 There he acted in college theatrical productions and composed music for productions of the Oxford University Dramatic Society, of which he was a founder, and the Phil-Thespian Club.He initially joined the legal profession at Lincoln's Inn and began to practise law, but gained part-time work as a songwriter and a theatre and music critic, first for the "Pall Mall Gazette" and later for the "Daily Telegraph".His first theatre work was "Mummies and Marriage", an operetta produced by amateurs in 1888.