Complete Works of J M Synge

by J. M. Synge

  For three days a south wind has been blowing over Paris.

  I have put syringa and white lilac in green vases round my room and left my windows open so that I can hear the crowds passing under them. This contact of perfume and sound recalls my childhood with peculiar surety.

  The first moment that I remember I was sitting upon my nurse’s knee while she arranged my clothes. I do not think I can have been more than two years old. Then I remember walking in under some shelves in the corner of my nursery and looking up at them with a vague curiosity how long it would take my head to reach them.

  My promotion to knickerbockers and a severe cough or croup came about the time that I began to remember coherently. If I could know the dates of my nurses I could trace the whole course of my opening memory, but they are lost. I remember old Maria, Liz, squatty Kate, Agnes, a handsome girl that I admired who was soon sent away, a girl who cried in the evenings when I was in bed, and red-haired Sarah who still starts up in my mind when people talk of red hair. In all I remember eight or nine nurses, and as I was rid of them when I was eight years old my memory goes back a good way.

  My childhood was a long series of coughs and colds, with plenty of amusement in the intervals and summer visits to the sea-side which were delightful. I have a vivid recollection of being caught in a heavy shower in the ladies’ bathing place and bundled into a bathing-box that was not empty! Little boys are rightly considered inoffensive but some of them who have unusual memories grow up with souvenirs that illustrate a celebrated line in Dante.

  I was painfully timid, and while still very young the idea of Hell took a fearful hold on me. One night I thought I was irretrievably damned and cried myself to sleep in vain yet terrified efforts to form a conception of eternal pain. In the morning I renewed my lamentations and my mother was sent for. She comforted me with the assurance that the Holy Ghost was convicting me of sin and thus preparing me for ultimate salvation. This was a new idea, and I rather approved. Later in the day while I was playing in the drawing-room I overheard my mother telling my aunt about my experience. While I gave no sign of attention I was inwardly flattered that I had caused this excitement and that the Holy Ghost should single me out so distinctively. I must have been quite young as my mother would not have talked about me in my presence for she was always judicious — except perhaps in her portrayal of Hell.

  Religion remained a difficulty and occasioned terror to me for many years, though I do not think the brand I was brought up on was peculiarly Calvinistic. When I went to church I remember wondering whether it might not all be a fraud got together to aid the bringing-up of children which I believed to be arduous. Later in my early teens I think I had moments of great fervour and thought myself saved, but never for long at a time. Still the well-meant but extraordinary cruelty of introducing the idea of Hell into the; imagination of a nervous child has probably caused more misery than many customs that the same people send missionaries to eradicate.

  Before I went to school I used to go out to walk every day with my maid or my relations. Even at this time I was a worshipper of nature. I remember that I would not allow my nurses to sit down on the seats by the River Dodder because they were man-made. If they wished to sit down they had to find a low branch of a tree or a bit of rock or bank. I do not seem to have lacked a certain authority for they all obeyed. My brother also had this idea about ‘made’ things, perhaps he gave it to me. I had a very strong feeling for the colour of locality which I expressed in syllables of no meaning, but my elders checked me for talking gibberish when I was heard practising them.

  My brother and I had several elaborate games which were not, I think, usual. There was a legendary character we called ‘Squirelly’ who was a sort of folk-lore creation. We would spend hours inventing adventures for him to pass through. I was a sort of poet with the frank imagination by which folk lore is created. I imagined myself half human monsters that went through series of supernatural adventures of which I kept a record....

  I do not think this legendary instinct was suggested by fairy tales. We knew Grimm’s alone, and our myths had no relation with the domestic instincts of the Germans. Then we had a number of ‘Men’ — spools with red flannel belts sewed round them — who lived a most complicated life with war and commerce between our opposite settlements. I sometimes gained in the war but at the commerce I was rarely successful.

  I was then about seven, and soon afterwards I made an attempt at literary composition, a poem intended to be a satire on an aunt who had slightly offended me. I remember walking into the drawing-room and telling the company that I had ‘invented’ a poem. I was proud of the achievement and wanted to read it aloud, but got very nervous in the middle and had to give it up. This was the first time I remember feeling nervous, apart from direct fear.

  I studied the arabs of the streets.... I remember coming out of St. Patrick’s, Sunday after Sunday, strained almost to torture by the music, and walking out through the slums of Harold’s Cross as the lamps were being lit. Hordes of wild children used to play round the cathedral of St. Patrick and I remember there was something appalling — a proximity of emotions as conflicting as the perversions of the Black Mass — in coming out suddenly from the white harmonies of the Passion according to St. Matthew among this blasphemy of childhood. The boys and girls were always in groups by themselves, for the utterly wild boy seems to regard a woman with the instinct of barbarians. I often stood for hours in a shadow to watch their manoeuvres and extraordinarily passionate quarrels....

  If we find in Bach an agreeable vibration of some portion of the brain and in the study of these children the vibration of another portion a little inferior — the attitude of science — we loose in the music our transcendent admiration, and in the slums the ecstasy of pity and with it the thin relish of delightful sympathy with the wildness of evil which all feel but few acknowledge even to themselves. The man who feels most exquisitely the joy of contact with what is perfect in art and nature is the man who from the width and power of his thought hides the greatest number of Satanic or barbarous sympathies. His opposite is the narrow churchman or reformer who knows no ecstasy and is shocked chiefly by the material discomforts of earth or Hell....

