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 manager of the Court Theatre agreed to put the author's play on the stage because   _   .
he thought it would run for fifteen months he knew it was one of the author's best plays shown in London he had just put on a play that failed the play he had arranged to put on was not ready