The one bright spot of White's time at Cheltenham was his meeting of a master named C. F. Scott, who praised White's talent and encouraged him to be a writer. Because of this, White often attested that he would "be grateful to him till I die." In 1923, White's parents obtained a divorce; the following year, White left Cheltenham and spent a year doing private tutoring in order to afford the tuition at Cambridge, where he enrolled in 1925.
White found Cambridge much more to his liking. It was there that he met the man whom he would call "the great literary influence in my life," L. J. Potts, one of his tutors who, ironically, White initially "disliked to the point of rage for about a year." White faced another hardship, however, when he contracted tuberculosis in 1927 and spent four months in a sanitarium. Potts raised enough money to send White to Italy to recuperate; it was there that White composed his first novel (although it was not his first published work), They Wintered Abroad. In 1929, White moved back to England, where his first book, Loved Helen and Other Poems, was published. The volume was favorably received, although he made no great impressions as a young Eliot or Auden. He graduated from Cambridge (with distinction) that same year, and for the next six years (1930–1936) he taught at different academies and published seven books, among them a murder-mystery (Dead Mr. Nixon), an experimental historical novel (Farewell Victoria), and a philosophical yet slapstick comedy (Earth Stopped). In 1936, White compiled and edited England Have My Bones, a memoir taken directly from White's own daybooks in which he recounts his life between March 3, 1934 and the same day a year later. The book, a collection of anecdotes and scenes about White's hunting, fishing, and piloting experiences (mixed with some philosophical speculation), was a bestseller and allowed White to resign from teaching in order to devote himself full-time to writing.
