John M. Synge | Page 5

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 with huge delight about his adventures in the wilds.
He had lodged in a cabin far from the common roads. There was no
basin in his bed-room. He asked for one, so that he might wash. The
people brought him a wooden box, worn smooth with much use. In the
morning he was roused by his host with the cry, "Have you washed

yourself yet? Herself is wanting the box to make up the bread in."
I remember asking him what sensations an author had when his play
was being performed for the first time. "I sit still in my box," he said
"and curse the actors." He was in a very gay mood that afternoon,
though his health was fast failing. He spoke with his usual merry
malice about his throat. With the trouble in his throat he could not tell
when he would be in England again. He was only in England once
more. That was in late May or early June, 1907, when the Irish players
gave a few performances at the Kingsway Theatre. I met him in the
foyer of the theatre just before the first London performance of The
Playboy of the Western World.
I had some talk with him then. During the performance I saw him in his
box, "sitting still," as he said, watching with the singular grave intensity
with which he watched life. It struck me then that he was the only
person there sufficiently simple to be really interested in living people;
and that it was this simplicity which gave him his charm. He found the
life in a man very well worth wonder, even though the man were a fool,
or a knave, or just down from Oxford. At the end of the play I saw him
standing in his box, gravely watching the actors as the curtain rose and
again rose during the applause. Presently he turned away to speak to the
lady who had read his plays on the night of his first success. The play
was loudly applauded. Some people behind me--a youth and a
girl--began to hiss. I remember thinking that they resembled the bird
they imitated. I only saw Synge on two other occasions. I met him at a
dinner party, but had no talk with him, and I called upon him at his old
lodgings in Handel Street. He said:--
"Doesn't it seem queer to you to be coming back here?"
"It seems only the other day that we were here."
"Those were great days."
"I wish we could have them again."
"Ah," he said, laughing his hard laugh, half a cough,

"Nature brings not back the mastodon, Nor we those times."
Presently he told me that he had been writing poetry. He handed me a
type-written copy of a ballad, and asked me what I thought of it. I told
him that I felt the want of an explanatory stanza near the beginning.
"Yes," he said; "But I can't take your advice, because then it would not
be quite my own." He told me the wild picturesque story (of a murder
in Connaught) which had inspired the ballad. His relish of the savagery
made me feel that he was a dying man clutching at life, and clutching
most wildly at violent life, as the sick man does. We went out shortly
afterwards, and got into a cab, and drove to the Gourmets, and ate our
last meal together. He was going to the theatre after dinner; I had to go
out of town. After dinner we got into another cab. He said he would
give me a lift towards my station. We drove together along the Strand,
talking of the great times we would have and of the jolly times we had
had. None of our many talks together was happier than the last. I felt in
my heart as we drove that I should never see him again. Our last talk
together was to be a happy one.
He was later than he thought. He could not come all the way to my
station. He had to turn off to his theatre.
At the top of Fleet Street hill we shook hands and said "So long" to
each other. The cab drew up just outside the office of a sporting
newspaper. I got out, and raised my hand to him. He raised his in his
grave way. The cab swung round and set off westwards, and that was
the end.
When I heard of his death I felt that his interest in life