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 [Page 120] 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
[Facing Page]
J. M. Synge
From a drawing by Robert Gregory in 1904
[Page 121] 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."
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 [Page 122] 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 would n'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. [Page 123] 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, [Page 124] 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 [Page 125] 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, [Page 126] 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 folklore 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 [Page 127] 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 [Page 128] 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, [Page 129] 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 some how 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 [Page 130] 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." [Page 131]
"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 [Page 132] 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 [Page 133] 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 [Page 134] 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 [Page 135] 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 [Page 136] 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 matinee on Friday. I would like to hear Yeats' speech, and I don't think [Page 137] 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 [Page 138] 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 [Page 139] 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."
