There’s a haunting account in the psychoanalytic literature of a child who asked for apologies. A 1955 Psychoanalytic Study of the Child article tells of a four-and-a-half-year-old admitted to the New York Neurological Institute. Gaunt and pale, a few weeks earlier she had stopped eating and speaking. She refused to be in bed, huddling in a corner with her face to the wall. “[S]oon she began to wet and soil as she lay mute and unresponsive.”

At the Institute her behavior was similar. Sometimes she muttered or hummed rhythmically.

A few days after admission, she was the subject of a case conference attended by many staff. She was rolled into the room in a crib. She sat staring. She made no response when the examiner put an arm around her or asked her name. After a few minutes, she began muttering. The examiner asked a nurse if she had ever been able to make out any words. The nurse said she’d once thought the child was chanting, “Say you’re sorry.”

Child’s hospital cot, Great Ormand Street & Bristol.

When she said this, the child looked at the nurse, then stared at the examiner. He took her hand, and seriously said, “I am sorry. I am very very sorry.” The child looked at the staff member standing next to him and spoke. Clearly. “Say you’re sorry.”

“I am sorry, too,” he said. She turned to each doctor in the front row and said, “Say you’re sorry.” Each one did. She started asking them their names, told them hers, and happily accepted a piece of candy.

She improved rapidly, and went home.

She was brought to the Institute for weekly therapy sessions. Her initial reaction was “excellent; but she then went successively through a long series of reactivated earlier phobias about contacts and smells, with related compulsive avoidance rituals.” Her mother was also pressured to come for weekly therapy.

The article says that the child’s “crisis” had come after a day when her father, tired and annoyed, lost his temper and spanked her.

The article “does not pretend to tap deep layers of analytical data or insights.” The saying sorry is referred to as a “verbal symbol” from an “unconscious constellation,” whose effect was “instantaneous and almost magical.” They describe the incident as a “demonstration of the appearance and disappearance of a psychotic state in childhood out of a neglected pre-existing neurosis. …that this malignant process was caught in time to be reversible was the happy outcome of a moment of exceptional clinical good fortune…”

Well, then.

New York Neurological Institute. Pretty sure this is the place.

Ten years later, a follow-up article in the American Journal of Psychotherapy, by different authors, offered more explanation. Six years on, the child was hospitalized again. She was violent, set fires, insisted she be called a boy’s name, said she might cut herself, eavesdropped on phone calls, and generally appalled and frightened the family.

After months of therapy, it was at last learned that when the child was very small, shortly after she began to walk, her parents decided the child was too constipated. They didn’t consult a doctor, but began giving her enemas every few days, which the child fought savagely. It took both parents to overpower her. This went on for three years – which seems to take us up to the time the child was first locked up after her “psychotic” crisis. Somehow, the parents never mentioned it to clinicians when asked about toilet training.

The second hospitalization seems to have been set off by an incident when the child’s day camp was scheduled to have a sleepover. Half an hour after arrival, the kid became hysterical and uncontrollable and had to be taken away. Much later, it turned out she’d spotted an enema bag in a counselor’s suitcase.

When the therapists finally learned about what they termed “the battle of the enemas,” they initiated sessions with child and mother and then the whole family over a month’s time. “The patient was allowed to introduce the topic of the enemas at her own time, and did so….” By the end of the month “all of the intense feelings surrounding it had disappeared.”

The authors of the second article go more directly to the subject of the apologies demanded. “Being ‘sorry’ can… be understood to have multiple meanings.” They say she felt sorry for her own behavior. “Moreover, she demanded that her parents should be sorry for deceiving her, surprising her, bribing her, and repeatedly invading the privacy of her body. By extension, she was unable to trust anyone…”

That was a hell of a way to treat a tiny kid. Today it’s called abusive. The articles aren’t fun reading, and the psychoanalytic interpretations might also be… dated. But the opening scene of the story touches the heart. The angry, despairing child was freed from self-destructive misery by a room full of strangers apologizing to her. There is a fleeting magic there.

On the eve of April Fool’s Day in 1848, two sisters in Hydesville, NY, began screaming for their mother. Margaretta, known as Maggie, was 14; Catherine, called Kate, was 11. Something in their bedroom was making thumping sounds, apparently attempting to communicate with them.

The girls asked the Something to copy them as they snapped her fingers; it did. They asked it if it knew their ages; it rapped 14 times, then 11 times. The neighbors were called in to witness; everyone was agog. Arthur Conan Doyle, who discussed the sisters’ experiences in his 1926 book, The History of Spiritualism, wrote, “Over the course of the next few days a code was developed where raps could signify yes or no in response to a question or be used to indicate a letter of the alphabet.”

The otherworldly communications quickly took an unnerving turn. Harry Houdini, who told the girls’ story in his 1924 book A Magician Among the Spirits, wrote, “Some one [sic] asked the girls if a murder had ever been committed in the house. The ominous sounds of the code answered in the affirmative.” Conan Doyle reported that the girls called the spirit “Mr. Splitfoot,” a nickname for the devil.

The family abandoned the house. (Who wouldn’t.) The girls’ much older, married sister, Leah — she was 23 when Maggie was born — took Maggie and Kate to live with her in Rochester, NY. There, the young sisters amazed the neighbors by communicating with their dead children. Leah became Maggie and Kate’s manager; she was soon collecting a dollar a head (around $40 today) from people who wanted to see Maggie and Kate talk to spirits. The girls drew ever-greater crowds. In November 1849, they sold out the biggest venue in Rochester, Corinthian Hall, and demonstrated their powers for nearly 400 people. Some thought they were fakers (Scientific American magazine called them “Spiritual Knockers from Rochester”) but many were convinced. Leah took them on a national tour, keeping them to a rigorous schedule of daily private spiritualist readings and public performances.

The sisters were an early inspiration for Spiritualism — a faith characterized by the belief in communication with departed souls. Spiritualism gained adherents throughout the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, largely in English-speaking countries. Many families lost loved ones in the Civil War, World War I, and the great flu epidemic of 1918. Almost every household at the time was touched by death in some way. Spiritualism gave grieving people hope. At the same time, the development of and advancements in photography meant that people began seeing (apparently) documentary images of ghosts and strange ectoplasm — the supposed physical manifestation of a dead person’s energy. This too helped people believe that their loved ones could reach out to them from the beyond … with a little help from certain gifted souls, who often happened to be attractive young women. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who lost a son in the flu epidemic and whose wife believed she could communicate with the dead, became increasingly passionate about Spiritualism; Harry Houdini cynically pretended to be a medium early in his career but became increasingly determined to debunk Spiritualist trickery. Their differences wound up destroying their long friendship.

Over the years, some mediums recanted and apologized for bilking rubes. Among them were Maggie and Kate Fox. Sort of.

By 1888, the sisters were exhausted. Maggie had been widowed; she and Kate both struggled with alcohol and poverty. They’d had a falling-out with Leah, who had accused Kate of being a bad mother because of her drinking.

In September of that year, Maggie decided to confess her deceptions to The New York World. She was paid $1500, the equivalent of around $51,300 today.

As recounted by Harry Houdini in his book debunking Spiritualism, Maggie acknowledged her and Katie’s actions … but blamed Leah completely. “Katie and I were led around like lambs,” she wrote. “The rooms were jammed from morning till night and we were called upon by those old wretches … when we should have been out at play in the fresh air.” She noted that Leah got rich while she and her little sister did not. “We had crowds coming to see us and she made as much as a hundred to a hundred and fifty dollars a night. She pocketed this.”

