(Walpole said later in life that there were "two strands--say Hawthorne and Trollope--from which I am derived.") He attempted to write historical romances in his teens and seems to have been a born storyteller, although later in life he resented this designation and thought that he was stronger as a creator of intriguing characters than as a spinner of tales.
In October 1903, Walpole went up to Emmanuel College, Cambridge, as a subsizar (receiving a yearly stipend because his parents could not pay the full fee); in September 1906, after graduation, he went reluctantly to Liverpool as a lay missioner on the staff of the Mersey Mission to Seamen. It soon became apparent that he was not cut out to be a lay missioner and certainly not a cleric as his father was. He seems to have had little doubt that he wanted a career in letters, and he began supporting himself by teaching in Germany and England until the publication of his first novel, The Wooden Horse, in 1909. When the novel was published, Walpole was on the threshold of the London literary world--reviewing books for the London Standard, seeing Henry James, and communicating with other literary figures.
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