text: Social life in London After lodging at several addresses in Sevenoaks, Davies moved back to London early in 1914, settling eventually at 14 Great Russell Street in the Bloomsbury district. He lived there from early 1916 until 1921 in a small  apartment, initially accompanied by an infestation of rodents, and adjacent to rooms occupied by a loud, Belgian prostitute.[p.118] During this London period, Davies embarked on a series of public readings of his work, alongside others such as Hilaire Belloc and W. B. Yeats, impressing fellow poet Ezra Pound. He soon found he could socialise with leading society figures of the day, including Arthur Balfour and Lady Randolph Churchill. While in London he also took up with artists such as Jacob Epstein, Harold and Laura Knight, Nina Hamnett, Augustus John, Harold Gilman, William Rothenstein, Walter Sickert, Sir William Nicholson and Osbert and Edith Sitwell. He enjoyed the society and conversation of literary men, particularly in the rarefied downstairs at the Café Royal. He also met regularly with W. H. Hudson, Edward Garrett and others at The Mont Blanc in Soho.
  For his poetry Davies drew much on experiences with the seamier side of life, but also on his love of nature. By the time he took a prominent place in the Edward Marsh Georgian Poetry series, he was an established figure, generally known for the opening lines of the poem "Leisure", first published in Songs of Joy and Others in 1911: "What is this life if, full of care / We have no time to stand and stare...."