Robert W. Service
Encyclopedia
Robert William Service was a poet and writer who has often been called "the Bard of the Yukon
".
Service is best known for his poems "The Shooting of Dan McGrew
" and "The Cremation of Sam McGee
", from his first book, Songs of a Sourdough
(1907; also published as The Spell of the Yukon and Other Verses). "These humorous tales in verse were considered doggerel by the literary set, yet remain extremely popular to this day." Songs of a Sourdough has sold more than three million copies, making it the most commercially successful book of poetry of the 20th century.
, the first of ten children. His father, also Robert Service, was a banker from Kilwinning
, Scotland
who had been transferred to England.
At five years old Robert W. Service went to live in Kilwinning with his three maiden aunts and his paternal grandfather, who was the town's postmaster
. There he is said to have composed his first verse, a grace
, on his sixth birthday:
At nine Service rejoined his parents who had moved to Glasgow
. He attended Glasgow's Hillhead High School
.
"Service worked in a bank after he left school" ("he joined the Commercial Bank of Scotland
which today is the Royal Bank of Scotland
"). He was writing at this time and reportedly already "selling his verses". He was also reading poetry: Browning
, Keats
, Tennyson, and Thackeray
.
Service moved to Canada
at the age of 21 and travelled to Vancouver Island
, British Columbia
with his Buffalo Bill
outfit and dreams of becoming a cowboy
. He drifted around western North America, "wandering from California
to British Columbia," taking and quitting a series of jobs: "Starving in Mexico
, residing in a California bordello, farming on Vancouver Island and pursuing unrequited love in Vancouver
." This sometimes required him to leech off his parent's Scottish neighbors and friends who had previously immigrated to Canada
.
In 1899 Service was a store clerk in Cowichan Bay, British Columbia
. He mentioned to a customer (Charles H. Gibbons, editor of the Victoria Daily Colonist) that he wrote verses, with the result that six poems by "R.S." on the Boer Wars had appeared in the Colonist by July 1900 – including "The March of the Dead" that would later appear in his first book. (Service's brother Alick was a prisoner of the Boers at the time, having been captured on November 15, 1899, alongside Winston Churchill
.)
The Colonist also published Service's "Music in the Bush" on September 18, 1901, and "The Little Old Log Cabin" on March 16, 1902.
In her 2006 biography, Under the Spell of the Yukon, Enid Mallory revealed that Service had fallen in love during this period. He was working as a "farm labourer and store clerk when he first met Constance MacLean at a dance in Duncan B.C
, where she was visiting her uncle." MacLean lived in Vancouver, on the mainland, so he courted her by mail. Though he was smitten, "MacLean was looking for a man of education and means to support her" so was not that interested. To please her, he took courses at McGill University
's Victoria College
, but failed.
Down on his luck in 1903, Service was hired by a Canadian Bank of Commerce
branch in Victoria
, British Columbia
, using his Commercial Bank letter of reference. The bank "watched him, gave him a raise, and sent him to Kamloops in the middle of British Columbia. In Victoria he lived over the bank with a hired piano, and dressed for dinner. In Kamloops, horse country, he played polo. In the fall of 1904 the bank sent him to their Whitehorse branch in the Yukon
. With the expense money he bought himself a raccoon coat
."
Throughout this period, Service continued writing and saving his verses: "more than a third of the poems in his first volume had been written before he moved north in 1904."
was a frontier town, less than ten years old. Located on the Yukon River
at the Whitehorse Rapids, it had begun in 1897 as a campground for prospectors on their way to Dawson City to join the Klondike Gold Rush
. The railroad that Service rode in on had reached Whitehorse only in 1900.
Settling in, "Service dreamed and listened to the stories of the great gold rush." He also "took part in the extremely active Whitehorse social life. As was popular at the time he recited at concerts – things like 'Casey at the Bat
' and 'Gunga Din
', but they were getting stale."
One day (Service later wrote), while pondering what to recite at an upcoming church concert he met E.J. “Stroller” White, editor of the Whitehorse Star
. White suggested: "Why don’t you write a poem for it? Give us something about our own bit of earth. We sure would appreciate it. There’s a rich paystreak waiting for someone to work. Why don’t you go in and stake it?”
Returning from a walk one Saturday night, Service heard the sounds of revelry from a saloon, and the phrase "A bunch of the boys were whooping it up" popped into his head. Inspired, he ran to the bank to write it down (almost being shot as a burglar), and by the next morning "The Shooting of Dan McGrew
" was complete.
"A month or so later he heard a gold rush yarn from a Dawson mining man about a fellow who cremated his pal." He spent the night walking in the woods composing "The Cremation of Sam McGee
," and wrote it down from memory the next day.
Other verses quickly followed. "In the early spring he stood above the heights of Miles Canyon ... the line 'I have gazed on naked grandeur where there’s nothing else to gaze on' came into his mind and again he hammered out a complete poem, "The Call of the Wild". Conversations with locals led Service to write about things he had not seen (some of which had not actually happened) as well. He did not set foot in Dawson City until 1908, arriving in the Klondike
ten years after the Gold Rush when his renown as a writer was already established.
