to Mrs. Sitwell

[Edinburgh, Saturday, April 1875.]

I am getting on with my rehearsals, but I find the part very hard.  I rehearsed yesterday from a quarter to seven, and to-day from four (with interval for dinner) to eleven.  You see the sad strait I am in for ink.—À demain.

Sunday.—This is the third ink-bottle I have tried, and still it’s nothing to boast of.  My journey went off all right, and I have kept ever in good spirits.  Last night, indeed, I did think my little bit of gaiety was going away down the wind like a whiff of tobacco smoke, but to-day it has come back to me a little.  The influence of this place is assuredly all that can be worst against one; mail il faut lutter.  I was haunted last night when I was in bed by the most cold, desolate recollections of my past life here; I was glad to try and think of the forest, and warm my hands at the thought of it.  O the quiet, grey thickets, and the yellow butterflies, and the woodpeckers, and the outlook over the plain as it were over a sea!  O for the good, fleshly stupidity of the woods, the body conscious of itself all over and the mind forgotten, the clean air nestling next your skin as though your clothes were gossamer, the eye filled and content, the whole MAN HAPPY!  Whereas here it takes a pull to hold yourself together; it needs both hands, and a book of stoical maxims, and a sort of bitterness at the heart by way of armour.—Ever your faithful

R. L. S.

Wednesday.—I am so played out with a cold in my eye that I cannot see to write or read without difficulty.  It is swollen horrible; so how I shall look as Orsino, God knows!  I have my fine clothes tho’.  Henley’s sonnets have been taken for the Cornhill.  He is out of hospital now, and dressed, but still not too much to brag of in health, poor fellow, I am afraid.

Sunday.—So.  I have still rather bad eyes, and a nasty sore throat.  I play Orsino every day, in all the pomp of Solomon, splendid Francis the First clothes, heavy with gold and stage jewellery.  I play it ill enough, I believe; but me and the clothes, and the wedding wherewith the clothes and me are reconciled, produce every night a thrill of admiration.  Our cook told my mother (there is a servants’ night, you know) that she and the housemaid were ‘just prood to be able to say it was oor young gentleman.’  To sup afterwards with these clothes on, and a wonderful lot of gaiety and Shakespearean jokes about the table, is something to live for.  It is so nice to feel you have been dead three hundred years, and the sound of your laughter is faint and far off in the centuries.—Ever your faithful

Robert Louis Stevenson.

Wednesday.—A moment at last.  These last few days have been as jolly as days could be, and by good fortune I leave to-morrow for Swanston, so that I shall not feel the whole fall back to habitual self.  The pride of life could scarce go further.  To live in splendid clothes, velvet and gold and fur, upon principally champagne and lobster salad, with a company of people nearly all of whom are exceptionally good talkers; when your days began about eleven and ended about four—I have lost that sentence; I give it up; it is very admirable sport, any way.  Then both my afternoons have been so pleasantly occupied—taking Henley drives.  I had a business to carry him down the long stair, and more of a business to get him up again, but while he was in the carriage it was splendid.  It is now just the top of spring with us.  The whole country is mad with green.  To see the cherry-blossom bitten out upon the black firs, and the black firs bitten out of the blue sky, was a sight to set before a king.  You may imagine what it was to a man who has been eighteen months in an hospital ward.  The look of his face was a wine to me.

I shall send this off to-day to let you know of my new address—Swanston Cottage, Lothianburn, Edinburgh.  Salute the faithful in my name.  Salute Priscilla, salute Barnabas, salute Ebenezer—O no, he’s too much, I withdraw Ebenezer; enough of early Christians.—Ever your faithful

Robert Louis Stevenson.