John M. Synge | Page 7

in his
reading. He had read considerably in some six languages, (Hebrew,
Irish, German, Italian, French and English) and widely in at least four
of them, besides his scholarship in the universal language of music.
Among his early plans for books were schemes for a translation from
some of the prose of St. Francis of Assisi, (which he abandoned,
because an English translation was published at the time) and for a
critical study of Racine, whose pure and noble art always meant much

to him. Some critical and other writings of this period exist in
manuscript. They are said to be carefully written, but wanting in inner
impulse.
Throughout this period if not throughout his life he lived with the
utmost ascetic frugality, bordering always, or touching, on poverty. He
used to say that his income was "forty pounds a year and a new suit of
clothes, when my old ones get too shabby." He had no expensive habits,
he was never self-indulgent, he had no wish to entertain nor to give
away, no desire to make nor to own money, no taste for collection nor
zest for spending. He eschewed all things that threatened his complete
frugal independence and thereby the integrity of his mind.
The superficial man, not seeing this last point, sometimes felt that he
"did not know how to abound."
* * * * *
When in Paris in 1899, he met Mr. W. B. Yeats who, having seen his
work suggested that he would do well to give up writing criticism, and
go again to the Aran Islands to study the life there, and fill his mind
with real and new images, so that, if he wrote later, his writing might
be lively and fresh and his subject a new discovery. He did as Mr.
Yeats suggested and went back to the Aran Islands and passed some
weeks in Inishmaan. In all, he made five or six visits to the Aran
Islands, these two of 1898 and 1899, and certainly three more in the
autumns of 1900, 1901, 1902. The Islanders liked him but were a little
puzzled by him. He was an unassertive, unassuming man, with a genius
for being inconspicuous. He has told us that his usual method in a poor
man's cabin was to make them forget that he was there, but in Aran on
these visits he always tried to add to the fun, and to his personal
prestige with conjuring tricks, fiddling, piping, taking photographs, etc.
Some of the Islanders were much attached to him. I suppose that their
main impression was that he was a linguist who had committed a crime
somewhere and had come to hide.
His next three or four years, 1899-1902 were passed between Paris and
Ireland; Paris in the winter and spring and Ireland in the other seasons.

He was at work on The Aran Islands, and on his three early one act
plays, The Tinker's Wedding, Riders to the Sea, and The Shadow of the
Glen. He came to London in the winter of 1902-3, where I saw him as I
have described. London did not suit him and he did not stay long. He
gave up his room in Paris at this time, with some searching of the heart;
for at thirty one clings to youth. After this, he was mostly in Ireland, in
the wilder West and elsewhere; writing and perfecting. At the end of
1904 he was in Dublin, for the opening of the Abbey Theatre of which
he was one of the advisers. In June, 1905, he went through the
Congested Districts of Connemara, with Mr. Jack B. Yeats. After this
expedition, which lasted a month, he was generally in or near Dublin,
in Kingstown and elsewhere, though he made summer excursions to
Dingle, the Blasket Islands, Kerry, etc. About once a year, when the
Abbey Theatre Company was touring in England, he came with it if his
health allowed, to watch the performances in London, Manchester or
Edinburgh, wherever they might be. His life was always mainly within
himself; the record of these years is very meagre, all that can be said of
them is that he passed them mostly in Ireland, writing and re-writing, in
failing health and with increasing purpose. His general health was
never robust, and for at least the last six years of his life his throat
troubled him. He used to speak of the trouble as "his glands;" I cannot
learn its exact nature; but I have been told that it was "cancer" or "some
form of cancer," which caused him "not very great pain," but which
"would have been excessively painful had he lived a little longer."
Doctors may be able to conclude from these vague statements what it
was. He was operated upon in