After having collected enough poems for a book, Service "sent the poems to his father, who had emigrated to Toronto
, and asked him to find a printing house so they could make it into a booklet. He enclosed a cheque to cover the costs and intended to give these booklets away to his friends in Whitehorse" for Christmas. His father took the manuscript to William Briggs in Toronto, whose employees loved the book. "The foreman and printers recited the ballads while they worked. A salesman read the proofs out loud as they came off the typesetting machines." An "enterprising salesman sold 1700 copies in advance orders from galley proofs." The publisher "sent Robert's cheque back to him and offered a ten percent royalty contract for the book."
Service's book, Songs of a Sourdough, was "an immediate success." It went through seven printings even before its official release date. Ultimately, Briggs "sold fifteen impressions in 1907. That same year there was an edition in New York, Philadelphia, and London. The London publisher, T. Fisher Unwin, struck a twenty-third printing in 1910, and thirteen more by 1917." "Service eventually earned in excess of $100,000 for Songs of a Sourdough alone (Mackay 14, 408n19)."
(In the United States
, the book would be given the more Jack London
-ish title, The Spell of the Yukon and Other Verses).
"When copies of the book reached Whitehorse, Robert's own minister took him aside to let him know how wicked were his stories. Service hung his head in shame.... But, that summer, tourists from the south arrived in Whitehorse looking for the famous poet; and he autographed many of his books."
"In 1908, after working for the bank for three years in Whitehorse, he was sent outside on mandatory paid leave for three months, a standard practice for bank employees serving in the Yukon." According to Enid Mallory, he went to Vancouver
and looked up Constance MacLean. Now that he was a successful author, she agreed to become engaged to him.
Following his leave, in 1908 the bank transferred Service to Dawson, where he met and talked to veterans of the Gold Rush, now ten years in the past: "they loved to reminisce, and Robert listened carefully and remembered." He used their tales to write a second book of verse, Ballads of a Cheechako, in 1908. "It too was an overwhelming success."
In 1909, when the bank wanted Service to return to Whitehorse as manager, he decided to resign. "After quitting his job, he rented a small two-room cabin on Eighth Avenue in Dawson City from Mrs. Edna Clarke and began his career as a full-time author." He immediately "went to work on his novel.... He went for walks that lasted all night, slept till mid-afternoon, and sometimes didn't come out of the cabin for days. In five months the novel, called The Trail of '98, was complete and he took it to a publisher in New York." Service's first novel also "immediately became a best-seller."
Newly wealthy, Service was able to travel to Paris
, the French Riviera
, Hollywood
, and beyond. He returned to Dawson City in 1912 to write his third book of poetry, Ballads of a Rolling Stone (1912). During that time he became a freemason, being initiated into Yukon Lodge No. 45 in Dawson.
It is not known what happened between Service and Constance MacLean. There are no known letters between then from after the time Service went to Dawson City. In 1912 she "married Leroy Grant, a surveyor and railroad engineer based in Prince Rupert."
for the Toronto Star
during the Balkan Wars
.
In 1913 Service arrived in Paris
, where he would live for the next 15 years. He settled in the Latin Quarter
, posing as a painter. In June 1913 he married Parisienne Germaine Bougeoin, daughter of a distillery owner, and they purchased a summer home at Lancieux
, Côtes-d'Armor
, in the Brittany
region
of France
. Thirteen years younger than her husband, Germaine Service lived 31 years following his death, dying at age 102 in 1989.
Robert Service was 41 when World War I
broke out; he enlisted, but was turned down "due to varicose veins
." He briefly covered the war for the Toronto Star (from December 11, 1915 through January 29, 1916), but "was arrested and nearly executed in an outbreak of spy hysteria in Dunkirk." – then "worked as a stretcher bearer and ambulance driver with the Ambulance Corps of the American Red Cross
, until his health broke."
Convalescing in Paris, he wrote a new book of mainly war poetry, Rhymes of a Red Cross Man, in 1916. The book was dedicated to the memory of Service's "brother, Lieutenant Albert Service, Canadian Infantry, Killed in Action, France, August 1916."
With the end of the war, Service "settled down to being a rich man in Paris.... During the day he would promenade in the best suits, with a monocle. At night he went out in old clothes with the company of his doorman, a retired policeman, to visit the lowest dives of the city.". During his time in Paris he was reputedly the wealthiest author living in the city, yet was known to dress as a working man and walk the streets, blending in and observing everything around him. Those experiences would be used in his next book of poetry, Ballads of a Bohemian (1921), "The poems are given in the persona of an American poet in Paris who serves as an ambulance driver and an infantryman in the war. The verses are separated by diary entries over a period of four years."