Lithograph depicting Miss Margaretta Fox, Miss Catherine Fox, and Mrs. Fish, Currier & Ives, 1852

Maggie went on:

I loathe the thing I have been. I used to say to those who wanted me to give a séance, ‘You are driving me into Hell.’ Then the next day I would drown my remorse in wine. I was too honest to remain a ‘medium.’ That’s why I gave up my exhibitions. I have seen so much miserable deception! Every morning of my life I have it before me. When I wake up I brood over it. That is why I am willing to state that Spiritualism is a fraud of the worst description. I have had a life of sorrow, I have been poor and ill, but I consider it my duty, a sacred thing, a holy mission to expose it. I want to see the day when it is entirely done away with. After my sister Katie and I expose it I hope Spiritualism will be given a death blow.

This isn’t an apology. Maggie takes no responsibility; everything is Leah’s fault. She doesn’t acknowledge that she perpetrated harm. She focuses on her own suffering and her bravery in coming clean (very like the way Mark Wahlberg focused on his own heroism in facing his youthful, racist criminal history, which we discuss at length in our book).

Maggie did a little better at a presentation a couple of weeks later, at the New York Hall of Music. There, on October 21, in front of an audience of 2000 people, with Kate in attendance for moral support, Maggie did acknowledge her own wrongdoing.

I have been chiefly instrumental in perpetrating the fraud of Spiritualism upon a too confiding public, most of you doubtless know.

 

The greatest sorrow of my life has been that this is true, and though it has come late in my day, I am now prepared to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth—so help me God!

 

There are probably many here who will scorn me for the deception I have practiced, yet did they know the true history of my unhappy past, the living agony and shame that it has been to me, they would pity, not reproach.

 

The imposition which I have so long maintained began in my early childhood, when, with character and mind still unformed, I was unable to distinguish between right and wrong.

 

I repented it in my maturity. I have lived through years of silence, through intimidation, scorn and bitter adversity, concealing as best I might, the consciousness of my guilt. Now, thanks to God and my awakened conscience, I am at last able to reveal the fatal truth, the exact truth of this hideous fraud which has withered so many hearts and has blighted so many hopeful lives.

 

I am here tonight as one of the founders of Spiritualism, to denounce it as an absolute falsehood from beginning to end, as the flimsiest of superstitions, the most wicked blasphemy known to the world.

 

I ask only your kind attention and forgiveness, and as I may prove myself worthy by the step I am now taking, may you extend to me your helping hands and sustain me in the better path I have chosen.

This is better, though still not great. She uses the term fraud, and says she repents for her actions (though “repent” is a lot like “regret”; it isn’t quite “apologize” – it’s still about the speaker rather than about those the speaker harmed). She does acknowledge that she hurt people. But she still focuses more on the wrong done to her and she still asks for “pity, not reproach.” A good apology would have taken ownership of her decisions as an adult and focused still more on those she’d harmed rather than herself.

Giving the people what they wanted, Maggie proceeded to describe and demonstrate how she and her sister had made their unnerving knocking sounds. At first, while living with their parents in Hydesville, the two had tied strings to apples, hid the apples in their beds, and secretly dropped them onto the floor to scare their mother. Over time, they learned to crack their finger and toe joints at will, loudly enough to create rapping noises that seemed to come from spirits. (Houdini had earlier called out their toe-bones trick, to Conan Doyle’s annoyance.)

Some victims of spiritualism were happy to forgive Maggie. Here are two letters the newspapers received:

God bless you, for I think that you now speak the truth. You have my forgiveness at least, and I believe that thousands of others will forgive you, for the atonement made in season wipes out much of the stain of the early sin.

 

If, as you say, you were forced to pursue this imposture from childhood, I can forgive you, and I am sure God will; for he turns not back the truly repentant. I will not upbraid you. I am sure you have suffered as much as any penalty, human or divine, could cause you to suffer.

Forgiveness can be healing for those who opt to forgive. It doesn’t mean any of the other victims were obliged to follow suit, however. (As we like to say, apologies are mandatory; forgiveness isn’t.) We who weren’t wronged aren’t entitled to berate victims for forgiving or for not forgiving. That’s their choice.

A year later, Maggie took back her confession. Her spirit guides had told her to lie, she said! They’d been real all along! Also real was the fact that she had run out of money. She was drinking heavily. But recanting didn’t help her career; she wasn’t welcomed back into the ranks of mediums. (Most of them chose not to forgive, it seems.) Maggie and her big sister Leah never spoke again. Leah died in 1890, at 77, well-off, married to a Wall Street banker. Kate died in 1892, at 55, in a drunken binge. Maggie died – penniless and living on charity in an empty Brooklyn townhouse belonging to a friend — eight months later, at 59.

Like Fox Mulder, many still want to believe. In 1904, newspapers reported the discovery of a human skeleton inside a wall in the basement of the Fox sisters’ childhood home. Had this been the murder victim Mr. Splitfoot had told Maggie and Kate about? YES! said the Boston Journal, in a story on November 23, 1904. The discovery “clears [the Fox sisters] from the only shadow of a doubt held concerning their sincerity in the discovery of spirit communication,” the paper intoned. There was no follow-up story noting that the “skeleton” consisted mainly of chicken bones.

Faith can be unshakeable. In 1926, Conan Doyle wrote that Margaret had always been a true psychic who did not understand her own power, was gaslit by her Catholic husband who scorned Spiritualism and convinced her she was lying about her gifts, and only renounced Spiritualism because of “alcoholic excitement and the frenzy of hatred” she felt for Leah, paired with “the hope of pecuniary reward.” (Conan Doyle felt that mediums should receive salaries, so as not to be tempted by either rich jerks or the fear of poverty. How the salary system would work is unclear.)

Today, many stories about the Fox sisters hint that they may have had legitimate knowledge of the spirit realm after all.

Who can prove otherwise?

Happy Halloween.

We won’t go into the entire remarkable career of Lieutenant Colonel Charity Adams Earley with the Women’s Army Corps (WAC), but will look at an incident in 1946, and what followed.

Major Adams, as she was then, was commanding officer of the 6888th Battalion. The battalion was stationed in Birmingham UK, and was charged with getting mail to US troops in the European Theater of Operations (ETO), all seven million of them. More than 7,500 of those troops were named “Robert Smith.” Yeah.

Captain Charity Adams drilling her company at Fort Des Moines, Iowa, May 1943.

There was a huge backlog – 17 million pieces of mail – when the Six Triple Eight arrived in England, and they were given six months to clear it up. It took them only three months, in part because Major Adams had the battalion working in three shifts around the clock. They created their own filing system for the task. “No Mail, Low Morale,” was their motto.

Captain Robert Smith, Bengal Engineers. Yes, I’m Robert Smith, and I’m expecting a letter from home. It might be addressed to “Bobs.”

The Six Triple Eight was composed largely of Black women and this was such a curiosity then that “we were inspected, visited, greeted, checked out, congratulated, called upon, supervised, and reviewed by every officer of any rank in the United Kingdom who could come up with an excuse to come to Birmingham,” Adams wrote in her book One Woman’s Army: A Black Officer Remembers the WAC. “They wanted to see for themselves.”

Actually, I’m Corporal Ben Roberts-Smith. Not Robert Smith. Not even a postcard?