  Although I had the usual affection for my near relations I began while still very young to live in my imagination in enchanted premises that had high walls with glass upon the top where I sat and drank ginger-beer in a sort of perpetual summer with one companion, usually some small school-fellow I hardly knew. One day the course of my class put me for a moment beside my temporary god, and before I could find a fit term of adulation he whispered an obscene banality which shattered my illusions.

  Soon afterwards — when I was about ten — my real affections and imagination acted together in a friendship with a girl of my own age who was our neighbour.... We had a large establishment of pets — rabbits, pigeons, guinea pigs, canaries, dogs — which we looked after together. I was now going to school, but I had many holidays from ill health — six months about this time especially which were recommended on account of continual head-aches that I suffered from which gave us a great deal of time to wander about among the fields near our houses. We were left in complete liberty and never abused it.... She was, I think, a very pleasant-featured child and must have had an excellent About this same time an aunt of mine died in our own house. My mother asked me the day after if I was not sorry. I answered with some hesitation — at this time I was truthful to an almost morbid degree — that I feared not. My mother was much shocked and began telling me little things about my aunt till I wept copiously. In reality the death impressed with a sort of awe and wonder, but although I was fond of my aunt it did not grieve me — I suppose I did not realize what death meant. The days when the house was darkened — it was August — I spent in some woods near Rathfarnham with my little friend. They were wonderfully delightful, though I hardly remember what we did or talked of.

  The sense of death seems to have been only strong en
ough to evoke the full luxury of the woods. I had never been so happy. It is a feeling like this makes all primitive people inclined to merry making at a funeral. character as for years I do not remember a single quarrel — with brothers, of course, I had plenty, sometimes of considerable violence. She was handy with her pencil and on wet days we used to draw animals from Vere Foster’s copy books with great assiduity....

  We were always primitive. We both understood all the facts of life and spoke of them without much hesitation but a certain propriety that was decidedly wholesome. We talked of sexual matters with an indifferent and sometimes amused frankness that was identical with the attitude of folk-tales. We were both superstitious, and if we had been allowed... we would have evolved a pantheistic scheme like that of all barbarians.... I never spoke of religion with my companion, although we were both well-versed in Christianity. The monotheistic doctrines seem foreign to the real genius of childhood in spite of the rather maudlin appeal Christianity makes to little children....

  As I grew older I became more interested in definite life, and I used to hide in bushes to watch with amorous fellowship the mere movements of the birds. People said I had an interesting taste for natural history and gave me books. My girl friend took fire at my enthusiasm and we devoted a great deal of our spare time to observation and reading books on ornithology. Further we clubbed our resources and bought a ten-shilling telescope, which led to trouble afterwards. This period was probably the happiest of my life. It was admirable in every way.

  The following summer, however, I had a horrible awakening. Our two families joined in a large country house in June where some Indian cousins of mine were coming to spend the later months with us. This June was absolutely delightful. I had my friend now under the same roof, and we were inseparable. In the day-time we played tennis or watched the birds... and we wandered arm in arm about among the odours of the old-fashioned garden till it was quite dark watching the bats and moths. I loved her with a curious affection that I cannot pretend to analyse and I told her, with more virile authority than I since possess, that she was to be my wife. She was not displeased. My cousins arrived, a small boy and a girl of my own age. My friend threw me over completely, apparently without a shadow of regret, and became the bosom friend of her new companion, my accursed cousin. I was stunned with horror. I complained to no-one, but I fretted myself ill in lonely corners whistling ‘Down in Alabama’, the only love-song I knew. My mother knew what was in my mind, and contrived occasionally to get me a walk with my old comrade but our old friendship was at an end, for the time at any rate. Thus I learned very young the weakness of the false gods we are obliged to worship.

  The following winter I do not recollect very clearly. I had a tutor, and a dog, and devoted myself to birds and Euclid with a good deal of success. When the spring returned I began a collection of birds’ eggs, in finding which I was remarkably fortunate, far more so than my cousin or brother who sometimes searched with me. I kept careful notes of all that I thought interesting, with the intention of publishing a book on birds when old enough.

  I used to rise at six in the morning and slip out to a quiet corner in the woods or fields near our house and watch for birds building. In this way I found water ouzels and other nests by the Dodder that no ordinary search could have revealed. My friend was still absorbed by her new companion yet we were again on good terms. I remember telling — or intending to tell her — that each egg I found gave three distinct moments of rapture: the finding of the nest, the insertion of the egg successfully blown in my collection, and, lastly, the greatest, exhibiting it to her. I still believed that she was a naturalist, though her interest in birds — at least in wild birds — had been only a development of her friendship for myself. The following summer my cousins went abroad. My affection was again freely accepted. Now, however, it took a different shade, it was less a steady liking than a curious form of being in love. I used to kiss the chair she had sat on and kiss the little notes she sometimes sent me till I blotted the ink. Formerly we had always walked arm in arm but now we never touched each other even to shake hands. I had moved into long trousers, begun to read Scott and felt myself a man.