In the 1920s Service began writing thriller novels. The Poisoned Paradise, A Romance of Monte Carlo
(New York, 1922) and The Roughneck. A Tale of Tahiti
(New York, 1923) would both be made into silent movies
.
In 1930 Service returned to Kilwinning, to erect a memorial to his family in the town cemetery. He also visited the USSR in the 1930s and later wrote a satirical "Ballad of Lenin's Tomb
". For this reason his poetry has never been translated into Russian
in the USSR and he was never mentioned in Soviet encyclopedias.
Service's second trip to the Soviet Union
"was interrupted by news of the Hitler-Stalin pact. Service fled across Poland
, Latvia
, Estonia
and the Baltic
to Stockholm
. He wintered in Nice
with his family, then fled France for Canada." Not long after, the Germans
invaded France, and "arrived at his home in Lancieux ... looking specifically for the poet who had mocked Hitler
in newspaper verse."
During World War II
Service lived in California
, "and Hollywood had him join with other celebrities in helping the morale of troops – visiting US Army camps to recite his poems. He was also asked to play himself in the movie The Spoilers
(1942), working alongside Marlene Dietrich
and John Wayne
." "He was thrilled to play a scene with Marlene Dietrich." After the war Service and his wife returned to his home in Brittany,
to find it destroyed. They rebuilt, and he lived there until his death in 1958, though he wintered in Monte Carlo on the French Riviera
. Service's wife and daughter, Iris, travelled to the Yukon in 1946 "and visited Whitehorse and Dawson City, which by then was becoming a ghost town. Service could not bring himself to go back. He preferred to remember the town as it had been."
Service wrote prolifically during his last years, publishing six books of verse from 1949 to 1955 (with one more appearing posthumously the following year). It was at Service's flat in Monte Carlo that Canadian broadcaster Pierre Berton
recorded, over a period of three days, many hours of autobiographical television interview, for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
, in the spring of 1958, not long before Service died.
Service wrote two volumes of autobiography
- Ploughman of the Moon and Harper of Heaven. He died in Lancieux and is buried there in the local cemetery.
." – yet that may have been a double-edged compliment. As T.S. Eliot has said, "we have to defend Kipling against the charge of excessive lucidity," "the charge of being a 'journalist
' appealing only to the commonest collective emotion," and "the charge of writing jingles." All those charges, and more, could be levelled against Service's best known and best loved works.
Certainly Service's verse was derivative of Kipling's. In "The Cremation of Sam McGee," for instance, he uses the form of Kipling's "Ballad of East and West."
In his E.J. Pratt lecture "Silence In the Sea," critic Northrop Frye
argued that Service's verse was not "serious poetry," but something else he called "popular poetry": "the idioms of popular and serious poetry remain inexorably distinct." Popular poems, he thought, "preserve a surface of explicit statement" – either being "proverbial, like Kipling's 'If
' or Longfellow
's 'Song of Life
' or Burns
's 'For A' That'," or dealing in "conventionally poetic themes, like the pastoral
themes of James Whitcomb Riley
, or the adventurous themes of Robert Service."
Service himself did not call his work poetry. "“Verse, not poetry, is what I was after ... something the man in the street would take notice of and the sweet old lady would paste in her album; something the schoolboy would spout and the fellow in the pub would quote. Yet I never wrote to please anyone but myself; it just happened. I belonged to the simple folks whom I liked to please.”
In his autobiography, Service described his method of writing at his Dawson City cabin. "I used to write on the coarse rolls of paper used by paper–hangers, pinning them on the wall and printing my verses in big charcoal letters. Then I would pace back and forth before them, repeating them, trying to make them perfect. I wanted to make them appeal to the eye as well as to the ear. I tried to avoid any literal quality."
One remarkable thing about both of Service's best-known ballads is how easily he wrote them. When writing about composing "The Shooting of Dan McGrew," 'easy' was exactly the word he used: "For it came so easy to me in my excited state that I was amazed at my facility. It was as if someone was whispering in my ear." And this was just after someone had tried to shoot him. He continued: "As I wrote stanza after stanza, the story seemed to evolve itself. It was a marvelous experience. Before I crawled into my bed at five in the morning, my ballad was in the bag."
Similarly, when he wrote "The Cremation of Sam McGee,", the verses just flowed: "“I took the woodland trail, my mind seething with excitement and a strange ecstasy.... As I started in: There are strange things done in the midnight sun, verse after verse developed with scarce a check ... and when I rolled happily into bed, my ballad was cinched. Next day, with scarcely any effort of memory I put it on paper."
In 1926, Archibald MacMechan, Professor of English at Canada's Dalhousie University
, pronounced on Service's Yukon books in his Headwaters of Canadian Literature:
MacMechan did give grudging respect to Service's World War I poetry, conceding that his style went well with that subject, and that "his Rhymes of a Red Cross Man are an advance on his previous volumes. He has come into touch with the grimmest of realities; and while his radical faults have not been cured, his rude lines drive home the truth that he has seen."