One such officer was a White general whom Adams does not name. Let’s call him General Robert Smith. (As far as we know, he never sang “Boys Don’t Cry.”) He was taken on a tour of the facilities, given lunch, and then presented with all the troops available for inspection – a third of the total number.

“Adams, where are the other personnel of this unit? It certainly does not look like a battalion to me.”

“Yes, Sir, but we work three eight-hour shifts, so some of the women are working.” Another third were sleeping, she explained.

“I wanted to review your troops. That means all of them.”

“But, Sir, our instructions were – ”

“I’ll tell you what I am going to do, Major Adams. I’m going to send a white first lieutenant down here to show you how to run this unit.” This was said in a voice loud enough to be heard by all present.

Adams wrote that it took her a fraction of a second to realize that “I would no longer be able to command if I did not make the proper response to the general.” She replied promptly.

“Over my dead body, Sir.”

“He sputtered and finally said, ‘You’ll hear from me, Adams.’ He saluted to indicate my dismissal from his presence and walked to his limousine. As I watched the general’s limousine slowly disappear from view, it dawned on me that I was in trouble.”

Indeed, that evening Adams and her immediate staff got a call from someone on General Smith’s staff warning that he’d been asked to draw up court-martial charges against Adams.

Any mail for me? I’m Robert Smith. They call me “The Windy City Kid.”

“After much deliberation someone, probably Sergeant Jones, who handled the filing, remembered some letters from SHAEF [Supreme Headquarters American Expeditionary Forces] that cautioned unit commanders about using language that stressed racial segregation so that our allies would not suspect disharmony among American troops…. My own ‘war council’ helped me to decide to put these letters to an unintended use. I would draw up court-martial charges against the general on the grounds that he had disobeyed a directive from SHAEF Headquarters. That was stretching a memorandum into a directive, but I had nothing to lose and everything to gain.”

After three days, Adams got word that General Smith was dropping his charges on the grounds that because Adams was the highest-ranking WAC officer in the ETO, and the court-martial had to heard by senior officers, it would be too expensive to fly them to Europe for the purpose. Accordingly, Adams dropped her plans to court-martial the general.

Adams, much relieved, thought she’d never have to see Smith again. Not so fast. Soon the Six Triple Eight was sent to France – and General Smith was in their line of command. Within days, Smith came to visit the battalion. “His manner was altogether different on this visit. His main concern was that we keep up the good work we had done in the United Kingdom. He was very pleasant, and you can be assured that I was. It was as if we had never met before that day.”

One day he appeared again. “[H]e showed up unannounced at the 6888th to say good-bye to me. I could not believe what he had to say.

“‘Adams, I’ve received my orders to return to the States. Otherwise, I would not be here. It’s not easy for me to say what I’ve come to say. Working with you has been quite an education for me, especially about Negroes.’ He had finally learned how to pronounce the word. I waited as he continued. ‘The only Negroes I have ever known personally were those who were in the servant capacity or my subordinates in the Army. It’s been a long time since anyone challenged me, black or white, but you took me on. You outsmarted me and I am proud that I know you. I would not have told you this if I thought I would ever see you again.’

“And I never did see him again.”

Was that an apology? Was it a good one?

We say this is an example of an apology that, although it does not follow our steps – or, really, anyone’s steps – to a good apology, still shows serious good intent.

He does NOT say “sorry” or “apologize,” but there’s no doubt that he’s sorry and is going out of his way to let Adams know. He is not specific about what he did, but he is specific about why he thought and acted as he did. He humbles himself by saying he was outsmarted, and shows her respect by saying he’s proud to know her.

The bizarre part is “I would not have told you this if I thought I would ever see you again.” In other words, he doesn’t feel like he can face anyone he’s apologized to. He feels too humiliated.

Okay. One: He was raised wrong. Two: He’d have apologized even better if he read SorryWatch. Three: He was probably wrong about not being able to face anyone he’d apologized to, because most people, like us, would think better of him after that. And his conscience would be clear.

(Reviving a post from 2012, because not getting an apology doesn’t make feelings go away.)

The Events:

It would be nice if we were all familiar with the Great Upheaval/Grand Dérangement – the forcible exile of the Acadians from the Maritime Provinces of Canada. But Americans, for example, typically learn little Canadian history. And these days, we hardly read any Longfellow.

Beginning in 1755, the Acadians were harshly deported to British colonies in America, to England, or to France. 11,500 Acadian refugees were scattered, typically to places which did not welcome destitute foreigners. Thousands died. Families were broken apart. Longfellow wrote an epic poem about the (fictional) Evangeline, deported separately from her fiance, Gabriel. She spends years searching the places of Acadian exile, always a step or two behind Gabriel. They only meet again when he is an old man dying in a Philadelphia poorhouse.

Evangeline Discovering Her Affianced in the Hospital. Painting by Samuel Richards, photographed by Quick Fix/Johnny Action.

Many people call this ethnic cleansing. (Others say it was just nasty deporting.) Why did the British do it? England and France were fighting and one theater of war was the North American colonies. You might know this as the French and Indian War, or the Guerre de la Conquête. The Acadians lived in English territory, but spoke French – probably acted French – and had refused to swear to fight for the Crown. “[W]e will take up arms neither against his Britannic Majesty, nor against France…” Pacifists?! But there were also some anti-British rebels, so the British decided to deport everybody.

The idea may have been suggested by Americans. The governor of Massachusetts was a booster and New Englanders settled the land the Acadians lost.

Acadian descendants haven’t forgotten. In 1990, Warren Perrin, a lawyer in Louisiana, filed a symbolic lawsuit asking for an apology for the Expulsion. He sent it to Queen Elizabeth and then-prime minster Margaret Thatcher.

The Apology:

Somewhat to the Acadians’ surprise, Britain responded, saying they’d think about it.

In 2003, they coughed up a Royal Proclamation, which we will abridge slightly. It’s from “Elizabeth the Second, by the Grace of God of the United Kingdom, Canada and her other Realms and Territories Queen, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith.”

Whereas the Acadian people, through the vitality of their community, have made a remarkable contribution to Canadian society for almost 400 years;

Whereas on July 28, 1755, the Crown, in the course of administering the affairs of the British colony of Nova Scotia, made the decision to deport the Acadian people;

Whereas the deportation of the Acadian people, commonly known as the Great Upheaval, continued until 1763 and had tragic consequences, including the deaths of many thousands of Acadians – from disease, in shipwrecks, in their places of refuge and in prison camps in Nova Scotia and England as well as in the British colonies in America;

Whereas We acknowledge these historical facts and the trials and suffering experienced by the Acadian people during the Great Upheaval;

Whereas We hope that the Acadian people can turn the page on this dark chapter of their history;
…

Whereas We, in Our role as Queen of Canada, exercise the executive power by and under the Constitution of Canada;
Whereas this Our present Proclamation does not, under any circumstances, constitute a recognition of legal or financial responsibility by the Crown in right of Canada and of the provinces and is not, under any circumstances, a recognition of, and does not have any effect upon, any right or obligation of any person or group of persons;
…
Now Know You that We, by and with the advice of Our Privy Council for Canada, do by this Our Proclamation, effective on September 5, 2004, designate July 28 of every year as “A Day of Commemoration of the Great Upheaval”, commencing on July 28, 2005.

Of All Which Our Loving Subjects and all others whom these Presents may concern are hereby required to take notice and to govern themselves accordingly.

