The rehearsals were those of Shakespeare's _Twelfth Night_ for
amateur theatricals at Professor Fleeming Jenkin's, in which
Stevenson played the part of Orsino.
_[Edinburgh, April 1875] Saturday._
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.--_A 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; _mais 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