Frankenstein

dignity in the vessel and entreated me to remain with the greatest
earnestness, so valuable did he consider my services.  And now, dear
Margaret, do I not deserve to accomplish some great purpose?  My life
might have been passed in ease and luxury, but I preferred glory to
every enticement that wealth placed in my path.  Oh, that some
encouraging voice would answer in the affirmative!  My courage and my
resolution is firm; but my hopes fluctuate, and my spirits are often
depressed.  I am about to proceed on a long and difficult voyage, the
emergencies of which will demand all my fortitude:  I am required not
only to raise the spirits of others, but sometimes to sustain my own,
when theirs are failing.

This is the most favourable period for travelling in Russia.  They fly
quickly over the snow in their sledges; the motion is pleasant, and, in
my opinion, far more agreeable than that of an English stagecoach.  The
cold is not excessive, if you are wrapped in furs--a dress which I have
already adopted, for there is a great difference between walking the
deck and remaining seated motionless for hours, when no exercise
prevents the blood from actually freezing in your veins.  I have no
ambition to lose my life on the post-road between St. Petersburgh and
Archangel. I shall depart for the latter town in a fortnight or three
weeks; and my intention is to hire a ship there, which can easily be
done by paying the insurance for the owner, and to engage as many
sailors as I think necessary among those who are accustomed to the
whale-fishing.  I do not intend to sail until the month of June; and
when shall I return?  Ah, dear sister, how can I answer this question?
If I succeed, many, many months, perhaps years, will pass before you
and I may meet.  If I fail, you will see me again soon, or never.
Farewell, my dear, excellent Margaret. Heaven shower down blessings on
you, and save me, that I may again and again testify my gratitude for
all your love and kindness.

Your affectionate brother,
  R. Walton



Letter 2


Archangel, 28th March, 17--

To Mrs. Saville, England

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