At times during Synges last illness, Lady Gregory and I would speak of his work and always find some pleasure ihought that unlike ourselves, who had made our experiments in public, he would leave to the world nothing to be wished away??nothing that was not beautiful or powerful in itself, or necessary as an expression of his life and thought. When he died we were in muxiety, for a letter written before his last illness, and printed in the sele of his poems published at the Cuala Press, had shown that he was anxious about the fate of his manuscripts and scattered writings. On the evening of the night he died he had asked that I might e to him the day; and my diary of the days following his death shows how great was our ay. Presently however, all seemed to have e right, for the Executors sehe followier that had been found among his papers, and promised to carry out his wishes.
May 4th, 1908 Dear Yeats,
This is only to go to you if anything should g with me uhe operation or after it. I am a little bothered about my papers. I have a certain amount of verse that I think would be worth preserving, possibly also the 1st and 3rd acts of Deirdre, and then I have a lot of Kerry and Wicklow articles that would go together into a book. The other early stuff I wrote I have kept as a sort of curiosity, but I am anxious that it should not get into print. I wonder could you get someone??say ... who is now in Dublin to gh them for you and do whatever you and Lady Gregory think desirable. It is rather a hard thing to ask you but I do not want my good things destroyed or my bad things printed rashly?? especially a morbid thing about a mad fiddler in Paris which I hate. Do what you ??Good luck.
J.M. Synge
In the summer of 1909, the Executors sent me a large bundle of papers, cuttings from neers and magazines, manuscript and typewritten prose and verse, put together and annotated by Synge himself before his last illness. I spent a portion of each day for weeks reading and re?reading early dramatic writing, poems, essays, and so forth, and with the exception of y pages which have been published without my sent, made sulting Lady Gregory from time to time the Sele of his work published by Messrs. Maunsel. It is because of these y pages, that her Lady Gregorys name nor mine appears in any of the books, and that the Introdu which I now publish, was withdrawn by me after it had been advertised by the publishers. Before the publication of the books the Executors discovered a scrap of paper with a sentence by J.M. Synge saying that Seleight be taken from his Essays on the gested Districts. I do not know if this was written before his letter to me, which made ion of them, or tained his final dires. The matter is unimportant, for the publishers decided to ignore my offer to select as well as my inal decision to reject, and for this act of theirs they have given me no reasons except reasons of venience, whieither Lady Gregory nor I could accept.
W.B. Yeats.