John M. Synge | Page 2

he sat smoking, pushed
back a little from the circle, gravely watching. Sometimes I heard his
deep, grave voice assenting 'Ye-es, ye-es,' with meditative boredom.
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