Now twenty-four years old, Sidney was back in London, once again living with his family at 11 Endsleigh Gardens. It was 1897, the year of the Imperial Victorian Exhibition, one of the ‘brilliantly vulgar’ exhibitions that helped to popularize Great Britain's imperial mission. The house at Endsleigh Gardens was, as always, full of people. Sidney's siblings were still there. His older sister Evelyn, twenty-seven, was helping her father with the Contemporary. His younger sister Dora, twenty, had decided to take up medicine. She had matriculated at University College in 1893, sat her science and maths exams in July 1896 and was planning to start at the London School of Medicine for Women on Henrietta Street that autumn of 1897. Sidney's brother Sheldon, just fifteen, had been at University College School since 1893. There were the usual array of guests and servants.

Sidney's father persuaded him to follow one of the family traditions and pursue a career in law, but to train as a solicitor rather than a barrister. Sidney was articled to Freshfields, a firm of solicitors in the City of London. It was a suitable post in a wealthy and prestigious firm. By the 1890s the City of London had recovered from the depression of the previous decade, largely as a result of the so-called ‘kaffi r boom’ – the boom in South African mining shares. British overseas investment was thriving.