Sorrywatch Analysis:

That’s not an apology. It acknowledges what happened and who did it, but then hopes “the Acadian people can turn the page.” Here’s a Day – don’t expect time off. Hope you can turn the page! It’s not good to be bitter! Resentment gives you wrinkles! Why let us live rent-free in your head? We’ve moved on, and so should you. Just saying.

Nothing about whether it was a good or bad idea, nothing about apologize/sorry/error. Nothing about whether they’d do it again.

Did the Acadian descendants point this out? Did they say ‘Hey, we asked for an apology!’ Somebody must have, but for the most part they simply declared it an apology.

A piece by Perrin himself, for the Acadian Museum, is titled “The Queen’s Royal Proclamation: An Apology for the Acadian Deportation.” An “apology.”

Maybe sometimes an apology would be so nice to get that you act as if you got one. You do a victory dance.

But Perrin doesn’t actually seem to be over it. Perrin’s part of the Gulf Oil Disaster Recovery Group litigating against British Petroleum over the Deepwater Horizon spill. That’s a logical thing for a Louisiana lawyer to be involved in.

Here’s something Perrin said in a video. “As soon as the BP spill took place, it occurred to me that it was a remarkable coincidence that it was the British government, ordered by the British Crown, that had deported the Acadians… in 1750.” Perrin said. “So here we fast-forward to April 20^th, 2010, and we have a flourishing Cajun culture in South Louisiana….”

Of a BP commercial pledging to ‘make it right’ Perrin says, “we certainly do not want to see another 300 years go by before this British Petroleum Corporation located in London protects our wetlands and protects our way of life because we certainly don’t want to have another Grand Dérangement or Great Upheaval of our people again at the hands of the British.”

Gee, Britain, I don’t think he trusts you. And after you apologized! Well, at least after you issued a proclamation.

Don’t trust us either! McCarthy and Ingall have documented ties to New England. As the truth about Yankee complicity in the Great Expulsion comes out, maybe we’re really worried that the Acadians will be coming after us. — Sumac

We have a criticism for Karl Marx, but maybe not one you might expect.

A friend of SorryWatch was reading the correspondence between Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, and came across a remarkable 1863 exchange of letters they knew would startle us.

As this small tale begins, Marx was living in London with his wife Jenny von Westphalen and their children. Engels was living in Manchester with his long-time companion Mary Burns and her sister Lizzy Burns. Engels and Burns didn’t believe marriage was a benign institution, and they didn’t marry, but they had been together for 20 years, and Engels sometimes wrote of Burns as “my wife.” Marx and Engels were longtime friends and colleagues, and Engels provided a great deal of financial support to Marx, who wasn’t getting rich off his writings.

Friedrich Engels, 1860.

Little is known of Mary Burns, who left no writings – some say she was illiterate – and about whom little was written. No photographs are known. People speculate and deduce. She might have been a textile factory worker, a street fruit peddler, a domestic servant… She seems to have been a radical Irish patriot (Ireland then under British rule), and traveled with Engels to Ireland, where he was horrified to behold the reality of famine. Wikipedia says (or said last time we looked), “It is likely that Burns guided Engels through the region, showing him the worst districts of Salford and Manchester for his research for The Condition of the Working Class in England.” Some have tried to restore her to what is likely to be her just place in history or to uphold her as a little-known founder of socialism.

Manchester, when they called it Cottonopolis. The textile factories around the time Mary Burns may have worked there, and Engels documented conditions there. Where did they get the cotton? Well, there’s a thing.

In 1863, Engels wrote to Marx, telling him that Burns had suddenly died. (This letter isn’t in the collected correspondence.)

Marx wrote back promptly, with a brief acknowledgement of Burns’s death and a quick pivot to his personal financial straits. With a swipe at his own wife. Whose outbursts almost keep him from working.

Dear Engels,

The news of Mary’s death surprised no less than it dismayed me. She was so good-natured, witty and closely attached to you.

The devil alone knows why nothing but ill-luck should dog everyone in our circle just now. I no longer know which way to turn either. My attempts to raise money in France and Germany have come to nought, and it might, of course, have been foreseen that £15 couldn’t help me to stem the avalanche for more than a couple of weeks. Aside from the fact that no one will let us have anything on credit — save for the butcher and baker — which will also cease at the end of this week — I am being dunned for the school fees, the rent, and by the whole gang of them. Those who got a few pounds on account cunningly pocketed them, only to fall upon me with redoubled vigour. On top of that, the children have no clothes or shoes in which to go out. In short, all hell is let loose, as I clearly foresaw when I came up to Manchester and despatched my wife to Paris as a last coup de désespoir. If I don’t succeed in raising a largish sum through a loan society or life assurance… [details], then the household here has barely another two weeks to go.

It is dreadfully selfish of me to tell you about these horreurs at this time. But it’s a homeopathic remedy. One calamity is a distraction from the other. And, au bout du compte, what else can I do? In the whole of London there’s not a single person to whom I can so much as speak my mind, and in my own home I play the silent stoic to counterbalance the outbursts from the other side. It’s becoming virtually impossible to work under such circumstances. Instead of Mary, ought it not to have been my mother, who is in any case a prey to physical ailments and has had her fair share of life … ? You can see what strange notions come into the heads of ‘civilised men’ under the pressure of certain circumstances.

Salut.

Your
K. M.

The hell you say, Karl.

Marx was horribly unfeeling in his response to Engels’ news of Burns’s death. He was indeed in bad financial shape, which suggests to us that he could have written TWO SEPARATE LETTERS, one of sympathy and the other his plea for help. We also think it would’ve been nice if he hadn’t made nasty remarks about how his wife turned him into a “silent stoic.” Also, saying it would’ve been better if Marx’s mother died instead of Engels’ wife… um, doesn’t seem like comfort.

Several days later, Engels replied.

Dear Marx,

You will find it quite in order that, this time, my own misfortune and the frosty view you took of it should have made it positively impossible for me to reply to you any sooner.

All my friends, including philistine acquaintances, have on this occasion, which in all conscience must needs afflict me deeply, given me proof of greater sympathy and friendship than I could have looked for. You thought it a fit moment to assert the superiority of your ‘dispassionate turn of mind’. Soit!

You know the state of my finances. You also know that I do all I can to drag you out of the mire. But I cannot raise the largish sum of which you speak, as you must also know. Three things can be done:…

[Marx could try a loan society; Marx could buy life insurance and borrow against it; Engels might be able to get £25 for Marx and also write him “a bill” for £60 if they can make sure Engels won’t have to pay it back for 6 months.]

I can see no other possibility.

So, let me know what steps you take and I will see to my side of it.

Your
F. E.

In Engels’s reply he sadly points out the casual nature of his friend’s condolences, and how hurtful he found it, before turning his focus to helping with Marx’s money woes.

It was a week and a half (an unusually long time for them) before Marx replied to that letter and its sad and reproachful start.

Dear Frederick,

I thought it advisable to allow some time to elapse before replying. Your position, on the one hand, and mine, on the other, made it difficult to view the situation ‘dispassionately’.

It was very wrong of me to write you that letter, and I regretted it as soon as it had gone off. However, what happened was in no sense due to heartlessness. As my wife and children will testify, I was as shattered when your letter arrived (first thing in the morning) as if my nearest and dearest had died. But, when I wrote to you in the evening, I did so under the pressure of circumstances that were desperate in the extreme. The landlord had put a broker in my house, the butcher had protested a bill, coal and provisions were in short supply, and little Jenny was confined to bed. Generally, under such circumstances, my only recourse is cynicism. What particularly enraged me was the fact that my wife believed I had failed to give you an adequate account of the real state of affairs. [How can a person WORK in such an atmosphere?]

