrent ‘letch’ was for the darkened interiors of London’s music halls.
He stayed on in town late that summer, and was still hard at work during the first week of August when he learnt that Whistler, who had broken with Maud Franklin, was to marry Beatrice Godwin. (She had never divorced Godwin but he had died two years previously.79) They made a happy and devoted pair. Beatrice, moreover, was supported by a close band of siblings, who could help her to provide Whistler with a new milieu, and a new stability, at a moment when – ousted from the RSBA – he might otherwise have succumbed to feelings of vulnerability and rejection. This new domestic circle came to provide a first forum for his thoughts and feelings on the great topics of his life: his work, his reputation, and his enemies. Sickert, like the other followers, found himself freer to pursue his own interests. But only so far. Even from a distance Whistler maintained a jealous watch over the doings of his disciples, ever ready to discern acts of presumption or betrayal. Sickert was fortunate to have an ally in Beatrice. She promoted his cause, and ensured that relations between master and erstwhile pupil continued happily, at least for the while.*
Soon after Whistler’s marriage Sickert went over to France for his holiday, but without Ellen. His mother had taken a house at St Valéry-en-Caux, just down the coast from Dieppe, and was there with Bernhard, Oswald, and Leonard.80 After the pressures of his London work, Walter had a chance to unwind. He found the small fishing village ‘a nice little place to sleep & eat in’, which, as he told Blanche, was what he was ‘most anxious to do now’.81 The appetite for work, however, very soon reasserted itself. He and Bernhard spent their days in swimming and painting. It was an ideal regime, and Mrs Sickert was able to report that both her older sons ‘look & are very well’. Walter was encouraging his brother to experiment with pastel and asked Blanche to send over some special ‘glasspaper & sandpaper canvas’ from the Dieppe art-supply shop for Bernhard to work on. The medium was one of Degas’ favourites, and it was being promoted in England through a series of Pastel Exhibitions at the Grosvenor Gallery. Shortly before crossing to France, Walter had spent a happy hour with the gallery’s new director, Paul Deschamps, looking at some Degas pictures they had in stock. He felt confident that under the new regime the Grosvenor’s annual pastel show ‘should become a sympathetic Exhibition’.82 He persuaded both Blanche and Bernhard to send to it.83 Strangely, though, there is scant evidence that Walter himself was working in pastel at this period. Perhaps he felt obliged to leave the ground clear for his easily discouraged brother.† Sickert concentrated his own energies on painting and drawing, producing amongst other things a bright little panel of the local butcher’s shop, its red frontage flushed in early autumnal sunshine. The motif was Whistlerian but the definition of the painting, and the boldness of the colour, brought it closer to the world of Manet and Degas.84 He also – in a yet more obvious homage to Degas – made numerous detailed studies of a laundress working away with her smoothing iron.85
By early October Sickert was back in London. He found the city in a state of simmering hysteria. Over the previous eight weeks, five East End prostitutes had been murdered and horribly mutilated by an unknown attacker. The two most recent victims had been discovered in the early hours of 30 September. A dedicated killer was on the loose. Theories as to his – or her – identity abounded. The press and the terrified