Reviewing Service's Rhymes of a Rebel in 1952, Frye remarked that the book "interests me chiefly because ... I have noticed so much verse in exactly the same idiom
, and I wonder how far Mr. Service's books may have influenced it. There was a time, fifty years ago," he added," when Robert W.Service represented, with some accuracy, the general level of poetic experience in Canada, as far as the popular reader was concerned.... there has been a prodigious, and, I should think, a permanent, change in public taste."
Service has also been noted for his use of ethnonym
s that would normally be considered offensive "slurs", but with no insult apparently intended. Words used in Service's poetry include jerries (Germans), dago (Italian), pickaninny (in reference to a Mozambican infant), cheechako (newcomer to the Yukon and Alaska gold fields, usually from the U.S.), nigger (black person), squaw (Aboriginal woman), and Jap (Japanese).
in Anchorage, Alaska
, Robert Service Senior Public School (Middle/ Jr. High) in Toronto
, Ontario
and Robert Service School in Dawson City, Yukon. He was also honoured on a Canadian postage stamp in 1976. The Robert Service Way
, a main road in Whitehorse, is named after him.
Additionally, the Bard & Banker public house in Victoria, British Columbia
is dedicated to him, the building having at one time been a Canadian Bank of Commerce branch where Service was employed while residing in the city. In 2010 Phillips Brewery in Victoria released the Service 1904 Scottish Stone Fired Ale, available only on tap in three Victoria locations: The Bard & Banker, Irish Times, and Penny Farthing public houses.
Service's first novel, The Trail of '98, was made into a movie by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
, directed by Clarence Brown
. "Trail of '98 ... starring Dolores Del Rio
, Ralph Forbes
and Karl Dante in 1929 ... was the first talking picture dealing with the Klondike gold rush and was acclaimed at the time by critics for depicting the Klondike as it really was."
Folksinger Country Joe MacDonald set some of Service's World War I poetry (plus "The March of the Dead" from his first book), to music for his 1971 studio album, War War War
.
. His prosperity allowed him the luxury of a telephone.
Service eventually decided he could not return to Dawson, as it would not be as he remembered it. He wrote in his autobiography:
"Only yesterday an air-line offered to fly me up there in two days, and I refused. It would have saddened me to see dust and rust where once hummed a rousing town; hundreds where were thousands; tumbledown cabins, mouldering warehouses."
After Service left for Europe, the Imperial Order of the Daughters of the Empire
(I.O.D.E.) took care of the cabin until 1971, preserving it. In 1971 it was taken over by Parks Canada
, which maintains it, including its sod roof, as a tourist attraction.
Irish-born actor Tom Byrne created The Robert Service Show which was presented in the front yard of the cabin, starting in 1976. This was very popular for summer visitors and set the standard for Robert Service recitations. A resurgence in sales of Service's works followed the institution of these performances.
Mr. Byrne discontinued the show at the cabin in 1995, moving it to a Front Street storefront. Since 2004 the show has been held at the Westmark Hotel in Dawson City at 3:00 p.m. every day during the summer months. Mr. Byrne collects Robert Service first editions, and corresponded with Mr. Service's widow for years.
At the Service Cabin, local Dawson entertainers dressed in period costumes and employed by Parks Canada offer biographical information and recite Service's poetry for visitors sitting on benches on the front lawn. Johnny Nunan performed this role through 2006. The present performer shares his first name (Fred). Following the presentation, visitors can view Service's home through the windows and front door. The fragility of the house, and the rarity of the artifacts, precludes any possibility of allowing visitors to enter the house itself.
Yukon
Yukon is the westernmost and smallest of Canada's three federal territories. It was named after the Yukon River. The word Yukon means "Great River" in Gwich’in....
".
Service is best known for his poems "The Shooting of Dan McGrew
The Shooting of Dan McGrew
"The Shooting of Dan McGrew" is a narrative poem by Robert W. Service, first published in The Songs of a Sourdough in 1907 in Canada.The tale takes place in a Yukon saloon during the Yukon Gold Rush of the late 1890s...
" and "The Cremation of Sam McGee
The Cremation of Sam McGee
"The Cremation of Sam McGee" is among the most famous of Robert W. Service's poems. It was published in 1907 in The Songs of a Sourdough...
", from his first book, Songs of a Sourdough
Songs of a Sourdough
Songs of a Sourdough is a book of poetry published in 1907 by Robert W. Service. In the United States, the book was published under the title The Spell of the Yukon and Other Verses....
(1907; also published as The Spell of the Yukon and Other Verses). "These humorous tales in verse were considered doggerel by the literary set, yet remain extremely popular to this day." Songs of a Sourdough has sold more than three million copies, making it the most commercially successful book of poetry of the 20th century.
