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