A person who apologises has the moral ball in his court
PAUL JOHNSON
I have sympathy for the butler in The Big Sleep. Marlowe detects him in a contradiction and asks him aggressively, 'You made a mistake, didn't you?' To which the man replies, sadly and sweetly, 'I make many mistakes, sir.' And so do I. I am, by instinct and training, a very specific writer, and so my errors are numerous. Recent ones include misspelling Geoffrey Madan's name — I phoned the printers with a correction but my page had already gone to press — and crediting Richard Tauber with Donald Peers's signature-tune, 'By a babbling brook' (Tauber's, of course, was 'You are my heart's delight'). I apologise for these mistakes, and for others in the past, and for those to come.
Disraeli thought that, in politics, apologies don't work. I see why. Such being the nature of parliamentary conflict, an apology in politics merely leads to fresh accusations and further demands for embarrassing details. (I am not talking about a Personal Statement, which by tradition is received in silence, without comment, the penalties for falsehood, vide Profumo. being enormous.) I once said to Harold Wilson when he was prime minister, 'It would be a good idea, Harold, to admit the government's mistakes occasionally, and apologise.' He replied, 'That's a shrewd suggestion, Paul, and I entirely agree with it.' (Harold being Harold, I knew an untruth was coming.) 'The trouble is, though, I can't actually think of any mistakes, and so there's nothing to apologise for.' Which was to make Disraeli's point, though in a Wilsonian way.
Apologise is one of those words which has effectively reversed its original meaning. Its origin, in the Greek lawcourts, was jurisprudential: it signified the speech for the defence in which the prosecution's case was answered point by point. It retained its original meaning until at least the 16th century. Thus Sir Thomas More, after resigning from office, drew up his `Apologie of Syr Thomas More, Knyght; made by him, after he had geuen ouer the office of Lord Chancellor of Englande'. Today we would say vindication. Only gradually did the word acquire the connotation of excuse, withdrawal, admission of fault and plea for forbearance. It still bore its original meaning in theology: Newman's Apologia pro Vita Sua was not an apology at all but a vigorous rebuttal of Charles Kingsley's charges. But almost the same year it was published, someone. describing Gibbon's personal appearance, wrote that 'he
had no nose at all, only an apology for one'. Dickens's unfortunate statement about his reasons for splitting up with his wife, which his friends begged him not to publish, was self-destructive precisely because it was halfway between the two meanings: half defiant vindication, half admission of guilt.
No doubt everyone has to apologise for his life, sooner or later. When we appear at the Last Judgment and the Recording Angel reads out a list of our sins, we will presumably be given an opportunity to apologise, in the old sense of rebuttal, and in the new sense too, by way of confession and plea of repentance. In this life, it is well to apologise (in the new sense), but promptly, voluntarily, fully and sincerely. If the error is a matter of opinion and unpunishable, so much the better — an apology then becomes a gracious and creditable occasion, and an example to all. An enforced apology is a miserable affair.
Newspaper apologies nearly always seem inadequate. The most audacious one I know was brought back from America by the artist Edward Burne-Jones to show his friend Lady Homer of Mells (the manor house still contains a piano decorated exquisitely by B.-J.). It read: 'Instead of being arrested as we stated, for kicking his wife down a flight of stairs. and hurling a lighted kerosene lamp after her, the Revd. James P. Wellman died unmarried four years ago.' This sentence is remarkable for the enormity of the error and the succinctness of the correction — not, be it noted, an apology, for the law of libel, in the United States as in England, offers no redress to a dead person. I suspect the extract is from the New York World when it was a sensational paper owned by Pulitzer. For reasons which a recent biography of him does not clarify, he had a particular hatred for clergymen of all denominations, and frequently exaggerated or invented discreditable news items about them. He also discovered that such items invariably put on circulation.
The most famous apology in history was made to a much maligned, though far from innocent, cleric: Hildebrand, Pope Gregory VII. He had become involved in what is known as the Investiture Dispute, a fierce Church-State lCulturkampf, revolving round the appointment of bishops. His chief opponent, the Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV
— not a nice man but not a monster either — had called him an impostor, an antipope, an Antichrist and I know not what, but had got the worst of it in the armed struggle that followed. Henry decided to purge his excommunication and get the interdict on his territories withdrawn by apologising and doing penance. The Pope had sought the protection of Countess Matilda of Tuscany, then the world's richest woman, and a princess of startling beauty, taste and wisdom. He was sheltering at her stupendous mountain stronghold of Canossa, not far from Modena, and the Emperor had to climb there barefoot, in the depths of winter, to make his kowtow. Why has this amazing story not been the subject of a great opera? Perhaps it has. Needless to say, the apology was insincere and the tragic story ended in tears on both sides, the Pope's bitter last words being: 'I have loved justice and hated iniquity: therefore I die in exile.' But the fact that the Church was slow to canonise this remarkable man suggests that to begin with it did not accept his version of events. A century later, Henry II of England was locked in mortal struggle over the same issue with Becket, and also apologised after he caused the archbishop's murder. This, too, was in some degree insincere, and trouble broke out afresh soon after Henry had donned sackcloth. Becket was at least as intemperate as Hildebrand, but he not only got his halo but did so in the fastest time on record. But then he was a martyr, and they always move to canonisation faster than any other category of saint.
When I was an editor, I always preferred to apologise promptly, whatever the merits of the case, rather than face the expense and, more importantly, the time-consuming complexities and debilitating worry of litigation, libel being one of the least satisfactory branches of the law. When we took a crack at Dr Bodkin Adams, believing him to be dead, and his joyful lawyer phoned me the next morning to tell me he was very much alive, I settled the matter there and then for the sum (if I remember correctly) of £450 and an apology. So my advice to editors is, get shot of claims quickly, unless the plaintiffs demands are manifestly unreasonable.
Besides, there is something distinguished about a ready apology. Ills the mark of a gentleman, more particularly if it is not necessary. It is the opposite of revenge. Bacon wrote, 'In seeking revenge, a man is but equal with his enemy, but in forgiving him, he is superior, for it is a prince's part to pardon.' So, the person who apologises freely has the moral ball in his court.
Previous page