Life
Early life
Robert W. Service was born in Preston, Lancashire, EnglandEngland
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
, the first of ten children. His father, also Robert Service, was a banker from Kilwinning
Kilwinning
Kilwinning is a historic town in North Ayrshire, Scotland. It is known as The Crossroads of Ayrshire. The 2001 Census recorded it as having a population of 15,908.-History:...
, Scotland
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
who had been transferred to England.
At five years old Robert W. Service went to live in Kilwinning with his three maiden aunts and his paternal grandfather, who was the town's postmaster
Postmaster
A postmaster is the head of an individual post office. Postmistress is not used anymore in the United States, as the "master" component of the word refers to a person of authority and has no gender quality...
. There he is said to have composed his first verse, a grace
Grace (prayer)
Grace is a name for any of a number of short prayers said or an unvoiced intention held prior to or after eating, thanking God and/or the entities that have given of themselves to furnish nutrients to those partaking in the meal. Some traditions hold that grace and thanksgiving imparts a blessing...
, on his sixth birthday:
-
-
- God bless the cakes and bless the jam;
- Bless the cheese and the cold boiled ham:
- Bless the scones Aunt Jeannie makes,
- And save us all from bellyaches. Amen
-
At nine Service rejoined his parents who had moved to Glasgow
Glasgow
Glasgow is the largest city in Scotland and third most populous in the United Kingdom. The city is situated on the River Clyde in the country's west central lowlands...
. He attended Glasgow's Hillhead High School
Hillhead High School
Hillhead High School is a day school located in Glasgow, Scotland, on Oakfield Avenue, neighbouring the University of Glasgow. It is one of the largest schools in Glasgow.Until 1976 it was a selective school...
.
"Service worked in a bank after he left school" ("he joined the Commercial Bank of Scotland
Commercial Bank of Scotland
The Commercial Bank of Scotland Ltd. was a Scottish commercial bank. It was founded in Edinburgh in 1810, and obtained a royal charter in 1831. It grew substantially through the 19th and early 20th centuries, until 1959, when it merged with the National Bank of Scotland to become the National...
which today is the Royal Bank of Scotland
Royal Bank of Scotland International
The Royal Bank of Scotland International Limited is an offshore bank headquartered in Jersey. It is the offshore banking arm of the Royal Bank of Scotland Group, offering a range of offshore banking services for personal, business, commercial, corporate and financial intermediary customers...
"). He was writing at this time and reportedly already "selling his verses". He was also reading poetry: Browning
Robert Browning
Robert Browning was an English poet and playwright whose mastery of dramatic verse, especially dramatic monologues, made him one of the foremost Victorian poets.-Early years:...
, Keats
John Keats
John Keats was an English Romantic poet. Along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, he was one of the key figures in the second generation of the Romantic movement, despite the fact that his work had been in publication for only four years before his death.Although his poems were not...
, Tennyson, and Thackeray
William Makepeace Thackeray
William Makepeace Thackeray was an English novelist of the 19th century. He was famous for his satirical works, particularly Vanity Fair, a panoramic portrait of English society.-Biography:...
.
Service moved to Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
at the age of 21 and travelled to Vancouver Island
Vancouver Island
Vancouver Island is a large island in British Columbia, Canada. It is one of several North American locations named after George Vancouver, the British Royal Navy officer who explored the Pacific Northwest coast of North America between 1791 and 1794...
, British Columbia
British Columbia
British Columbia is the westernmost of Canada's provinces and is known for its natural beauty, as reflected in its Latin motto, Splendor sine occasu . Its name was chosen by Queen Victoria in 1858...
with his Buffalo Bill
Buffalo Bill
William Frederick "Buffalo Bill" Cody was a United States soldier, bison hunter and showman. He was born in the Iowa Territory , in LeClaire but lived several years in Canada before his family moved to the Kansas Territory. Buffalo Bill received the Medal of Honor in 1872 for service to the US...
outfit and dreams of becoming a cowboy
Cowboy
A cowboy is an animal herder who tends cattle on ranches in North America, traditionally on horseback, and often performs a multitude of other ranch-related tasks. The historic American cowboy of the late 19th century arose from the vaquero traditions of northern Mexico and became a figure of...
. He drifted around western North America, "wandering from California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
to British Columbia," taking and quitting a series of jobs: "Starving in Mexico
Mexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
, residing in a California bordello, farming on Vancouver Island and pursuing unrequited love in Vancouver
Vancouver
Vancouver is a coastal seaport city on the mainland of British Columbia, Canada. It is the hub of Greater Vancouver, which, with over 2.3 million residents, is the third most populous metropolitan area in the country,...
." This sometimes required him to leech off his parent's Scottish neighbors and friends who had previously immigrated to Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
.
In 1899 Service was a store clerk in Cowichan Bay, British Columbia
Cowichan Bay, British Columbia
Cowichan Bay is a bay and community located near Duncan, in British Columbia. The mouth of the Cowichan River is near Cowichan Bay. The bay is known for its fishing and scenic value...
