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Decency is often a question of style. Many Britons feel that there was nothing wrong, or at least new, in a Cabinet minister having a mistress. But there is a slightly snobbish feeling that Christine Keeler and her set really were a bit too casual. Although in Britain the official mistress has never quite reached the glittering status she has in France, the great and small affairs of the past were more likely to be quiet, settled, near-permanent arrangements. A new factor, says Daily Mail Columnist Anne Scott-James, is the "sleaziness of the crowd with which the War Minister mixed." Says Muggeridge: "Fifty years ago people would have gone to Maida Vale and patronized one of the grandes cocottes. If there is anything new in this, it is the overlapping of the social life of Cliveden and of Ward." In short, Britain may be in danger of abandoning Actress Mrs. Pat Campbell's celebrated axiom about Edwardian London: "You can do anything you please here, so long as you don't do it on the street and frighten the horses."
