Ch. 2: 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 sympathise 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