 Walpole published his first novel , The Wooden Horse , in 1909 . It told of a <unk> and <unk> English family shaken up by the return of one of its members from a less <unk> life in New Zealand . The book received good reviews but barely repaid the cost of having it <unk> . His first commercial success was Mr Perrin and Mr Traill , published in 1911 . The novelist and biographer Michael Sadleir writes that though some of the six novels Walpole wrote between 1909 and 1914 are of interest as examples of the author 's developing style , it is Mr Perrin and Mr Traill that deserves to be remembered for its own sake . The book , <unk> " a <unk> @-@ comedy " , is a psychological study of a deadly clash between two <unk> , one an ageing failure and the other a young , attractive idealist . In the view of Hart @-@ Davis , Walpole only once recaptured " the fresh , clear cut realism " of this book , and Walpole himself , looking back on his work in the 1930s , felt that of all his books to date , it was the <unk> . The Observer gave the book a favourable review : " The slow growth of the poison within [ Perrin ] is traced with wonderful skill and sympathy ... one feels throughout these pages a sense of intolerable tension , of impending disaster " ; The Manchester Guardian was less enthusiastic , praising the scene @-@ setting but calling the story " an <unk> melodrama " . The San Francisco Chronicle praised its " technical excellence , imagination and beauty – Walpole at his best . " Arnold Bennett , a well @-@ established novelist seventeen years Walpole 's senior , admired the book , and befriended the young author , regularly <unk> , encouraging , sometimes mocking him into improving his prose , characters and narratives . 
