SYNGE
_It is October now and leaves have fallen from the branches of the
big copper-beech in the garden; I saw the stars shining through them
last night. You were asleep then, but in the daytime you can see the
sky all blue through their bareness. And the dry red heaps under them
are noisy when pheasants, looking for mast, hurry away as you come
calling, running, down the hill. The smooth trunk of the tree that
was in shadow all through the summer time shines out now like silver.
You stop to look at letters cut in the bark. You can read most of
them yourself. You came under the wide boughs a few weeks ago, when
a soldier who has gone now to set in order all the British dominions
over sea, carved that “Ian H.” far out of your reach, as high as his
own high head. There is another name higher again, for the painter
who cut that “A” and that “J” climbed up to write it again where we
could not follow him, higher than the birds make their nests. There
are letters of other names, “G. B. S.” and “W. B. Y.” Strangers know
the names they stand for; they are easily known. But there to the
north those letters, “J. M. S.,” stand for a name that was not known
at all at the time it was cut there, a few years before you were
born._
_The days are getting short and in the evening, when you ask me for
something to paint or to scribble on, I sometimes give you one from a
bundle of old sheets of paper, with three names printed at the head
of it, with the picture of a woman and a dog. The names are those of
three friends who worked together for a while: Yeats’s name and my
own and the name of John Millington Synge._
* * * * *
I first saw Synge in the north island of Aran. I was staying there,
gathering folk-lore, talking to the people, and felt quite angry
when I passed another outsider walking here and there, talking also
to the people. I was jealous of not being alone on the island among
the fishers and sea-weed gatherers. I did not speak to the stranger,
nor was he inclined to speak to me. He also looked on me as an
intruder. I heard only his name. But a little later in the summer
Mr. Yeats, who was staying with us at Coole, had a note from Synge,
saying he was in Aran. They had met in Paris. Yeats wrote of him from
there: “He is really a most excellent man. He lives in a little room
which he has furnished himself; he is his own servant. He works very
hard and is learning Breton; he will be a very useful scholar.”
[Illustration: J. M. Synge
From a drawing by Robert Gregory in 1904]
I asked him here and we became friends at once. I said of him in a
letter: “One never has to rearrange one’s mind to talk to him.” He
was quite direct, sincere, and simple, not only a good listener but
too good a one, not speaking much in general society. His fellow
guests at Coole always liked him, and he was pleasant and genial
with them, though once, when he had come straight from life on a
wild coast, he confessed that a somewhat warlike English lady in the
house was “civilisation in its most violent form.” There could be a
sharp edge to his wit, as when he said that a certain actress (not
Mrs. Campbell), whose modern methods he disliked, had turned Yeats’
_Deirdre_ into _The Second Mrs. Conchubar_. And once, when awakened
from the anæsthetic after one of those hopeless operations, the
first words that could be understood were, “Those damned English
can’t even swear without vulgarity.”
He sent me later, when we had been long working at the Theatre,
some reviews of his work from a German newspaper. “What gives
me a sympathy with this new man is that he does not go off into
sentimentality. Behind this legend I see a laughing face; then he
raises his eyebrows in irony and laughs again. Herr Synge may not be
a dramatist, he may not be a great poet, but he has something in him
that I like, a thing that for many good Germans is a book with seven
seals, that is, Humour.” He writes a note with this, “I’d like to
quote about ‘Humour,’ but I don’t want to tell Dublin I’m maybe no
dramatist; that wouldn’t do.”
Of his other side, Mr. J. B. Yeats wrote to me: “Coleridge said that
all Shakespeare’s characters from Macbeth to Dogberry are ideal
realities, his comedies are poetry as an unlimited jest, and his
tragedies ‘poetry in deepest earnest.’ Had he seen Synge’s plays he
would have called them, ‘Poetry in unlimited sadness.’”
