Upon his recovery he found his private affairs in some confusion, and he was at the same time deeply indebted to the government for public funds which had been lost through the mismanagement or dishonesty of a confidential clerk, and for which he was responsible as US attorney.
22.
Others might say he had lost his nerve, had begun to prove it by writing the fascinating but far less ambitious " Cocktail Party " and was about to destroy the credibility of a renaissance of poetic drama in Britain with a flimsy comedy called " The Confidential Clerk ."
23.
"The Confidential Clerk, " a comedy about a young man with a religious vocation, was dismissed by one critic as " a repertory of West End gestures, " and " The Elder Statesman, " in which a politician confronts his past sins, was damned by another, with a sneering reference to the father of drawing-room drama.
