SD2599. John Ruskin to Charles Eliot Norton

Published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 30, 350 (in part).

Mornex, Haute Savoie.

28th Aug. 62

Dear Norton,

It seems to me hardly possible I can have left your last kind letter with the photograph, unanswered, but it seems also, I have become capable of anything. …

As for your American war—I still say as I said at first– If they want to fight—they deserve to fight and to suffer– It is entirely horrible and abominable—but nothing else would do.– Do you remember Mrs Brownings curse on America. I said at the time “she had no business to curse any country but her own”. But she, as it appeared afterwards, was dying—and knew better than I against whom her words were to be recorded. We have come in for a proper share of suffering—but the strange thing is how many innocent suffer—while the guiltiest—Derby & d’Israeli, & such like—are shooting grouse. …

Publication: The Correspondence of John Ruskin and Charles Eliot Norton, ed. John Lewis Bradley and Ian Ousby (Cambridge, 1987), pp. 71–73.

Manuscript: Harvard University.

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