While with us, he hardly looked at a newspaper. He seemed to look on
politics and reforms with a sort of tolerant indifference, though he
spoke once of something that had happened as “the greatest tragedy
since Parnell’s death.” He told me that the people of the play he
was writing often seemed the real people among whom he lived, and I
think his dreamy look came from this. He spent a good deal of time
wandering in our woods where many shy creatures still find their
homes--marten cats and squirrels and otters and badgers,--and by the
lake where wild swans come and go. He told Mr. Yeats he had given up
wearing the black clothes he had worn for a while, when they were a
fashion with writers, thinking they were not in harmony with nature,
which is so sparing in the use of the harsh colour of the raven.
Simple things always pleased him. In his long illness in a Dublin
hospital where I went to see him every day, he would ask for every
detail of a search I was making for a couple of Irish terrier puppies
to bring home, and laugh at my adventures again and again. And when
I described to him the place where I had found the puppies at last,
a little house in a suburb, with a long garden stretching into wide
fields, with a view of the hills beyond, he was excited and said
that it was just such a Dublin home as he wanted, and as he had been
sure was somewhere to be found. He asked me at this time about a
village on the Atlantic coast, where I had stayed for a while, over
a post-office, and where he hoped he might go for his convalescence
instead of to Germany, as had been arranged for him. I said, in
talking, that I felt more and more the time wasted that was not spent
in Ireland, and he said: “That is just my feeling.”
The rich, abundant speech of the people was a delight to him. When
my _Cuchulain of Muirthemme_ came out, he said to Mr. Yeats he had
been amazed to find in it the dialect he had been trying to master.
He wrote to me: “Your _Cuchulain_ is a part of my daily bread.” I
say this with a little pride, for I was the first to use the Irish
idiom as it is spoken, with intention and with belief in it. Dr. Hyde
indeed has used it with fine effect in his _Love Songs of Connacht_,
but alas! gave it up afterwards, in deference to some Dublin editor.
He wrote to me after his first visit: “I had a very prosperous
journey up from Gort. At Athenry an old Irish-speaking wanderer
made my acquaintance. He claimed to be the best singer in England,
Ireland, and America. One night, he says, he sang a song at Moate,
and a friend of his heard the words in Athenry. He was so much struck
by the event, he had himself examined by one who knew, and found that
his singing did not come out of his lungs but out of his heart, which
is a ‘winged heart’!”
At the time of his first visit to Coole he had written some poems,
not very good for the most part, and a play, which was not good at
all. I read it again after his death when, according to his written
wish, helping Mr. Yeats in sorting out the work to be published
or set aside, and again it seemed but of slight merit. But a year
later he brought us his two plays, _The Shadow of the Glen_, and the
_Riders to the Sea_, both masterpieces, both perfect in their way. He
had got emotion, the driving force he needed, from his life among the
people, and it was the working in dialect that had set free his style.
He was anxious to publish his book on Aran and these two plays, and
so have something to add to that “£40 a year and a new suit when I
am too shabby,” he used with a laugh to put down as his income. He
wrote to me from Paris in February, 1902: “I don’t know what part of
Europe you may be in now, but I suppose this will reach you if I send
it to Coole. I want to tell you the evil fate of my Aran book and
ask your advice. It has been to two London publishers, one of whom
was sympathetic, though he refused it, as he said it would not be a
commercial success, and the other inclined to be scornful.
“Now that you have seen the book, do you think that there would be
any chance of Mr. N---- taking it up? I am afraid he is my only
chance, but I don’t know whether there is any possibility of getting
him to bring out a book of the kind at his own expense, as after all
there is very little folk-lore in it.”
I took the book to London and had it retyped, for Synge, as I myself
do, typed his own manuscripts, and the present one was very faint and
rubbed. Both Mr. Yeats and I took it to publishers, but they would
not accept it. Synge writes in March, 1903:
“My play came back from the _Fortnightly_ as not suitable for their
purpose. I don’t think that Mr. J---- intends to bring out the Aran
book. I saw him on my way home, but he seemed hopelessly undecided,
saying one minute he liked it very much, and that it might be a great
success, and that he wanted to be in touch with the Irish movement,
and then going off in the other direction, and fearing that it might
fall perfectly flat! Finally he asked me to let him consider it a
little longer!”
I was no more successful. I wrote to Mr. Yeats, who was in America:
“I went to Mr. B. about the music for your book ... I think I told
you he had never opened the Synge MS., and said he would rather have
nothing to do with it. Masefield has it now.”
