John M. Synge | Page 3

might have had nice
hot eggs. It was at this supper that I first came to know the man.
When we got into the street, we found that we 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