. He mentioned to a customer (Charles H. Gibbons, editor of the Victoria Daily Colonist) that he wrote verses, with the result that six poems by "R.S." on the Boer Wars had appeared in the Colonist by July 1900 – including "The March of the Dead" that would later appear in his first book. (Service's brother Alick was a prisoner of the Boers at the time, having been captured on November 15, 1899, alongside Winston Churchill
Winston Churchill
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, was a predominantly Conservative British politician and statesman known for his leadership of the United Kingdom during the Second World War. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest wartime leaders of the century and served as Prime Minister twice...
.)
The Colonist also published Service's "Music in the Bush" on September 18, 1901, and "The Little Old Log Cabin" on March 16, 1902.
In her 2006 biography, Under the Spell of the Yukon, Enid Mallory revealed that Service had fallen in love during this period. He was working as a "farm labourer and store clerk when he first met Constance MacLean at a dance in Duncan B.C
Duncan, British Columbia
Duncan is a city on southern Vancouver Island in British Columbia, Canada.-History:The community is named after William Chalmers Duncan . He arrived in Victoria in May 1862, then in August of that year he was one of the party of a hundred settlers which Governor Douglas took to Cowichan Bay...
, where she was visiting her uncle." MacLean lived in Vancouver, on the mainland, so he courted her by mail. Though he was smitten, "MacLean was looking for a man of education and means to support her" so was not that interested. To please her, he took courses at McGill University
McGill University
Mohammed Fathy is a public research university located in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The university bears the name of James McGill, a prominent Montreal merchant from Glasgow, Scotland, whose bequest formed the beginning of the university...
's Victoria College
Victoria College, British Columbia
Victoria College was a two-year college in Victoria, British Columbia founded in 1903 with sponsorship from McGill University. It was one of the first post-secondary institutions in British Columbia...
, but failed.
Down on his luck in 1903, Service was hired by a Canadian Bank of Commerce
Canadian Bank of Commerce
The Canadian Bank of Commerce was a Canadian bank cofounded in 1867 by William McMaster. The Canadian Bank of Commerce opened in Toronto with a charter in 1866 that it purchased from the defunct Bank of Canada, which folded in 1858....
branch in Victoria
Victoria, British Columbia
Victoria is the capital city of British Columbia, Canada and is located on the southern tip of Vancouver Island off Canada's Pacific coast. The city has a population of about 78,000 within the metropolitan area of Greater Victoria, which has a population of 360,063, the 15th most populous Canadian...
, British Columbia
British Columbia
British Columbia is the westernmost of Canada's provinces and is known for its natural beauty, as reflected in its Latin motto, Splendor sine occasu . Its name was chosen by Queen Victoria in 1858...
, using his Commercial Bank letter of reference. The bank "watched him, gave him a raise, and sent him to Kamloops in the middle of British Columbia. In Victoria he lived over the bank with a hired piano, and dressed for dinner. In Kamloops, horse country, he played polo. In the fall of 1904 the bank sent him to their Whitehorse branch in the Yukon
Yukon
Yukon is the westernmost and smallest of Canada's three federal territories. It was named after the Yukon River. The word Yukon means "Great River" in Gwich’in....
. With the expense money he bought himself a raccoon coat
Raccoon coat
Raccoon coats were a fad in the United States during the 1920s, particularly with college students in the mid- and later years of the decade. They are full-length fur coats. They became popular due to the stories of Davy Crockett and popular artist James Van Der Zee.-External links:* * *...
."
Throughout this period, Service continued writing and saving his verses: "more than a third of the poems in his first volume had been written before he moved north in 1904."
Yukon period
WhitehorseWhitehorse, Yukon
Whitehorse is Yukon's capital and largest city . It was incorporated in 1950 and is located at kilometre 1476 on the Alaska Highway in southern Yukon. Whitehorse's downtown and Riverdale areas occupy both shores of the Yukon River, which originates in British Columbia and meets the Bering Sea in...
was a frontier town, less than ten years old. Located on the Yukon River
Yukon River
The Yukon River is a major watercourse of northwestern North America. The source of the river is located in British Columbia, Canada. The next portion lies in, and gives its name to Yukon Territory. The lower half of the river lies in the U.S. state of Alaska. The river is long and empties into...
at the Whitehorse Rapids, it had begun in 1897 as a campground for prospectors on their way to Dawson City to join the Klondike Gold Rush
Klondike Gold Rush
The Klondike Gold Rush, also called the Yukon Gold Rush, the Alaska Gold Rush and the Last Great Gold Rush, was an attempt by an estimated 100,000 people to travel to the Klondike region the Yukon in north-western Canada between 1897 and 1899 in the hope of successfully prospecting for gold...
. The railroad that Service rode in on had reached Whitehorse only in 1900.
