John M. Synge | Page 8

a family vault in the Protestant graveyard of Mount Jerome, Harold's Cross, Dublin. He had been betrothed, but not married.
* * * * *
One thing more needs to be said. People have stated that Synge's masters in art were the writers of the French Decadent school of the eighteen nineties, Verlaine, Mallarme, J. K. Huysmans, etc. Synge had read these writers (who has not?) I often talked of them with him. So far as I know, they were the only writers for whom he expressed dislike. As a craftsman he respected their skill, as an artist he disliked their vision. The dislike he plainly stated in a review of Huysmans' La Cathedrale ( The Speaker, April, 1903) and in an allusion to the same author's, A Rebours, in one of his Prefaces. I do not know who his masters in art may have been, that is one of the personal things he would not willingly have told; but from what I can remember, I should say that his favourite author, during the greater part of his life, was Racine.

PORTRAITS
Several portraits of Synge exist. Besides a few drawings of him which are still in private hands, there are these, which have been made public.
An oil painting by Mr. J. B. Yeats. R.H.A. (Municipal Gallery, Dublin.)
A Drawing by Mr. J. B. Yeats. R.H.A. (Samhain. December, 1904.)
A Drawing by Mr. J. B. Yeats. R.H.A. (Frontispiece to Playboy.)
Frontispieces to Vols. I. III. and IV. of the Works. (One of these is a drawing by Mr. James Paterson, the others are photographs.)
Two small but characteristic amateur photographs reproduced in M. Bourgeois's book.
Very few people can read a dead man's character from a portrait. Life is our concern; it was very specially synge's concern. Doubtless he would prefer us not to bother about how he looked, but to think of him as one who
"Held Time's fickle glass his fickle hour"
and then was put back into the earth with the kings and tinkers who made such a pageant in his brain. For the rest, he would say, with Shakespeare,
"My spirit is thine, the better part of me."

A LIST OF HIS PLAYS, IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER WITH THE DATES OF THEIR FIRST PERFORMANCES
The Shadow of the Glen. Written 1902.3. Performed 8th. October 1903.
Riders to the Sea. Written 1902.3. Performed 25th. February 1904.
The Well of the Saints. Written 1903.4. Performed 4th. February 1905.
The Playboy of the Western World. Written 1905.6. Performed 26th. January 1907.
The Tinker's Wedding. Written 1902-1907. Performed 11th. November 1909.
Deirdre of the Sorrows, (unfinished) 1907.8. Performed 13th. January 1910.

OTHER WRITINGS
The Aran Islands. Written between 1899 and 1907. Published April, 1907.
Poems and Translations. Written between 1891 and 1908; the translations between 1905 and 1908. Published June 5, 1909.
The works of John M. Synge, in 4 volumes, published in 1910, contains all the published plays and books and selections from his papers. Though he disliked writing for newspapers he wrote some contributions to The Gael, The Shanachie, The Speaker, The Manchester Guardian and L'Europeen (in Paris) between the years 1902 and 1908. One or two of the best of these are reprinted in The Works. The others may be read in their place by those who care. It is possible that the zeal of biographers will discover a few papers by him in other periodicals.

A NOTE
Information about John M. Synge may be found in Mr. W. B. Yeats's Collected Works, Vol. 8, p. 173. In J. M. Synge and the Ireland of His Time, by W. B. Yeats and Jack B. Yeats. In an article by Mr. Jack B. Yeats in the New York Sun, July, 1909, mainly reprinted in the above.
In the Manchester Guardian, March 25th. 1909, and, much more fully than elsewhere in John M. Synge, by M. Maurice Bourgeois, the French authority on Synge, whose book is the best extant record of the man's career. A good many critical and controversial books and articles of varying power and bitterness have appeared about him. A short Life of him by myself, was published in a supplementary volume of the Dictionary of National Biography in 1912. The people who knew him in Ireland, and some who have followed in his tracks there have set down or collected facts about him. The student will no doubt meet with more of these as time goes by. For those which have already appeared, the student should refer to M. Bourgeois's very carefully compiled appendices, and to the published indices of English and American Periodical Publications.

HERE ENDS 'JOHN M. SYNGE: A FEW PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS, WITH BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES BY JOHN MASEFIELD.' PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY ELIZABETH CORBET YEATS AT THE CUALA PRESS, CHURCHTOWN, DUNDRUM, IN THE COUNTY OF DUBLIN, IRELAND. FINISHED AT EASTER, IN THE YEAR NINETEEN HUNDRED AND FIFTEEN.

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