Читать книгу Франкенштейн, или Современный Прометей / Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus - Мэри Шелли - Страница 3

To Mrs. Saville, England.

Archangelsk, 28th March, 17-.

How slowly the time passes here! Yet I have hired a vessel. I am collecting my sailors. But I have no friend, Margaret. No one will sustain me in dejection. I shall commit my thoughts to paper, it is true. But that is not enough. I desire the company of a man who can sympathise with me, whose eyes can reply to mine. You may deem me romantic, my dear sister, but I really need a friend. I have no one near me, gentle yet courageous, whose tastes are like my own, to approve or amend my plans. Such a friend can repair the faults of your poor brother! I am too impatient. But it is a still greater evil to me that I am self-educated. Now I am twenty-eight and am in reality more illiterate than many schoolboys of fifteen.

Well, these are useless complaints. I shall certainly find no friend on the wide ocean, nor even here in Archangelsk, among merchants and seamen. My lieutenant, for instance, is a man of wonderful courage. He is madly desirous of glory. He is an Englishman, and retains some of the noblest endowments of humanity. I first became acquainted with him on board a whale vessel. I found that he was unemployed in this city. I easily engaged him to assist in my enterprise.

The captain is a person of an excellent disposition and is remarkable in the ship for his gentleness and the mildness of his discipline. His dauntless courage made me very desirous to engage him. My youth, my best years, passed in solitude, under your gentle and feminine fosterage. I distaste the usual brutality. I shall do nothing rashly: you know me sufficiently to confide in my prudence and considerateness.

I cannot describe to you my sensations. It is impossible to tell you about the trembling sensation, half pleasurable and half fearful. I am going to unexplored regions, to “the land of mist and snow”. But I shall kill no albatross. There is something in my soul which I do not understand. I am practically industrious – but besides this there is a love for the marvellous, a belief in the marvellous.

Shall I meet you again, when I return from Africa or America? Write to me by every opportunity[5]: I may receive your letters when I need them most. I love you very tenderly.

Your affectionate brother,

Robert Walton