Settling in, "Service dreamed and listened to the stories of the great gold rush." He also "took part in the extremely active Whitehorse social life. As was popular at the time he recited at concerts – things like 'Casey at the Bat
Casey at the Bat
"Casey at the Bat: A Ballad of the Republic Sung in the Year 1888" is a baseball poem written in 1888 by Ernest Thayer. First published in The San Francisco Examiner on June 3, 1888, it was later popularized by DeWolf Hopper in many vaudeville performances.The poem was originally published...
' and 'Gunga Din
Gunga Din
-Background:The poem is a rhyming narrative from the point of view of a British soldier, about a native water-bearer who saves the soldier's life but dies himself. The last line suggests a deep-down unease of conscience about the prevailing views of natural hierarchies, both in the depicted...
', but they were getting stale."
One day (Service later wrote), while pondering what to recite at an upcoming church concert he met E.J. “Stroller” White, editor of the Whitehorse Star
Whitehorse Star
The Whitehorse Star is one of two newspapers in Whitehorse, Yukon. The Whitehorse Star was founded in 1900 and progressed from a weekly to twice-weekly, three-times weekly during the 1960s, to five times per week briefly around 1980-1983....
. White suggested: "Why don’t you write a poem for it? Give us something about our own bit of earth. We sure would appreciate it. There’s a rich paystreak waiting for someone to work. Why don’t you go in and stake it?”
Returning from a walk one Saturday night, Service heard the sounds of revelry from a saloon, and the phrase "A bunch of the boys were whooping it up" popped into his head. Inspired, he ran to the bank to write it down (almost being shot as a burglar), and by the next morning "The Shooting of Dan McGrew
The Shooting of Dan McGrew
"The Shooting of Dan McGrew" is a narrative poem by Robert W. Service, first published in The Songs of a Sourdough in 1907 in Canada.The tale takes place in a Yukon saloon during the Yukon Gold Rush of the late 1890s...
" was complete.
"A month or so later he heard a gold rush yarn from a Dawson mining man about a fellow who cremated his pal." He spent the night walking in the woods composing "The Cremation of Sam McGee
The Cremation of Sam McGee
"The Cremation of Sam McGee" is among the most famous of Robert W. Service's poems. It was published in 1907 in The Songs of a Sourdough...
," and wrote it down from memory the next day.
Other verses quickly followed. "In the early spring he stood above the heights of Miles Canyon ... the line 'I have gazed on naked grandeur where there’s nothing else to gaze on' came into his mind and again he hammered out a complete poem, "The Call of the Wild". Conversations with locals led Service to write about things he had not seen (some of which had not actually happened) as well. He did not set foot in Dawson City until 1908, arriving in the Klondike
Klondike, Yukon
The Klondike is a region of the Yukon in northwest Canada, east of the Alaska border. It lies around the Klondike River, a small river that enters the Yukon from the east at Dawson....
ten years after the Gold Rush when his renown as a writer was already established.
After having collected enough poems for a book, Service "sent the poems to his father, who had emigrated to Toronto
Toronto
Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the largest city in Canada. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A relatively modern city, Toronto's history dates back to the late-18th century, when its land was first purchased by the British monarchy from...
, and asked him to find a printing house so they could make it into a booklet. He enclosed a cheque to cover the costs and intended to give these booklets away to his friends in Whitehorse" for Christmas. His father took the manuscript to William Briggs in Toronto, whose employees loved the book. "The foreman and printers recited the ballads while they worked. A salesman read the proofs out loud as they came off the typesetting machines." An "enterprising salesman sold 1700 copies in advance orders from galley proofs." The publisher "sent Robert's cheque back to him and offered a ten percent royalty contract for the book."
Service's book, Songs of a Sourdough, was "an immediate success." It went through seven printings even before its official release date. Ultimately, Briggs "sold fifteen impressions in 1907. That same year there was an edition in New York, Philadelphia, and London. The London publisher, T. Fisher Unwin, struck a twenty-third printing in 1910, and thirteen more by 1917." "Service eventually earned in excess of $100,000 for Songs of a Sourdough alone (Mackay 14, 408n19)."
(In the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, the book would be given the more Jack London
Jack London
John Griffith "Jack" London was an American author, journalist, and social activist. He was a pioneer in the then-burgeoning world of commercial magazine fiction and was one of the first fiction writers to obtain worldwide celebrity and a large fortune from his fiction alone...
-ish title, The Spell of the Yukon and Other Verses).
"When copies of the book reached Whitehorse, Robert's own minister took him aside to let him know how wicked were his stories. Service hung his head in shame.... But, that summer, tourists from the south arrived in Whitehorse looking for the famous poet; and he autographed many of his books."
"In 1908, after working for the bank for three years in Whitehorse, he was sent outside on mandatory paid leave for three months, a standard practice for bank employees serving in the Yukon." According to Enid Mallory, he went to Vancouver
Vancouver
Vancouver is a coastal seaport city on the mainland of British Columbia, Canada. It is the hub of Greater Vancouver, which, with over 2.3 million residents, is the third most populous metropolitan area in the country,...
and looked up Constance MacLean. Now that he was a successful author, she agreed to become engaged to him.