Then I had a note: “Dear Lady Gregory, I saw Mr. N. yesterday and
spoke to him about Synge’s new play [_Riders to the Sea_], which
struck me as being in some ways better even than the other. He has
promised to read it if it is sent to him, though he does not much
care for plays. Will you post it to, the Editor, _Monthly Review_....
Yours very truly, Arthur Symons.”
Nothing came of that and in December Synge writes:
“I am delighted to find that there is a prospect of getting the book
out at last, and equally grateful for the trouble you have taken
with it. I am writing to Masefield to-day to thank him and ask him
by all means to get Matthews to do as he proposes. Do you think if
he brings out the book in the spring, I should add the _Tinkers_? I
was getting on well with the blind people (in _Well of the Saints_),
till about a month ago when I suddenly got ill with influenza and a
nasty attack on my lung. I am getting better now, but I cannot work
yet satisfactorily, so I hardly know when the play is likely to be
finished. There is no use trying to hurry on with a thing of that
sort when one is not in the mood.”
Yet, after all, the Aran book was not published till 1907, when
Synge’s name had already gone up. _The Shadow of the Glen_ and
_Riders to the Sea_ were published by Mr. Elkin Matthews in 1905.
_Riders to the Sea_ had already been published in _Samhain_, the
little annual of our Theatre, edited by Mr. Yeats. And in America a
friend of ours and of the Theatre had printed some of the plays in a
little edition of fifty copies, thus saving his copyright. It was of
Synge and of others as well as myself I thought when, in dedicating a
book to John Quinn during my first winter in America, I wrote, “best
friend, best helper, these half score years on this side of the sea.”
When Synge had joined us in the management of the Theatre, he took
his share of the work, and though we were all amateurs then, we got
on somehow or other. He writes about a secretary we had sent for him
to report on: “He seems very willing and I think he may do very well
if he does not take fright at us. He still thinks it was a terrible
thing for Yeats to suggest that Irish people should sell their souls
and for you to put His Sacred Majesty James II. into a barrel. He
should be very useful in working up an audience; an important part
of our work that we have rather neglected. By the way, the annual
meeting of our company must be held, I suppose, before the year is
up. It would be well to have it before we pay off Ryan, as otherwise
we shall all be sitting about, looking with curiosity and awe at the
balance sheet.”
He went on bravely with his work, but always fighting against ill
health. He writes: “Feb. 15, ’06. Many thanks for the MS. of _Le
Médecin_. I think he is entirely admirable and is certain to go well.
This is just a line to acknowledge the MS., as I suppose I shall see
you in a day or two.
“My play has made practically no headway since, as I have been down
for ten days with bronchitis. My lung is not touched, however, and I
have got off well considering. I hope I shall be all right by next
week.”
[About the same date.]: “I am pleased with the way my play is going,
but I find it is quite impossible to rush through with it now, so
I rather think I shall take it and the typewriter to some place
in Kerry where I could work. By doing so, I will get some sort of
holiday and still avoid dropping the play again, which is a rather
dangerous process. If I do this, I will be beyond posts.... If I do
not get a good summer, I generally pay for it in the winter in extra
bouts of influenza and all its miseries.”
“August 12, ’06. I shall be very glad, thanks, to go down and read
you my play (_The Playboy_), if it is finished in time, but there
is still a great deal to do. I have had a very steady week’s work
since last Sunday and have made good way, but my head is getting very
tired. Working in hot weather takes a lot out of me.”
“November 25, ’06. I have had rather a worse attack than I expected
when I wrote my last note, but I am much better now, and out as
usual. One of my lungs, however, has been a little touched, so I
shall have to be careful for a while. Would it be possible to put off
_The Playboy_ for a couple of weeks? I am afraid if I went to work
at him again now, and then rehearsed all December, I would be very
likely to knock up badly before I was done with him. My doctor says I
may do so if it is _necessary_, but he advises me to take a couple of
weeks’ rest if it can be managed. That cousin of mine who etches is
over here now, and he wants me to stay with him for a fortnight in a
sort of country house he has in Surrey; so if you think _The Playboy_
can be put off, I will go across on Thursday or Friday and get back
in time to see _The Shadowy Waters_ and get _The Playboy_ under way
for January. What do you think? If so, I would like to read the third
act of _Playboy_ to you before I go, and then make final changes
while I am away, as I shall have a quiet time.”
