John M. Synge | Page 2

Sometimes his little finger flicked off the ash on to the floor. His manner was that of a man too much interested in the life about him to wish to be more than a spectator. His interest was in life, not in ideas. He was new to that particular kind of life. Afterwards, when I had come to know him, I heard him sum up every person there with extraordinary point and sparkle. Often since then, eager to hear more of my friend, I have asked men who met him casually for a report of him. So often they have said, "He was a looker-on at life. He came in and sat down and looked on. He gave nothing in return. He never talked, he only listened. I never got much out of him. I never got to the real Synge. I was never conscious of what he felt. Sometimes I felt that there was nothing in him. I never knew him respond. I never knew him do or say anything to suggest what he was in himself." When I hear these phrases, I know that those who utter them really met Synge. His place was outside the circle, gravely watching, gravely summing up, with a brilliant malice, the fools and wise ones inside.
A week, or perhaps a fortnight, later, I met him again at the same place, among the same people. He was talking brightly and charmingly to a woman. Men usually talk their best to women. When I turn over my memories of him, it seems that his grave courtesy was only gay when he was talking to women. His talk to women had a lightness and charm. It was sympathetic; never self-assertive, as the hard, brilliant Irish intellect so often is. He liked people to talk to him. He liked to know the colours of people's minds. He liked to be amused. His merriest talk was like playing catch with an apple of banter, which one afterwards ate and forgot.
He never tried to be brilliant. I never heard him say a brilliant thing. He said shrewd things. I do not know what he could have done if stirred to talk. Few people born out of old, sunny countries talk well. I never heard him engaged with a brilliant talker, either man or woman. He told me that once, in Paris, he had gone to hear a brilliant talker--a French poet, now dead. It was like him that he did not speak to the talker. "We sat round on chairs and the great man talked."
During the evening, I spoke a few words to Synge about some Irish matter. We pushed back our chairs out of the circle and discussed it. I did not know at that time that he was a writer. I knew by name most of the writers in the Irish movement. Synge was not one of the names. I thought that he must be at work on the political side. I wronged him in this. He never played any part in politics: politics did not interest him. He was the only Irishman I have ever met who cared nothing for either the political or the religious issue. He had a prejudice against one Orange district, because the people in it were dour. He had a prejudice against one Roman Catholic district, because the people in it were rude. Otherwise his mind was untroubled. Life was what interested him. He would have watched a political or religious riot with gravity, with pleasure in the spectacle, and malice for the folly. He would have taken no side, and felt no emotion, except a sort of pity when the losers could go on no longer. The question was nothing to him. All that he asked for was to hear what it made people say and to see what it made people do.
Towards one in the morning, our host asked Syrige and me to sup with him. We foraged in the pantry, and found some eggs, but nothing in which to cook them. Our host said that he would try a new trick, of boiling eggs in a paper box. We were scornful about it, thinking it impossible. He brought out paper, made a box (with some difficulty,) filled it with water, and boiled an egg in it. Synge watched the task with the most keen interest. "You've done it," he said. "I never thought you would." Afterwards he examined the paper box. I suppose he planned to make one in Aran in the summer. While we supped, our host chaffed us both for choosing to eat cold meats when we might have had nice hot eggs. It was at this supper that I first came to know the man.
When we got into the street, we found that we