The title of [his] first memoir, A CAB AT THE DOOR, refers to the many times as a boy that he was awakened to find "a cabby and his horse * * * coughing together outside the house and the next thing we knew we were driving to an underground station and to a new house in a new part of London, to the smell of new paint [and] new mice dirts". Given the vicissitudes of his father's business endeavors and his efforts to dodge his creditors, by the time Pritchett was twelve the family had had eighteen different addresses. Pritchett started school in industrial South London at the age of eight, and at fifteen he left school to work in the leather trade. His four years with the leather factors essentially coincided with World War I and the bombing of London by Zeppelins. After Pritchett recovered from an extended illness first brought on by influenza, he resolved to escape the constant family upheaval and pursue his destiny in Paris.

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