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George Moore met Harry Colvill Bridger while both were enrolled in art school in London circa 1870. He met Harry’s sisters Florence and Dulcibella on visits to the family farm in Shoreham-by-Sea; in the 1880s one of the sisters became his girlfriend.

Florence Louisa Bridger (1856-1935), Dulcibella Mary Bridger (1859-1934) are pictured above-left in an undated carte-de visite in my collection. They were identified on the verso pictured above right, based on the handwritten caption in an antique album of the Orme family.

The girls and their brother Harry Colvill Bridger (1850-1929) were children of Harry Colvill Bridger (1828-1910) and his wife Sarah Louise Louisa. All were born in Shoreham-by-Sea, West Sussex. The Bridgers inspired George Moore’s fictional portraits of the Brookes family in Spring Days (1888)

In the 1970s I interviewed the girls’ half-brother Frank Stanley Colvill Bridger (born 1892) at his home in Sussex. I have since lost track of the family.