John M. Synge: a Few Personal Recollections, with Biographical Notes by Masefield, John, 1878-1967

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 May, 1908, but the growth could not be removed, and from that time on he was under sentence of death. He passed his last few months of life trying to finish his play of _Deirdre_ and writing some of his few poems. He died in a private nursing home in Dublin on the 24th. March, 1909. and was buried two days later in a family vault in the Protestant graveyard of Mount Jerome, Harold's Cross, Dublin. He had been betrothed, but not married.

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