saw him.

When I first called upon him, I found him at his type-writer, hard
at work. He was making a fair copy of one of his two early one-act
plays, then just finished. His type-writer was a small portable
machine, of the Blick variety. He was the only writer I have ever
known who composed direct upon a type-writing machine. I have
often seen him at work upon it. Sometimes, when I called to ask
him to come for a walk, he had matter to finish off before we
could start. He worked rather slowly and very carefully, sitting
very upright. He composed slowly. He wrote and re-wrote his plays
many times. I remember that on this first occasion the table had a
pile of type-written drafts upon it, as well as a few books, one
or two of them by M. Pierre Loti. He thought M. Loti the best
living writer of prose. There are marks of M. Loti's influence in
the Aran book. Much of the Aran manuscript was on the table at
that time. Synge asked me to wait for a few minutes while he
finished the draft at which he was working. He handed me a black
tobacco-pouch and a packet of cigarette-papers. While I rolled a
cigarette he searched for his photographs and at last handed them
to me. They were quarter-plate prints in a thick bundle. There
must have been fifty of them. They were all of the daily life of
Aran; women carrying kelp, men in hookers, old people at their
doors, a crowd at the landing-place, men loading horses, people of
vivid character, pigs and children playing together, etc. As I
looked at them he explained them or commented on them in a way
which made all sharp and bright. His talk was best when it was
about life or the ways of life. His mind was too busy with the
life to be busy with the affairs or the criticism of life. His
talk was all about men and women and what they did and what they