Letter 2

Letter 2

To Mrs. Saville, England

Archangel, 28th March, 17--

How slowly the time passes here, encompassed as I am by frost and snow!

Yet a second step is taken towards my enterprise. I have hired a vessel

and am occupied in collecting my sailors; those whom I have already engaged

appear to be men on whom I can depend and are certainly possessed

of dauntless courage.

But I have one want which I have never yet been able to satisfy,

and the absence of the object of which I now feel as a most severe evil.

I have no friend, Margaret: when I am glowing with the enthusiasm

of success, there will be none to participate my joy; if I am assailed

by disappointment, no one will endeavour to sustain me in dejection.

I shall commit my thoughts to paper, it is true; but that is a poor medium

for the communication of feeling. I desire the company of a man

who could sympathize with me, whose eyes would reply to mine.

You may deem me romantic, my dear sister, but I bitterly feel

the want of a friend. I have no one near me, gentle yet courageous,

possessed of a cultivated as well as of a capacious mind,

whose tastes are like my own, to approve or amend my plans.

How would such a friend repair the faults of your poor brother!

I am too ardent in execution and too impatient of difficulties.

But it is a still greater evil to me that I am self-educated:

for the first fourteen years of my life I ran wild on a common

and read nothing but our Uncle Thomas' books of voyages.

At that age I became acquainted with the celebrated poets

of our own country; but it was only when it had ceased to be in my power

to derive its most important benefits from such a conviction

that I perceived the necessity of becoming acquainted with more languages

than that of my native country. Now I am twenty-eight and am in reality

more illiterate than many schoolboys of fifteen. It is true

that I have thought more and that my daydreams are more extended

and magnificent, but they want (as the painters call it) *keeping*;

and I greatly need a friend who would have sense enough not to despise me

as romantic, and affection enough for me to endeavour to regulate my mind.

Well, these are useless complaints; I shall certainly find no friend

on the wide ocean, nor even here in Archangel, among merchants and seamen.

Yet some feelings, unallied to the dross of human nature, beat even

in these rugged bosoms. My lieutenant, for instance, is a man of wonderful

courage and enterprise; he is madly desirous of glory, or rather,

to word my phrase more characteristically, of advancement in his profession.

He is an Englishman, and in the midst of national and professional

prejudices, unsoftened by cultivation, retains some of the noblest

endowments of humanity. I first became acquainted with him

on board a whale vessel; finding that he was unemployed in this city,

I easily engaged him to assist in my enterprise.

The master is a person of an excellent disposition and is remarkable

in the ship for his gentleness and the mildness of his discipline.

This circumstance, added to his well-known integrity and dauntless courage,

made me very desirous to engage him. A youth passed in solitude,

my best years spent under your gentle and feminine fosterage,

has so refined the groundwork of my character that I cannot overcome

an intense distaste to the usual brutality exercised on board ship:

I have never believed it to be necessary, and when I heard of a mariner

equally noted for his kindliness of heart and the respect and obedience

paid to him by his crew, I felt myself peculiarly fortunate

in being able to secure his services. I heard of him first

in rather a romantic manner, from a lady who owes to him the happiness

of her life. This, briefly, is his story. Some years ago

he loved a young Russian lady of moderate fortune, and having amassed

a considerable sum in prize-money, the father of the girl consented

to the match. He saw his mistress once before the destined ceremony;

but she was bathed in tears, and throwing herself at his feet,

entreated him to spare her, confessing at the same time

that she loved another, but that he was poor, and that her father

would never consent to the union. My generous friend

reassured the suppliant, and on being informed of the name of her lover,

instantly abandoned his pursuit. He had already bought a farm

with his money, on which he had designed to pass the remainder of his life;

but he bestowed the whole on his rival, together with the remains

of his prize-money to purchase stock, and then himself solicited

the young woman's father to consent to her marriage with her lover.

But the old man decidedly refused, thinking himself bound in honour

to my friend, who, when he found the father inexorable,

quitted his country, nor returned until he heard that his former mistress

was married according to her inclinations. "What a noble fellow!"

you will exclaim. He is so; but then he is wholly uneducated:

he is as silent as a Turk, and a kind of ignorant carelessness attends him,

which, while it renders his conduct the more astonishing,

detracts from the interest and sympathy which otherwise he would command.

Yet do not suppose, because I complain a little or because I can conceive

a consolation for my toils which I may never know, that I am wavering

in my resolutions. Those are as fixed as fate, and my voyage

is only now delayed until the weather shall permit my embarkation.

The winter has been dreadfully severe, but the spring promises well,

and it is considered as a remarkably early season, so that perhaps

I may sail sooner than I expected. I shall do nothing rashly:

you know me sufficiently to confide in my prudence and considerateness

whenever the safety of others is committed to my care.

I cannot describe to you my sensations on the near prospect

of my undertaking. It is impossible to communicate to you

a conception of the trembling sensation, half pleasurable and half fearful,

with which I am preparing to depart. I am going to unexplored regions,

to "the land of mist and snow," but I shall kill no albatross;

therefore do not be alarmed for my safety or if I should come back to you

as worn and woeful as the "Ancient Mariner." You will smile at my allusion,

but I will disclose a secret. I have often attributed my attachment to,

my passionate enthusiasm for, the dangerous mysteries of ocean

to that production of the most imaginative of modern poets.

There is something at work in my soul which I do not understand.

I am practically industrious--painstaking, a workman to execute

with perseverance and labour--but besides this there is a love

for the marvellous, a belief in the marvellous, intertwined

in all my projects, which hurries me out of the common pathways of men,

even to the wild sea and unvisited regions I am about to explore.

But to return to dearer considerations. Shall I meet you again,

after having traversed immense seas, and returned by the most southern cape

of Africa or America? I dare not expect such success, yet I cannot bear

to look on the reverse of the picture. Continue for the present

to write to me by every opportunity: I may receive your letters

on some occasions when I need them most to support my spirits.

I love you very tenderly. Remember me with affection,

should you never hear from me again.

Your affectionate brother,

Robert Walton