His half-sister, Anna Alexandra Hyde (née Locke), by his father's second marriage, died in 1898 in childbirth aged 25.

He remained in England for nine years, before returning to Trinidad to attend prep school with his brother at Queen's Royal College.

He returned to England in 1881 to attend Cambridge University, where he graduated with honours in Mathematics in 1884, despite his dislike of that "utterly futile and inhuman subject".

In 1894 he published his first novel, At the Gate of Samaria, but he did not achieve real success for another decade, with The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne (1905) and The Beloved Vagabond (1906).

Chambers Biographical Dictionary wrote of his "long series of novels and plays which with their charmingly written sentimental themes had such a success during his life in both Britain and America.... His plays, some of which were dramatised versions of his novels, were all produced with success on the London Stage" (p. 836).