Stevenson, hard at work upon _Providence and the Guitar_, _New
Arabian Nights_, and _Travels with a Donkey_, was at this time
occupying for a few days my rooms at Trinity in my absence. The
college buildings and gardens, the ideal setting and careful tutelage
of English academic life--in these respects so strongly contrasted
with the Scottish--affected him always with a sense of unreality. The
gyp mentioned is the present head porter of the college.
[_Trinity College, Cambridge, Autumn 1878._]
MY DEAR HENLEY,--Here I am living like a fighting-cock, and have not
spoken to a real person for about sixty hours. Those who wait on me are
not real. The man I know to be a myth, because I have seen him acting so
often in the Palais Royal. He plays the Duke in _Tricoche et Cacolet_; I
knew his nose at once. The part he plays here is very dull for him, but
conscientious. As for the bedmaker, she's a dream, a kind of cheerful,
innocent nightmare; I never saw so poor an imitation of humanity. I
cannot work--_cannot_. Even the _Guitar_ is still undone; I can only
write ditch-water. 'Tis ghastly; but I am quite cheerful, and that is
more important. Do you think you could prepare the printers for a
possible breakdown this week? I shall try all I know on Monday; but if I
can get nothing better than I got this morning, I prefer to drop a week.
Telegraph to me if you think it necessary. I shall not leave till
Wednesday at soonest. Shall write again.