Page:John M. Synge - Masefield - Dublin 1915.djvu/35

 beginning to get languid. After we had seen the picture I walked with him to his hotel (the Kenilworth Hotel,) talking about Irish art, which he thought was the kind of art people make when mind has been languid for a long time. I never saw him angry. I never saw him vexed. I never heard him utter a hasty or an unkind word. I saw him visibly moved once to sadness, when some one told him how tourists had spoiled the country people in a part of Ireland. The Irish country people are simple and charming. Tourists make them servile, insolent, and base. “The Irish are easily corrupted,” he said, “because they are so simple. When they’re corrupted, they’re hard, they’re rude, they’re everything that’s bad. But they’re only that where the low-class tourists go, from America, and Glasgow, and Liverpool and these places.” He seldom praised people, either for their work or for their personality. When he spoke of acquaintances he generally quoted a third person. When he uttered a personal judgment it was always short, like “He’s a great fellow,” or “He’s a grand fellow,” or “Nobody in Ireland understands how big he is.”