I entered St Thoma's Hospital as a medical student at the age of 18 and spent five years there .  I was an unsatisfactory student , for my heart , as you might have guessed , was not in it . I wanted , I had always wanted to be a writer , and in the evening , after my high tea , I wrote and read . Before long , I wrote a novel , called " Liza of Lambeth", which I sent to a publisher and was accepted . It appeared during my last year at the hospital and had something of a success . It was of course an accident , but naturally I did not know that . I felt I could afford to give up medicine and make writing my profession ; so, three days after I graduated from the school of medicine , I set out forprefix = st1 /Spainto write another book. Looking back now , and knowing as I do the terrible difficulties of making a living by writing , I realize I was taking a fearful risk . It never even occurred to me . The next ten years were very hard , and I earned an average of PS100 a year . Then I had a bit of luck . The manager of the Court Theatre put on a play that failed ; the next play he arranged to put on was not ready , and he was at his wits' end.He read a play of mine and , though he did not much like it , he thought it might just run for the six weeks till the play he had in mind to follow it with could be produced . It ran for fifteen months . Within a short while I had four plays running in Londonat the same time . Nothing of the kind had ever happened before . I was the talk of the town . One of the students atSt Thomas's Hospital asked the eminent surgeon with whom I had worked whether he remembered me . " Yes, I remember him quite well , " he said . " One of our failures , I'm afraid ." The author became the talk of the town . The reason was that   _  .
he talked with a great many people in Londonabout his plays the plays he wrote were excellently performed in London his performances in the Court Theatre were unexpectedly he was criticized by an eminent surgeon as one of their failures