He worked very hard at _The Playboy_, altering it a good deal as he
went on. He had first planned the opening act in the ploughed field,
where the quarrel between Christy and his father took place. But
when he thought of the actual stage, he could not see any possible
side wings for that “wide, windy corner of high distant hills.” He
had also thought that the scene of the return of the father should
be at the very door of the chapel where Christy was to wed Pegeen.
But in the end all took place within the one cottage room. We all
tried at that time to write our plays so as to require as little
scene-shifting as possible for the sake of economy of scenery and of
stage hands.
In October, 1906, Synge wrote to Mr. Yeats: “My play, though in its
last agony, is not finished, and I cannot promise it for any definite
day. It is more than likely that when I read it to you and Fay, there
will be little things to alter that have escaped me, and with my
stuff it takes time to get even half a page of new dialogue fully
into key with what goes before it. The play, I think, will be one of
the longest we have done, and in places extremely difficult. If we
said the 19th, I could only have six or seven full rehearsals, which
would not, I am quite sure, be enough. I am very sorry, but what is
to be done?”
Then he wrote to me in November: “May I read _The Playboy_ to
you and Yeats and Fay, some time to-morrow, Saturday, or Monday,
according as it suits you all? A little verbal correction is still
necessary, and one or two structural points may need--I fancy do
need--revision, but I would like to have your opinions on it before I
go any further.”
I remember his bringing the play to us in Dublin, but he was too
hoarse to read it, and it was read by Mr. Fay. We were almost
bewildered by its abundance and fantasy, but we felt, and Mr. Yeats
said very plainly, that there was far too much “bad language.” There
were too many violent oaths, and the play itself was marred by this.
I did not think it was fit to be put on the stage without cutting.
It was agreed that it should be cut in rehearsal. A fortnight before
its production, Mr. Yeats, thinking I had seen a rehearsal, wrote: “I
would like to know how you thought _The Playboy_ acted.... Have they
cleared many of the objectionable sentences out of it?” I did not,
however, see a rehearsal and did not hear the play again until the
night of its production, and then I told Synge that the cuts were not
enough, that many more should be made. He gave me leave to do this,
and, in consultation with the players, I took out many phrases which,
though in the printed book, have never since that first production
been spoken on our stage. I am sorry they were not taken out before
it had been played at all, but that is just what happened.
On Saturday, January 26, 1907, I found a note from Synge on my
arrival in Dublin: “I do not know how things will go to-night. The
day company are all very steady but some of the outsiders in a most
deplorable state of uncertainty.... I have a sort of second edition
of influenza and I am looking gloomily at everything. Fay has worked
very hard all through, and everything has gone smoothly.”
I think the week’s rioting helped to break down his health. He was
always nervous at a first production and the unusual excitement
attending this one upset him. He took a chill and was kept to his
bed for a while. Yet he got away to wild places while he could. He
wrote to me from the Kerry coast: “My journey went off all right, and
though I had a terribly wet night in Tralee, I was able to ride on
here next day. When I came up to the house, I found to my horror a
large green tent pitched in the haggard and thought I had run my head
into a Gaelic League settlement at last. However, it turned out to
be only a band of sappers, who have since moved on.” And again: “The
day after to-morrow I move on, bag and baggage, to the Great Blasket
Island. It is probably even more primitive than Aran, and I am wild
with joy at the prospect. I will tell you of my new abode. I am to go
out in a curragh on Sunday, when the people are going back from Mass
on the mainland, and I am to lodge with the King!”
It was only in the country places he was shy of the Gaelic League.
