John M. Synge | Page 4

about life. When we talked about writers (modern French and ancient English writers) it was not about their writings that we talked, but about the something kindling in them, which never got expressed. His theory of writing was this:--"No good writer can ever be translated." He used to quote triumphantly from Shakespeare's 130th. Sonnet.
"As any she belied with false compare."
"How would you put that into French ?" he asked.
He never talked about himself. He often talked of his affairs, his money, his little room in Paris, his meetings with odd characters, etc., but never of himself. He had wandered over a lot of Europe. He was silent about all that.
Very rarely, and then by chance, when telling of the life in Aran, or of some strange man in the train or in the steamer, he revealed little things about himself:--
"They asked me to fiddle to them, so that they might dance."
"Do you play, then?"
"I fiddle a little. I try to learn something different for them every time. The last time I learned to do conjuring tricks. They'd get tired of me if I didn't bring something new. I'm thinking of learning the penny whistle before I go again."
I never heard him mention his early life nor what he endured in his struggles to find a form. I believe he never spoke about his writings, except to say that he wrote them slowly, many times over. His talk was always about vivid, picturesque, wild life. He took greater joy in what some frantic soul from Joyce's country said when the policeman hit him than in anything of his own. He found no vivid life in England. He disliked England. I think he only knew London. Afterwards he stayed for a couple of weeks in Devonshire. London is a place where money can be made and spent. Devonshire is a place where elderly ladies invite retired naval officers to tea. England lies further to the north. He was never in any part of England where the country life is vigorous and picturesque. He believed England to be all suburb, like the "six counties overhung with smoke." Soon after our first meeting I was present at his first success. His two early plays, Riders to the Sea and The Shadow of the Glen, were read aloud to about a dozen friends at the rooms of one who was always most generously helpful to writers not yet sure of their road. A lady read the plays very beautifully. Afterwards we all applauded. Synge learned his metier that night. Until then, all his work had been tentative and in the air. After that, he went forward, knowing what he could do.
For two or three months I met Synge almost daily. Presently he went back to Ireland (I believe to Aran) and I to "loathed Devonshire." I met him again, later in the year. During the next few years, though he was not often in town, I met him fairly often whenever the Irish players came to London. Once I met him for a few days together in Dublin. He was to have stayed with me both in London and in Ireland; but on both occasions his health gave way, and the visit was never paid. I remember sitting up talking with him through the whole of one winter night (in 1904.) Later, when the Roke--by Velasquez was being talked of, I went with him to see the picture. We agreed that it was the kind of picture people paint when mind is beginning to get languid. After we had seen the picture I walked with him to his hotel (the Kenilworth Hotel,) talking about Irish art, which he thought was the kind of art people make when mind has been languid for a long time. I never saw him angry. I never saw him vexed. I never heard him utter a hasty or an unkind word. I saw him visibly moved once to sadness, when some one told him how tourists had spoiled the country people in a part of Ireland. The Irish country people are simple and charming. Tourists make them servile, insolent, and base. "The Irish are easily corrupted," he said, "because they are so simple. When they're corrupted, they're hard, they're rude, they're everything that's bad. But they're only that where the low-class tourists go, from America, and Glasgow, and Liverpool and these places." He seldom praised people, either for their work or for their personality. When he spoke of acquaintances he generally quoted a third person. When he uttered a personal judgment it was always short, like "He's a great fellow," or "He's a grand fellow," or "Nobody in Ireland understands how big he is."
On one occasion (I think in 1906) we lunched together (at the Vienna Cafe.) He told me