Indeed, your letter was welcome to me in as much as it opened her eyes to the ‘non possumus’ for she knows full well that I didn’t wait for your advice before writing to my uncle; that I couldn’t, in London, have recourse to Watts whose person and office are both in Manchester; that since Lassalle’s latest dunning notice I have been unable to draw a bill in London and, lastly, that £25 in February would not enable us to live in January, still less avert the impending crisis. As it was impossible for you to help us, despite my having told you we were in the same plight as the Manchester workers, she could not but recognise the non possumus, and this is what I wanted, since an end has got to be put to the present state of affairs — the long ordeal by fire, ravaging heart and head alike, and, on top of that, the waste of precious time and the keeping up of false appearances, this last being as harmful to myself as it is to the children. Since then we have been through three weeks such as have at last induced my wife to fall in with a suggestion I had made long ago and which, for all the unpleasantness it involves, not only represents the only way out, but is also preferable to the life we have led for the past three years, the last one in particular, and which will, besides, restore our self-esteem. [Thanks for making the woman see reason! Say one little thing in Latin and she flies into a rage!]

I shall write and tell all our creditors (with the exception of the landlord) that, unless they leave me alone, I shall declare myself insolvent by the filing of a Bill in the Court of Bankruptcy. This does not, of course, apply to the landlord, who has a right to the furniture, which he may keep. My two elder children will obtain employment as governesses through the Cunningham family. Lenchen is to enter service elsewhere, and I, along with my wife and little Tussy, shall go and live in the same City Model Lodging House in which Red Wolff once resided with his family.

[details about bills and not being able to send the kids to school] But by adopting the above plan I shall, I think, at least attain tranquillity without intervention of any kind by third parties.

Finally, a matter unconnected with the above. I’m in considerable doubt about the section in my book that deals with machinery. I have never quite been able to see in what way self-actors changed spinning, or rather, since steam power was already in use before then, how it was that the spinner, despite steam power, had to intervene with his motive power.

I’d be grateful if you could explain this.

Apropos. Unbeknown to me, my wife wrote and asked Lupus for £1 for immediate necessities. He sent her two. It’s distasteful to me, but factum est factum. [She hates it when I say that!]

Your
K. M.

Abarbanel is dead. Sasonow, too, has died in Geneva.

That next letter from Marx is not great, either. He does say it was “very wrong” of him to have written as he did, but then he’s on to excuses, complaints about Jenny’s unfairness to him, the state of his marriage, and guilt-tripping. He was FORCED TO BE CYNICAL! But DON’T WORRY ABOUT ME! I will just declare bankruptcy and send my children out as servants! No prob! It’ll be fine!

Jenny von Westphalen. Theater critic, political activist, wife, mother, and apparently, THE CAUSE OF ALL THE TROUBLE.

Dear Moor,

Thank you for being so candid. You yourself have now realised what sort of impression your last letter but one had made on me. One can’t live with a woman for years on end without being fearfully affected by her death. I felt as though with her I was burying the last vestige of my youth. When your letter arrived she had not yet been buried. That letter, I tell you, obsessed me for a whole week; I couldn’t get it out of my head. Never mind. Your last letter made up for it and I’m glad that, in losing Mary, I didn’t also lose my oldest and best friend.

To turn to your affairs. [Details about various schemes to get money for Marx, including a risky move that gets Marx £100, which Engels hopes won’t get him (Engels) in trouble.]

…

Your
F. E.

Engels accepted Marx’s lousy, self-centered apology, and forgave. People often accept inferior apologies, when they badly want them.

Mary “Pumps” Burns, niece of Mary Burns. Perhaps they resembled each other?

Marx replied:

Dear Frederick,

[After thanking Engels for the latest financial contribution] …I am well aware what a risk you were running in thus affording us such great and unexpected help. I can’t tell you how grateful I am, although I myself, in my inner forum, did not require any fresh proof of your friendship to convince me of its self-sacrificing nature. If, by the by, you could have seen my children’s joy, it would have been a fine reward for you.

I can tell you now, too, without beating about the bush that, despite the straits I’ve been in during the past few weeks, nothing oppressed me so much as the fear that our friendship might be severed. Over and over again, I told my wife that the mess we were in was as nothing to me compared with the fact that these bourgeois pinpricks and her peculiar exasperation had, at such a moment, rendered me capable of assailing you with my private needs instead of trying to comfort you. [The woman nearly ruined everything!] Domestic peace was consequently much disrupted, and the poor woman had to suffer for something of which she was in fact innocent, for women are wont to ask for the impossible. She did not, of course, have any inkling of what I had written, but a little reflection should have told her that something of the kind must be the result. [She had to know she forced me to be a selfish jerk to you!] Women are funny creatures, even those endowed with much intelligence. In the morning my wife wept over Marie [Burns] and your loss, thus becoming quite oblivious to her own misfortunes, which culminated that very day, and in the evening she felt that, except for us, no one in the world was capable of suffering unless they had children and the broker in the house.

[Follows many words on machinery, tools, power, and one “Izzy,” a “braggart” who has been ripping off their work.]

Marx’s next letter affirms his high regard for Engels and his friendship, partly demonstrated by how much Marx blames his wife for the whole business. “Women are funny creatures…”? Not like dispassionate male political philosophers, no no. We’re starting to feel more sympathy for the Engels-Burns position on marriage here.

What can we understand about Marxism or Communism from this? Probably not a thing. We can understand interesting things about individual people from this, not the masses of people.

(Thanks to Joseph G.)

January 14 will mark the 325th anniversary of Judge Samuel Sewall’s apology for his conduct during the Salem Witch Trials. On this date in 1697, Sewall stood up before God and everybody in Boston’s Old South Church and bowed his head. The Rev. Samuel Willard read aloud Sewall’s statement of contrition, which was wordy and flowery and old-school and third-person-y. Here’s the abbreviated gist:

Samuel Sewall, sensible of the…strokes of God upon himself and his family; and being sensible, that as to the guilt contracted, upon the opening of [the court that conducted the witchcraft trials]…he is, upon many accounts, more concerned than any that he knows of, desires to take the blame and shame of it, asking pardon of men, and especially desiring prayers that God, who has an unlimited authority, would pardon that sin and all his other sins…and…powerfully defend him against all temptations to sin, for the future.

Translation: “I, referring to myself in the third person, am aware that God is punishing me, and I’m also aware of my guilt in the Salem Witch Trials. I want to take responsibility. I ask forgiveness from God and my fellow humans, and I hope God will help me not screw up again.”

Samuel Sewall is Sorry, Sorry, Sorry

To non-1697 ears, this is not an impressive apology. Today, good apologies don’t ask for forgiveness. (As SorryWatch often says, forgiveness is a gift to be granted; it is bad manners to ask for a gift.) But back then, asking pardon was a linguistic convention: It showed that the speaker was putting himself in a humble position, being deferential and submissive. For a man of status, like Sewall, presenting oneself as a supplicant was a form of giving away power.