In August, 1906, he says: “I went to the Oireactas on Thursday to
see their plays. Their propagandist play, done by the Ballaghadereen
company, was clever, with some excellent dialogue. The peasants who
acted it were quite admirable. I felt really enthusiastic about the
whole show, although the definitely propagandist fragments were, of
course, very crude. The play was called, I think, _an T-Atruighe mor_
(The big change). I think I have spelled it wrong. It would probably
read badly.”
The last year was still a struggle against failing strength: “April,
’08. I have been waiting from day to day to write, so that I might
say something definite about my ‘tin-tacks’ (an allusion to the old
man in _Workhouse Ward_ who had pains like tin-tacks in his inside)
and possible plans. I was with the doctor again to-day, and he thinks
I may have to go into hospital again and perhaps have an operation,
but things are uncertain for a day or two.... I fear there is little
possibility of my being able to go to the shows this week, so I do
not know if you ought to come up, if you can without inconvenience.
I am rather afraid of slovenly shows if there are poor houses and
no one there to supervise. It is very trying having to drop my
rehearsals of _Well of the Saints_. In fact, this unlooked for
complication is a terrible upset everyway--I have so much to do.”
“August 28, ’08. I have just been with Sir C. Ball. He seems to think
I am going on very well, and says I may ride and bicycle and do what
I like! All the same I am not good for much yet. I get tired out very
easily. I am half inclined to go to the British Association matinée
on Friday. I would like to hear Yeats’ speech, and I don’t think it
would do me any harm. In any case, I will go in and see you when you
are up. I think of going away to Germany or somewhere before very
long. I am not quite well enough for the West of Ireland in this
broken weather, and I think the complete change would do me most
good. I have old friends on the Rhine I could stay with, if I decide
to go there. I hear great accounts of the Abbey this week. It almost
looks as if Dublin was beginning to know we are there. I have been
fiddling with my _Deirdre_ a little. I think I’ll have to cut it down
to two longish acts. The middle act in Scotland is impossible....
They have been playing _The Well of the Saints_ in Munich. I have
just got £3:10, royalties. It was a one-act version I have just heard
this minute, compressed from my text!”
“January 3, ’09. I have done a great deal to _Deirdre_ since I saw
you, chiefly in the way of strengthening motives and recasting the
general scenario; but there is still a good deal to be done with the
dialogue and some scenes in the first act must be rewritten to make
them fit in with the new parts I have added. I only work a little
every day, and I suffer more than I like with indigestion and
general uneasiness inside.... The doctors are vague and don’t say
much that is definite....
“They are working at the _Miser_ now and are all very pleased with it
and with themselves, as I hear. I have not been in to see a rehearsal
yet, as I keep out in the country as much as I can.”
But his strength did not last long enough to enable him to finish
_Deirdre of the Sorrows_, his last play. After he was gone, we did
our best to bring the versions together, and we produced it early in
the next year, but it needed the writer’s hand. I did my best for it,
working at its production through snowy days and into winter nights
until rheumatism seized me with a grip I have never shaken off. I
wrote to Mr. Yeats: “I still hope we can start with _Deirdre_. I will
be in Dublin for rehearsals in Christmas week, though I still hope
to get to Paris for Christmas with Robert, but it may not be worth
while. I will spend all January at the Theatre, but I must be back on
the first of February to do some planting that cannot be put off.”
And again: “I am more hopeful of _Deirdre_ now. I have got Conchubar
and Fergus off at the last in Deirdre’s long speech and that makes
an immense improvement. She looks lonely and pathetic with the other
two women crouching and rocking themselves on the floor.”
For we have done our best for Synge’s work since we lost him, as we
did while he was with us here.
He had written a poem which was in the Press at the time of his death:
“With Fifteen-ninety or Sixteen-sixteen
We end Cervantes, Marot, Nashe or Green;
Then Sixteen-thirteen till two score and nine
Is Crashaw’s niche, that honey-lipped divine.
And so when all my little work is done
They’ll say I came in Eighteen-seventy-one,
And died in Dublin. What year will they write
For my poor passage to the stall of Night?”
Early in 1909 he was sent again into a private hospital in Dublin.
A letter came to me from Mr. Yeats, dated March 24th: “In the early
morning Synge said to the nurse ‘It’s no use fighting death any
longer,’ and turned over and died.”