John M. Synge

John M. Synge: A Few Personal

by John Masefield

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Title: John M. Synge: A Few Personal Recollections, with Biographical

Notes
Author: John Masefield
Release Date: January, 2005 [EBook #7296] [Yes, we are more than
one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on April 8,
2003]
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SYNGE ***

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JOHN M. SYNGE
A FEW PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS, WITH BIOGRAPHICAL
NOTES
BY JOHN MASEFIELD

JOHN M. SYNGE
I first met John M. Synge at the room of a common friend, up two pairs
of stairs, in an old house in Bloomsbury, on a Monday night of January,
1903. When I entered the room, he was sitting in a rush-bottomed chair,
talking to a young man just down from Oxford. My host introduced me,
with the remark that he wanted us to know each other.

Synge stood up to shake hands with me. He was of the middle height,
about five feet eight or nine. My first impression of him was of a dark,
grave face, with a great deal in it, changing from the liveliness of
conversation to a gravity of scrutiny. After we had shaken hands, I
passed to the other end of the room to greet other friends. We did not
speak to each other again that night.
When I sat at the other end of the room my chair was opposite Synge's
chair. Whenever I raised my eyes I saw him, and wondered who he
could be. Disordered people look disordered, unusual people look
unusual. A youth with long hair, a velvet coat, extravagant manners,
and the other effeminacies of emptiness looks the charlatan he is.
Synge gave one from the first the impression of a strange personality.
He was of a dark type of Irishman, though not black-haired. Something
in his air gave one the fancy that his face was dark from gravity.
Gravity filled the face and haunted it, as though the man behind were
forever listening to life's case before passing judgment. It was "a dark,
grave face, with a great deal in it." The hair was worn neither short nor
long. The moustache was rather thick and heavy. The lower jaw,
otherwise clean-shaven, was made remarkable by a tuft of hair, too
small to be called a goatee, upon the lower lip. The head was of a good
size. There was nothing niggardly, nothing abundant about it. The face
was pale, the cheeks were rather drawn. In my memory they were
rather seamed and old-looking. The eyes were at once smoky and
kindling. The mouth, not well seen below the moustache, had a great
play of humour on it. But for this humorous mouth, the kindling in the
eyes, and something not robust in his build, he would have been more
like a Scotchman than an Irishman.
I remember wondering if he were Irish. His voice, very guttural and
quick, with a kind of lively bitterness in it, was of a kind of Irish voice
new to me at that time. I had known a good many Irish people; but they
had all been vivacious and picturesque, rapid in intellectual argument,
and vague about life. There was nothing vivacious, picturesque, rapid
or vague about Synge. The rush-bottomed chair next to him was filled
by talker after talker, but Synge was not talking, he was answering.
When someone spoke to him he answered with the grave Irish courtesy.

He offered nothing of his own. When the talk became general he was
silent. Sometimes he went to a reddish earthenware pot upon the table,
took out a cigarette and lit it at a candle. Then