Sewall also notes that he’s apologizing at least in part because he feels he’s experiencing consequences for his actions [“strokes of God upon himself and his family”]. Again, a strategy we frown upon in modern apologies: letting everyone know you are suffering for your mistake is Bad Celebrity Apology Behavior. Think of former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, after being accused of groping by multiple women, apologizing for “making anyone uncomfortable” but assuring us that this “has been an incredibly difficult situation for me as well as for other people.” Poor him! Or consider Chrissy Teigen’s response to the screenshots of vile messages she’d sent to then-teenaged Courtney Stodden, mocking Stodden’s appearance and telling Stodden to commit suicide. “Not a lot of people are lucky enough to be held accountable for all their past bullshit in front of the entire world,” Teigen said in her apology statement. The snark.

But back to Sewall: What did he have to apologize for? We think you know. You were probably in your high school’s production of The Crucible. You saw Hocus Pocus. (Aw, I love Hocus Pocus!) To refresh your memory: In 1692, 30 people, mostly women, were found guilty of witchcraft. Nineteen were hanged, five died in jail, and one was pressed to death (by stones of increasing size being placed on his chest) for refusing to enter a plea. Supposedly, as the last stone was applied, that victim’s last words were “More weight!” which is pretty badass, if horrifying.

There were no public domain images of Hocus Pocus so here is a woodcut of a witch holding a plant.

Why did Sewall second-guess his actions four years later? Well, the “strokes of God” he referred to included the deaths of two of his daughters and his wife’s mother, and the birth of a stillborn child. Surely, he felt, this raft of horrors is no coincidence.

Thinking that God is punishing you doesn’t inherently mean your repentance is insincere. Sewall, a man of great religious faith, kept extensive diaries in which he discussed his doubts about his actions and the peer pressure he got from fellow judges to convict, presenting women’s moles and pimples as evidence. (PROOF of evil sorcery!) After the fact, Sewall tried to convince both Increase Mather and his son Cotton to apologize too. Those guys were actually responsible for promoting the witch hunts as well as judging and punishing the would-be witches. But they refused to listen to Sewall. Massachusetts governor William Phips opted to blame everything on his lieutenant governor, William Stoughton. In 1693, Phipps sent a letter to the British government saying that Stoughton “hath from the beginning hurried on these matters with great precipitancy” and had seized the property of those executed “without my knowledge or consent”! Channeling little Jeffy in the Family Circus cartoon chirping “Not Me!”

Here is a parody of The Family Circus called the Nietzsche Family Circus, an ancient meme generator that paired random Nietzche quotes with Family Circus panels.

Here is a parody of The Family Circus called The Dysfunctional Family Circus which was also a meme way back in the day.

But  the day of Sewall’s speech was named an official fast day in Massachusetts, and 11 witch-trials jurors were enough influenced by Sewall’s apology to join him in public repentance. We wrote about their apology on SorryWatch back in 2014; at the time we were not impressed. “Meh,” we said then. “Doesn’t fully take responsibility. WE WERE DELUDED, WE HAD NO CLUE… whatever, Puritans.”

Perhaps in 2021 we have lower standards than we did in 2014? Because now we say, hey, at least they said they’d never do it again? Sure, they blame the devil as much as they do themselves, but they made an effort? Here’s what they said, btw.

We confess that we ourselves were not capable to understand, nor able to withstand the mysterious delusions of the powers of darkness and prince of the air… we fear we have been instrumental with others, though ignorantly and unwittingly, to bring upon ourselves and this people of the Lord, the guilt of innocent blood. We do, therefore, hereby signify to all in general (and to the surviving sufferers in especial) our deep sense of and sorrow for our errors in acting on such evidence to the condemning of any person….and do hereby declare that we justly fear that we were sadly deluded and mistaken, for which we are much disquieted and distressed in our minds, and do therefore humbly beg forgiveness, first of God for Christ’s sake for this our error. And pray that God would not impute the guilt of it to ourselves nor others. And we also pray that we may be considered candidly and aright by the living sufferers as being then under the power of a strong and general delusion, utterly unacquainted with and not experienced in matters of that nature.

We do heartily ask forgiveness of you all, whom we have justly offended and do declare, according to our present minds, we would none of us do such things again on such grounds for the whole world, praying you to accept of this in way of satisfaction for our offense, and that you would bless the inheritance of the Lord that He may be entreated for the land.

Whew. Wordy people. Points for noting that the public was “justly offended,” but too much “delusion” and “unwittingly.” A good apology takes responsibility.

Despite the jurors following Sewall’s suit, many prominent Massachusetts citizens were furious at Sewall for apologizing. In Sorry About That: The Language of Public Apology (Oxford University Press, 2014), linguist Edwin L. Battistella writes that Sewall was “ostracized” after his admission of wrongdoing, but “the apology was transformative for him, and he devoted much of his life from that point forward to making amends, writing in opposition to colonial treatment of Indians and slaves.” Sewall’s treatise The Selling of Joseph, published in 1700, used Biblical texts to prove that African slavery was a horrific crime. He wrote:

“Joseph was rightfully no more a Slave to his Brethren, then they were to him: and they had no more Authority to Sell him, than they had to Slay him …There is no proportion between Twenty Pieces of Silver, and LIBERTY.”

And:

“That which GOD has joyned together men do boldly rend asunder; Men from their Country, Husbands from their Wives, Parents from their Children. How horrible is the Uncleanness, Mortality, if not Murder, that the Ships are guilty of that bring great Crouds of these miserable Men, and Women.”

Printed by Bartholomew Green and John Allen, 1700.

Gradually, everyone came around to the notion that the Witch Trials were a bad and wrong idea. In 1942, the State House of Representatives commissioned a mural-sized painting by Albert Herder, called “The Dawn of Tolerance in Massachusetts,” depicting Sewall’s apology. And in 2001, the Massachusetts legislature passed an act exonerating, by name, everyone in the state who had been convicted of witchcraft. Still, despite the efforts of descendants of the victims, monetary reparations have not been forthcoming. Strange, that. Somehow governments have a really hard time putting their money where their mouth is. And where their paintings are.

There’s a letter from Edgar Allan Poe, now in the collection of the University of Virginia, which contains an evasive little apology. The 1842 letter is to J and HG Langley, publishers of the Democratic Review, for whom he’d written before.

Poe, a Baltimore resident, had apparently done the writerly thing of Going To New York To Meet People in Publishing, and also met up with his lawyer/poet friend Wallace, as you will see.

Here’s the letter, transcribed by Sumac after peering at photos on the Internet:

Gentlemen,

Enclosed I have the honor to send you an article which I should be pleased if you would accept for the “Democratic Review”. I am desperately pushed for money; and, in the event of Mr O’Sullivan’s liking the “Landscape-Garden”, I would take it as an especial favor if you would mail me the amount due for it, so as to reach me here by the 21st, in which day I shall need it. Can you possibly oblige me in this? If you accept the paper I presume you will allow me your usual term, whatever that is for similar contributions – but I set no price – leaving all to your own liberality….

 

Will you be so kind enough to put the best possible interpretation upon my behavior while in N. York? You must have conceived a queer idea of me — but the simple truth is that Wallace would insist upon the juleps, and I knew not what I was either doing or saying. The Review of Dawes which I offered you was [deficient?] in a 1/2 page of commencement, which I had written to supersede the old beginning, which gave the article the character of a general and introspective view. No wonder you did not take it – I should have been very much mortified if you [had?]. I hope to see you at some future time, under better auspices.

