Frankenstein

Letter II

Letter IITo 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