At times during Synge's last illness, Lady Gregory and I would speak of
his work and always find some pleasure in the thought that unlike
ourselves, who had made our experiments in public, he would leave to
the world nothing to be wished away--nothing that was not beautiful or
powerful in itself, or necessary as an expression of his life and
thought. When he died we were in much anxiety, for a letter written
before his last illness, and printed in the selection of his poems
published at the Cuala Press, had shown that he was anxious about the
fate of his manuscripts and scattered writings. On the evening of the
night he died he had asked that I might come to him the next day; and
my diary of the days following his death shows how great was our
anxiety. Presently however, all seemed to have come right, for the
Executors sent me the following letter that had been found among his
papers, and promised to carry out his wishes.
'May 4th, 1908
'Dear Yeats,
'This is only to go to you if anything should go wrong with me under
the operation or after it. I am a little bothered about my 'papers.' I
have a certain amount of verse that I think would be worth preserving,
possibly also the 1st and 3rd acts of 'Deirdre,' and then I have a lot
of Kerry and Wicklow articles that would go together into a book. The
other early stuff I wrote I have kept as a sort of curiosity, but I am
anxious that it should not get into print. I wonder could you get
someone--say ... who is now in Dublin to go through them for you and do
whatever you and Lady Gregory think desirable. It is rather a hard
thing to ask you but I do not want my good things destroyed or my bad
things printed rashly--especially a morbid thing about a mad fiddler in
Paris which I hate. Do what you can--Good luck.
'J.M. Synge'
In the summer of 1909, the Executors sent me a large bundle of papers,
cuttings from newspapers and magazines, manuscript and typewritten
prose and verse, put together and annotated by Synge himself before his
last illness. I spent a portion of each day for weeks reading and
re-reading early dramatic writing, poems, essays, and so forth, and
with the exception of ninety pages which have been published without my
consent, made consulting Lady Gregory from time to time the Selection
of his work published by Messrs. Maunsel. It is because of these ninety
pages, that neither Lady Gregory's name nor mine appears in any of the
books, and that the Introduction which I now publish, was withdrawn by
me after it had been advertised by the publishers. Before the
publication of the books the Executors discovered a scrap of paper with
a sentence by J.M. Synge saying that Selections might be taken from his
Essays on the Congested Districts. I do not know if this was written
before his letter to me, which made no mention of them, or contained
his final directions. The matter is unimportant, for the publishers
decided to ignore my offer to select as well as my original decision to
reject, and for this act of theirs they have given me no reasons except
reasons of convenience, which neither Lady Gregory nor I could accept.
W.B. Yeats.
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