In the meantime I remain

Yours very truly,

E.A. Poe

It’s not clear if leaving off the beginning of the “Review of Dawes” (a poet) was because Poe was drunk, or if he didn’t explain it at the time because he was drunk, or maybe it fell on the floor and bourbon made the ink run, and maybe Poe didn’t just didn’t remember. Maybe it was a simple oversight that could happen to the most sober and meticulous writer. The Democratic Review didn’t take “Landscape-Garden,” but Poe sold it to the Ladies’ Companion.

Not a great apology. He’s honest about his drunkenness, but blames it on Wallace. Poets, right? Nope, SorryWatch knows fine poets who don’t get smashed when they meet with publishers. But whatever the Langleys thought of Poe’s “behavior while in N. York,” that should’ve been irrelevant to whether they wanted to run “Landscape-Garden.” It’s not like he worked in their office….

The Raving

Once upon a pubcrawl cheery, as I networked, kinda bleary,

Over many a minty julep Wallace made the barkeep pour –

As I pitched, me so needy, wanting payment dreadful speedy,

I saw wealthy eyebrows raising, raising as I drank one more.

“Just – I need the bucks,” I muttered, sucking daring from one more,

“Only that, and nothing more.”

Langley told me, “Listen, Eddie – my, this bourbon’s rather heady –

“Your writing is so dark – so edgy! – that we always ask for more

“We’ll look at your m.s., baby, if it’s good we’ll run it maybe —

“You might want to cut back drinking, stinking writers are a bore –

“A Review of Dawes?” he murmured, blinking as I downed one more –

“Could be fun, if nothing more.

“Hear me out, Al, Eddie, honey, yes I know you need the money,

“Write us some poems! Put a bird in! Say, bourbon costs less at the store –

“If you don’t slow down, you’ll be sorry – here, eat some calamari –

“Verse with dead girls, verse with birds, words to chill us to the core,

“Publish that we would,” he gabbled, “Love your work, I underscore!

“But a staff job? Nevermore!”

When you think of that night, be merciful.

It was recently discovered that the late author Roald Dahl’s family had added a note to his web site. It was hidden, as Washington Post’s Ron Charles noted, “like a Golden Ticket hidden inside a Wonka Bar.” (The note took Snarly seven minutes to find, even though she was looking for it — it’s in a small box midway down the “About Us” page.)

It reads as follows:

Apology by Mr. Harry Wormwood.

This is a bad apology. First of all, we cannot apologize for others’ conduct, only for our own. The Dahl family could have apologized for profiting from their antisemitic relative’s work, but they have no standing to apologize for that relative’s views. Especially since they distance themselves from his unpleasantness even as they hand-wring over it; see the phrases “incomprehensible to us” and “stand in marked contrast to the man we knew.” Well, bully for you, Dahl family! It’s perfectly LOVELY that Roald was perfectly lovely to you! Hitler was perfectly lovely to his German Shepherd, Blondi!

Speaking of Hitler, Dahl once said in an interview, “There is a trait in the Jewish character that does provoke animosity…even a stinker like Hitler didn’t just pick on them for no reason.” Well then! He also railed against “those powerful American Jewish bankers.” called the American government “utterly dominated by the great Jewish financial institutions,” and said that Jews owned the media.

The note doesn’t say, thankfully, that the family had no idea Dahl held these views, which were pretty common knowledge. (Snarly is still horrified that around two years ago, she met a nice woman at a family concert with a lovely daughter named Matilda, and blurted, “Oh, we almost named my second kid Matilda! But then we didn’t because Roald Dahl was a horrible antisemite!” The nice woman blanched, Snarly stammered for a bit about how Matilda was still a beautiful name and a great literary character, and then Snarly slunk off to the bar.)

Dahl, who was in constant pain from a war injury and had a life filled with tragedies (WHICH IS NOT AN EXCUSE), including losing a child to measles before there was a vaccine, having another child seriously hurt and left with brain damage after a car accident, and coping with the severe stroke of his wife Patricia Neal (who called him “Roald the Rotten”), was unpleasant in a multitude of ways. He was repeatedly unfaithful in marriage, screamed at his loved ones (his granddaughter Sophie referred to him as “a difficult man…roaring around the house), and oh yes, originally wrote the Oompa Loompas as near-naked Black pygmy savages imported from Africa to work in the chocolate factory. When the NAACP threatened to boycott the impending movie, Dahl called this “real Nazi stuff.” (Why, it was cancel culture! And just as in most cases of cancel culture, Dahl was not actually cancelled!) The Oompa Loompas turned tangerine; the movie went on; the Dahl estate still rakes in a ton of money.)

The Dahl family’s apology refers to “prejudiced remarks” but doesn’t say what they were. This minimizes them and dulls their impact. Saying “that’s not the man we knew!” is not only weaselly (Patricia Neal and Sylvie Dahl clearly knew that man), but also hurtful, because it implies that someone who could be lovely can’t also be vicious. An honest apology could have said that Dahl was a complicated, sometimes loathsome man capable of creating wonderful stories. Even children can understand complexity and darkness. (Hence the popularity of Dahl’s work. The Witches and James and the Giant Peach in particular are full of loss, fury, bleakness and terror.) A toothless statement like “We hope that, just as he did at his best, at his absolute worst, Roald Dahl can help remind us of the lasting impact of words” is dismaying. First, because it is an awkwardly written sentence. This is an ironic bummer given that it’s about the power of words. Second, because the statement says nothing. How does Dahl’s “absolute worst” remind us of the impact of words if you won’t tell us what those words were?

The Dahls can’t apologize for Roald’s words, but they can apologize for profiting from them. Donate some of that shmoney to organizations that combat antisemitism and prejudice. Remedy the fact that no one from the family reached out to any Jewish organizations before publishing their pallid statement.

The family is clearly charitable, though Snarly had trouble figuring out exactly what the existing Roald Dahl’s Marvellous Children’s Charity does: it solicits donations for its work involving children’s nurses, but what does that mean? Drilling down several levels into the RoaldDahl.com site shows that the charity has funded 79 pediatric nurses in the UK. Which is great! Snarly could not find an accounting for precisely how the money is spent, but it surely exists off the site. (We are an apology site, not Charity Navigator.)

There is also a prominently touted “Marvellous Nurse Inventing Room,” funding research projects pitched by nurses. Also cool!

But the Room ran from 2014-1017, even though the web site design makes this look like an ongoing project. Again, Snarly is unclear on how much money it gave away. (Even the Executive Summary doesn’t say.) So it would be good to be more transparent, and to expand the charity’s range of causes and recipients in a way that’s relevant to this apology.

SO! Back to SorryWatch’s rules! 1. Use the word “sorry” or “apologize” (the Dahls did, yay!). 2. Say specifically what you’re sorry for. (Nope. Say the words, even if they’re horrifying. Because they’re horrifying. As the BFG put it, “Don’t gobblefunk around with words.”) 3. Show you understand why you’re apologizing. (Nope. They didn’t understand that they have to apologize for themselves, not for Dahl.) 4. Don’t make excuses. (OK! We’ll give them this one!) 5. Fix things moving forward. (Nope.) 6. Make reparations. (Nope.)

All this said, we’d argue that no one should feel guilty to continue loving Dahl’s books. Just own the nuance. Don’t dismiss the artist’s badness as irrelevant. Matilda is still awesome, even if her creator wasn’t.

“It was her turn now to become a heroine.”

Around 1910, a man who had recently become a grandfather learned that his grandchild was seriously ill and had to go to the hospital. His daughter, the child’s mother, was beside herself with worry, maybe close to a nervous breakdown.

