The Magician

Contents

A FRAGMENT OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY

In 1897, after spending five years at St Thomas’s Hospital I passed theexaminations which enabled me to practise medicine. While still a medicalstudent I had published a novel called Liza of Lambeth which caused amild sensation, and on the strength of that I rashly decided to abandondoctoring and earn my living as a writer; so, as soon as I was “qualified”, Iset out for Spain and spent the best part of a year in Seville. I amused myselfhugely and wrote a bad novel. Then I returned to London and, with a friend ofmy own age, took and furnished a small flat near Victoria Station. A maid ofall work cooked for us and kept the flat neat and tidy. My friend was at theBar, and so I had the day (and the flat) to myself and my work. During the nextsix years I wrote several novels and a number of plays. Only one of thesenovels had any success, but even that failed to make the stir that my first onehad made. I could get no manager to take my plays. At last, in desperation, Isent one, which I called A Man of Honour, to the Stage Society, whichgave two performances, one on Sunday night, another on Monday afternoon, ofplays which, unsuitable for the commercial theatre, were considered ofsufficient merit to please an intellectual audience. As every one knows, it wasthe Stage Society that produced the early plays of Bernard Shaw. The committeeaccepted A Man of Honour, and W.L. Courtney, who was a member of it,thought well enough of my crude play to publish it in The FortnightlyReview, of which he was then editor. It was a feather in my cap.

Though these efforts of mine brought me very little money, they attracted not alittle attention, and I made friends. I was looked upon as a promising youngwriter and, I think I may say it without vanity, was accepted as a member ofthe intelligentsia, an honourable condition which, some years later, when Ibecame a popular writer of light comedies, I lost; and have never sinceregained. I was invited to literary parties and to parties given by women ofrank and fashion who thought it behoved them to patronise the arts. Anunattached and fairl

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