A U.K. women’s organization’s attempts to praise Meghan Markle, the Duchess of Sussex, as a symbol of fortitude has instead once again given Markle’s detractors a reason to criticize her.
It’s not clear how the wrong attribution occurred, whether Meghan had ever taken credit for the quote, or where she was even an involved party, but the tweet from the Women’s Organization sparked a new round of online discussion among the duchess’ critics about whether she has ever lifted ideas or words from other people, then passed them off as her own.
Several hours after the tweet was posted, the organization retweeted it with an apology and clarification, that said, “We apologize, as we misquoted here, the original quote is from E.E. Cummings.” The organization later deleted the apology and the original post about Meghan, and only shared the quote, properly attributed to Cummings, but late Monday, the organization had apparently been inundated with so much fury from Meghan’s critics that it made its tweets private.
The quote doesn’t show up in any initial online search of stories about Meghan’s writings or public statements. The Women’s Organization didn’t immediately respond to an email requesting comment. People have noted that the quote attributed to Meghan is slightly different than Cummings’ quote, switching the words “night and day.”