Although he was very busy, with a crammed schedule, the grandfather cancelled all his events for two weeks to spend time with the worried family, who lived in the Washington D.C. area. He helped with the medical expenses, and he arranged for the hospital’s chief surgeon to oversee the child’s case.

What was this grandpa so busy with, anyway? He was Booker T. Washington, president of Tuskegee Institute (now Tuskegee University), famous educator, writer, activist, and speaker. He was in high demand across the country, consulted by people like Theodore Roosevelt (26^th U.S. president), Tuskegee University (economist and editor of The New York Age), and Julius Rosenwald (president of Sears, Roebuck).

Actually, I WAS doing something.

With Rosenwald, for example, Washington was helping build 5,000 schools in the southeast US for black kids. That involved finding local leaders, seeking matching funds, and guiding communities in building the schools – a tremendous amount of work. The Rosenwald school program was enormously successful and influential. But it sure took time.

So it’s good to know that Washington could also be there for his family. (It looks to us as if the child was Sidney Pittman, Jr., and that he survived the medical crisis.)

One day he took his daughter, Portia Pittman (a pianist) to visit the Washington Monument. We suppose he was trying to take both their minds off worrying about the hospitalized boy. On the way out, Washington signed the guest book.

The guard on duty grabbed the book away and “used a racial epithet to say that the invitation to sign the book did not extend to blacks.” That’s how it’s described in You Need a Schoolhouse by Stephanie Deutsch. Louis Harlan’s The Wizard of Tuskegee, 1901-1915 confirms what you might suspect, that the guard used the n-word.

Then the guard glanced at the book and read the signature. Gasp! Booker T. Washington! He apologized. Washington either “said nothing” and “just walked away” (Deutsch) or “accepted with an indifferent shrug” (Harlan).

Gasp!

The story seems to have been found in Portia Pittman’s letters, which we can’t access right now, because covid.

We don’t have the wording of the guard’s apology. It may have been something like, “Sorry, I didn’t realize who you were.” Which leaves the implication that other black people were still considered so awful they can’t sign the book. (Other black people including Portia Pittman, standing right there.)

That’s not an apology anyone should accept.

In the unlikely case that the guard’s apology included the statement that he’d had a change of heart, and a promise that in future he would not stop people from signing the book because of their race, that would have been different.

The monument in question.

Washington was not a man who favored bitterness. He once wrote to Portia, studying piano in Germany, not to “dwell too much upon American prejudice, or any other racial prejudice. The thing is for one to get above such things. If one gets into the habit of continually thinking and talking about race prejudice, he soon gets to the point where he is fit for little that is worth doing.”

If Washington shrugged indifferently, we doubt that constituted acceptance. Maybe it conveyed, “I hear you” and “Whatever.”

Booker T. Washington, his wife Margaret Murray Washington, and sons. Portia not shown.

Here’s a problem: how to talk about an apology embodied in a long, arch, ornate, annoying poem without making people read the long, arch, ornate, annoying text. Because that would be annoying.

C. Clement Moore. Your go-to guy for azure pinions, crimes of deepest dye, and fancy’s motley forms.

Excerpts? Summaries and excerpts? We’ll try.

The poem is “Lines Addressed to a Lady, as an Apology for Not Accepting Her Invitation to a Ball.”

See?

It’s by C. Clement Moore. More about him later. The poem is dated 1844. It can be found in Moore’s “Poems,” a book which is deservedly hard to find.

“Those drugs I mix in pleasure’s luscious bowl, Which pain the body to preserve the soul.”

The plot is that he has been invited to a ball. He dreams about a “friendly” fairy who predicts dire punishments if he goes to the ball. Yes, because the fairy will make sure of it.

Verse One – Fashion is a boss who rules with “despotic sway o’er old and young, o’er wise as well as fools.” The throng obeys, even “though Heav’n pronounce it wrong.”

Verse Two – But Moore is not fashionable. He will explain. “A right which guiltiest criminals may claim; E’en they who fly not at a Lady’s call, And dare withstand the attraction of a ball.” (Ooh, burn.)

Verse Three – Stories about fairy rings that pinch you if you’re bad? True! “Nor think these stories false because they’re old, But true as this which soon I will unfold.”

Verse Four – He sleeps, and sees a tiny glowing talkative bossy fairy who lays down the law. No parties. The fairy is an enforcer. “To me ’tis giv’n your virtue to secure/From custom’s force and pleasure’s dangerous lure.”

SOME fairies are ALL ABOUT dancing.
(William Blake)

The fairy likes: virtue and wisdom. The fairy dislikes: folly, dissipation’s giddy round, gaudy scenes, rejoicing in that crap. If Moore gives in to giddy gaudy folly, the fairy will inflict “listlessness… aches… qualms.” (A hangover, right?) If that doesn’t work, Moore can expect those dire punishments: “Disgust, and fretfulness, and secret dread. Unmeaning forms shall swim before your eyes, wild as the clouds which float in vernal skies.” (A BAD hangover? Maybe even DTs? Moore should definitely stay hydrated.)

Verse Five – Exit fairy. Moore follows the fairy’s advice, but people get annoyed. “Complaining friendship’s frown I oft endure.” Don’t be that Lady!

Not pardon for my fault I hope to find;

But humbly pray, you’ll change to one more kind

The threaten’d sentence, cruel as ’tis hard,

To lose forever your benign regard.

Fairies observe EVERY party. “I watch the motions of your youthful mind, Rejoicing when to virtue ’tis inclin’d; But when a growing folly is descried, To root it out, no art I leave untried.”

We don’t care what the title says – that’s not an apology. He’s not sorry, he doesn’t ask pardon. He says that the reason he doesn’t accept her invitation is that her party is… not virtuous. If he went to her wicked/evil/sinful/fashionable party, he too would be wicked/evil/sinful and he would have such a headache. But don’t be mad! Fairies! It’s a poisoned apology.

We would be surprised if anyone had invited Moore to an actually sinful party. Still, people shouldn’t have to go to parties if they don’t like parties. A simple, “No thank you” or “No thank you, I’m not comfortable at parties” should do the job. It’s not necessary to write 70 lines about FAIRIES SAY YOUR PARTIES ARE EVIL.

A Mr. William Bard wrote an answer poem. Shorter, less ornate, still arch. Bard regrets that “dear Clem” is vexed at night “[b]y some uncourtly angry spright…” But what’s so wrong about dancing? Homer says the gods danced. That surly fairy sounds like a phony.

This Sylph who plagues you thus by night

Must surely be some surly spright,

Or e’en no spright at all;

No good objection can he find

To mirth with innocence combined.

Nor even to a Ball.

See you tomorrow, Clem!

Talk about your disgust, and fretfulness, and secret dread.

More about Moore. He’s famous as the supposed — and, eventually, self-proclaimed – author of the famous poem “A Visit from St. Nicholas.” You know, “’Twas the night before Christmas” etc. But maybe he didn’t write it. It first appeared anonymously in 1823, and Moore didn’t claim it till 1844. Don Foster, an expert on literary forensics who wrote “Author Unknown: Tales of a Literary Detective,” is among those who argue it was actually written by Major Henry Livingston, Jr. We find Foster’s argument convincing, if only because it’s hard to see the same person writing about “visions of sugar-plums” – whatever those are – and “Disgust, and fretfulness, and secret dread.”

There is no dispute about “Lines Addressed to a Lady” – no one else ever wanted the credit for that one.