He knew his London well. "I have lived in London many years. I have known the seamy side of London life for far more than a quarter of a century, and am familiar with every detail of the 'old days' as they are called. I can compare the present with the past, decency with disgust, order with license, and remember the time when we supped in a cellar under the Portico, where the Pall Mall restaurant now stands, when the Haymarket cafés were open as long as customers patronised them. I can recall the nights when Panton Street and Jermyn Street were lined with watchmen and confederates, and admittance was only gained to certain favoured meeting-places by giving a sign, or peeping through a slit in the door or guichet.... I have seen a Chancellor {105} and a Cabinet Minister watching with amused gaze a scene, which was at least decorous on the surface, at the Argyll Rooms in Windmill Street, and, listening to excellent music, I have sat unnoticed up in the corner of the old Holborn Casino, where the Holborn restaurant now stands. I have seen some wild scenes at the Foley Street rooms (Mott's) in the early hours of the morning, and hideous scenes at 222 Piccadilly--the 'Pic' as it was then called--since pulled down and destroyed for the now palatial Criterion. In the warm summer nights I have driven down to Cremorne, and wandered there till the daylight, in lilac and purple, came out above the tall trees and put out the yellow glare of the gas. I have even condescended to the decorous dissipation of Caldwell's dancing rooms, beloved by milliners, and now turned into a National School. I have been an eye-witness of the ups and downs of London life, and the so-called humours of the West End. I have observed the contest between common-sense and prudery, between the men of liberal mind and those determined to make the vicious virtuous by Act of Parliament. I have lived through the changes of licensing rules and closing hours, and seen one place of amusement after another shut up and confiscated--the decorous tarred with the same brush as the dirty. Cremorne and the Holborn Casino bombarded equally with Mott's and the Piccadilly Saloon,..." he wrote in the course of an article, which ended with one of the most powerful indictments of British virtue ever published,[15] and it was during the sixteen years that elapsed between his departure from the Diplomatic Service and his entrance to the House as the "Christian" member for Northampton that he acquired most of his vast experimental knowledge of the artistic and vagabond side of human nature about town.