John M. Synge | Page 3

lodged within a few minutes' walk of each other. We walked together to our lodgings. He said that he had been for a time in Aran, that he had taken some photographs there, and that he would be pleased to show them to me, if I would call upon him later in the morning. He said that he had just come to London from Paris, and that he found Bloomsbury strange after the Quartier Latin. He was puzzled by the talk of the clever young men from Oxford. "That's a queer way to talk. They all talk like that. I wonder what makes them talk like that? I suppose they're always stewing over dead things."
Synge lodged in a front room on the second floor of No. 4, Handel Street, Bloomsbury. It was a quiet house in a quiet, out-of-the- way street. His room there was always very clean and tidy. The people made him very comfortable. Afterwards, in 1907, during his last visit to London, he lodged there again, in the same room. I called upon him there in the afternoon of the day on which I last saw him.
When I first called upon him, I found him at his type-writer, hard at work. He was making a fair copy of one of his two early one-act plays, then just finished. His type-writer was a small portable machine, of the Blick variety. He was the only writer I have ever known who composed direct upon a type-writing machine. I have often seen him at work upon it. Sometimes, when I called to ask him to come for a walk, he had matter to finish off before we could start. He worked rather slowly and very carefully, sitting very upright. He composed slowly. He wrote and re-wrote his plays many times. I remember that on this first occasion the table had a pile of type-written drafts upon it, as well as a few books, one or two of them by M. Pierre Loti. He thought M. Loti the best living writer of prose. There are marks of M. Loti's influence in the Aran book. Much of the Aran manuscript was on the table at that time. Synge asked me to wait for a few minutes while he finished the draft at which he was working. He handed me a black tobacco-pouch and a packet of cigarette-papers. While I rolled a cigarette he searched for his photographs and at last handed them to me. They were quarter-plate prints in a thick bundle. There must have been fifty of them. They were all of the daily life of Aran; women carrying kelp, men in hookers, old people at their doors, a crowd at the landing-place, men loading horses, people of vivid character, pigs and children playing together, etc. As I looked at them he explained them or commented on them in a way which made all sharp and bright. His talk was best when it was about life or the ways of life. His mind was too busy with the life to be busy with the affairs or the criticism of life. His talk was all about men and women and what they did and what they said when life excited them. His mind was perhaps a little like Shakespeare's. We do not know what Shakespeare thought: I do not know what Synge thought. I don't believe anybody knew, or thinks he knows.
"There was something very nice about Synge."
The friend who said this to me, added that "though the plays are cynical, he was not cynical in himself." I do not feel that the plays are cynical. They seem heartless at first sight. The abundant malicious zest in them gives them an air of cruelty. But in the plays, Synge did with his personality as he did in daily life. He buried his meaning deep. He covered his tragedy with mockeries.
More than a year ago a friend asked me what sort of man Synge was. I answered, "a perfect companion." The other day I saw that another friend, who knew him better than I, had described him as "the best companion." After that first day, when I called upon him at his room, we met frequently. We walked long miles together, generally from Bloomsbury to the river, along the river to Vauxhall, and back by Westminster to Soho. We sometimes dined together at a little French restaurant, called the Restaurant des Gourmets. The house still stands; but it has now grown to five times the size. The place where Synge and I used to sit has now been improved away. We spent happy hours there, talking, rolling cigarettes, and watching the life. "Those were great days," he used to say. He was the best companion for that kind of day.
Our talk was always