  I was now at school again, but ill continually. This ill health led to a curious resolution which has explained in some measure all my subsequent evolution. Without knowing, or, as far as I can remember, hearing anything about doctrines of heredity I surmised that unhealthy parents should have unhealthy children — my rabbit breeding may have put the idea into my head. Therefore, I said, I am unhealthy, and if I marry I will have unhealthy children. But I will never create beings to suffer as I am suffering, so I will never marry. I do not know how old I was when I came to this decision, but I was between thirteen and fifteen and it caused me horrible misery.

  The following spring I had measles and gave up school finally. When I recovered I began to collect moths and butterflies and other insects, a pursuit which kept me engrossed for several years. It gave me a great fondness for the eerie and night and encouraged a lonely temperament which was beginning to take possession of me. My girl friend was now absent a good deal so that our childish intimacy was no longer possible. I had realized too that though we were excellent companions we knew each other too well and were both eager for more exciting flirtations.

  In my sixteenth year everything changed. I took to the violin and the study of literature with wild excitement and lost almost completely my interest in natural science although the beauty of nature influenced me more than ever. I had a tutor three times a week, for the rest I was alone. I began taking very long walks among the Dublin mountains, of which I soon knew every turn and crevice. Natural history did much for me.... To wander as I did for years through the dawn of night with every nerve stiff and strained with expectation gives one a singular acquaintance with the essences of the world. The obscure noises of the owls and rabbits, the heavy scent of the hemlock and the flowers of the elder, the silent flight of the moths I was in search of gave me a passionate and receptive mood like that of early man. The hunter, poacher and painter are the only men who know nature. The poet too often lets his intellect draw the curtain of connected thought between him and the glory that is round him. The forces which rid me of theological mysticism reinforced my innate feeling for the profound mysteries of life.

  I had even psychical adventures which throw perhaps an interesting light on some of the data of folklore.

  One evening when I was collecting on the brow of a long valley in County Wicklow wreaths of white mist began to rise from the narrow bogs beside the river. Before it was quite dark I looked round the edge of the field and saw two immense luminous eyes looking at me from the base of the valley. I dropped my net and caught hold of a gate in front of me. Behind the eyes there rose a black sinister forehead. I was fascinated. For a moment the eyes seemed to consume my personality, then the whole valley became filled with a pageant of movement and colour, and the opposite hillside covered itself with ancient doorways and spires and high turrets. I did not know where or when I was existing. At last someone spoke in the lane behind me — it was a man going home — and I came back to myself. The night had become quite dark and the eyes were no longer visible, yet I recognized in a moment what had caused the apparition — two clearings in a wood lined with white mist divided again by a few trees which formed the eye-balls. For many days afterwards I could not look on these fields even in daylight without terror. It would not be easy to find a better instance of the origin of local superstitions, which have their origin not in some trivial accident of colour but in the fearful and genuine hypnotic influence such things possess upon the prepared personality.

  Before I abandoned science it rendered me an important service. When I was about fourteen I obtained a book of Darwin’s. It opened in my hands at a passage where he asks how can we explain the similarity between a man’s hand and a bird’s or bat’s wings except by evolution. I flung the book aside and rushed out into the open air — it was summer an
d we were in the country — the sky seemed to have lost its blue and the grass its green. I lay down and writhed in an agony of doubt. My studies showed me the force of what I read, and the more I put it from me the more it rushed back with new instances and power. Till then I had never doubted and never conceived that a sane and wise man or boy could doubt. I had of course heard of atheists but as vague monsters that I was unable to realize. It seemed that I was become in a moment the playfellow of Judas. Incest and parricide were but a consequence of the idea that possessed me. My memory docs not record how I returned home nor how long my misery lasted. I know only that I got the book out of the house as soon as possible and kept it out of sight, saying to myself logically enough that I was not yet sufficiently advanced in science to weigh his arguments, so I would do better to reserve his work for future study. In a few weeks or days I regained my composure, but this was the beginning. Soon afterwards I turned my attention to works of Christian evidence, reading them at first with pleasure, soon with doubt, and at last in some cases with derision.

  My study of insects had given me a scientific attitude — probably a crude one — which did not and could not interpret life and nature as I heard it interpreted from the pulpit. By the time I was sixteen or seventeen I had renounced Christianity after a good deal of wobbling, although I do not think I avowed my decision quite so soon. I felt a sort of shame in being thought an infidel, a term which I have always used as a reproach. For a while I denied everything, then I took to reading Carlyle, Leslie Stephen and Matthew Arnold, and made myself a sort of incredulous belief that illuminated nature and lent an object to life without hampering the intellect. This story is easily told, but it was a terrible experience. By it I laid a chasm between my present and my past and between myself and my kindred and friends. Till I was twenty-three I never met or at least knew a man or woman who shared my opinions. Compared with the people about me, compared with the Fellows of Trinity, I seemed a presumptuous boy yet I felt that the views which I had arrived at after sincere efforts to find what was true represented, in spite of my immediate surroundings, the real opinion of the world.