Following his leave, in 1908 the bank transferred Service to Dawson, where he met and talked to veterans of the Gold Rush, now ten years in the past: "they loved to reminisce, and Robert listened carefully and remembered." He used their tales to write a second book of verse, Ballads of a Cheechako, in 1908. "It too was an overwhelming success."
In 1909, when the bank wanted Service to return to Whitehorse as manager, he decided to resign. "After quitting his job, he rented a small two-room cabin on Eighth Avenue in Dawson City from Mrs. Edna Clarke and began his career as a full-time author." He immediately "went to work on his novel.... He went for walks that lasted all night, slept till mid-afternoon, and sometimes didn't come out of the cabin for days. In five months the novel, called The Trail of '98, was complete and he took it to a publisher in New York." Service's first novel also "immediately became a best-seller."
Newly wealthy, Service was able to travel to Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, the French Riviera
French Riviera
The Côte d'Azur, pronounced , often known in English as the French Riviera , is the Mediterranean coastline of the southeast corner of France, also including the sovereign state of Monaco...
, Hollywood
Hollywood, Los Angeles, California
Hollywood is a famous district in Los Angeles, California, United States situated west-northwest of downtown Los Angeles. Due to its fame and cultural identity as the historical center of movie studios and movie stars, the word Hollywood is often used as a metonym of American cinema...
, and beyond. He returned to Dawson City in 1912 to write his third book of poetry, Ballads of a Rolling Stone (1912). During that time he became a freemason, being initiated into Yukon Lodge No. 45 in Dawson.
It is not known what happened between Service and Constance MacLean. There are no known letters between then from after the time Service went to Dawson City. In 1912 she "married Leroy Grant, a surveyor and railroad engineer based in Prince Rupert."
Later life
Service left Dawson City for good in 1912. From 1912 to 1913 he was a correspondentCorrespondent
A correspondent or on-the-scene reporter is a journalist or commentator, or more general speaking, an agent who contributes reports to a newspaper, or radio or television news, or another type of company, from a remote, often distant, location. A foreign correspondent is stationed in a foreign...
for the Toronto Star
Toronto Star
The Toronto Star is Canada's highest-circulation newspaper, based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Its print edition is distributed almost entirely within the province of Ontario...
during the Balkan Wars
Balkan Wars
The Balkan Wars were two conflicts that took place in the Balkans in south-eastern Europe in 1912 and 1913.By the early 20th century, Montenegro, Bulgaria, Greece and Serbia, the countries of the Balkan League, had achieved their independence from the Ottoman Empire, but large parts of their ethnic...
.
In 1913 Service arrived in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, where he would live for the next 15 years. He settled in the Latin Quarter
Latin Quarter
Latin Quarter is a part of the 5th arrondissement in Paris.Latin Quarter may also refer to:* Latin Quarter , a British pop/rock band* Latin Quarter , a 1945 British film*Latin Quarter, Aarhus, part of Midtbyen, Aarhus C, Denmark...
, posing as a painter. In June 1913 he married Parisienne Germaine Bougeoin, daughter of a distillery owner, and they purchased a summer home at Lancieux
Lancieux
Lancieux is a commune in the Côtes-d'Armor department in Bretagne in northwestern France.-Population:Inhabitants of Lancieux are called lancieutins or lancieutains.-Personalities:...
, Côtes-d'Armor
Côtes-d'Armor
Côtes-d'Armor is a department in the north of Brittany, in northwestern France.-History:Côtes-du-Nord was one of the original 83 departments created during the French Revolution on 4 March 1790. It was created from part of the former province of Brittany. Its name was changed in 1990 to...
, in the Brittany
Brittany
Brittany is a cultural and administrative region in the north-west of France. Previously a kingdom and then a duchy, Brittany was united to the Kingdom of France in 1532 as a province. Brittany has also been referred to as Less, Lesser or Little Britain...
region
Region
Region is most commonly found as a term used in terrestrial and astrophysics sciences also an area, notably among the different sub-disciplines of geography, studied by regional geographers. Regions consist of subregions that contain clusters of like areas that are distinctive by their uniformity...
of France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
. Thirteen years younger than her husband, Germaine Service lived 31 years following his death, dying at age 102 in 1989.
Robert Service was 41 when World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
broke out; he enlisted, but was turned down "due to varicose veins
Varicose veins
Varicose veins are veins that have become enlarged and tortuous. The term commonly refers to the veins on the leg, although varicose veins can occur elsewhere. Veins have leaflet valves to prevent blood from flowing backwards . Leg muscles pump the veins to return blood to the heart, against the...
." He briefly covered the war for the Toronto Star (from December 11, 1915 through January 29, 1916), but "was arrested and nearly executed in an outbreak of spy hysteria in Dunkirk." – then "worked as a stretcher bearer and ambulance driver with the Ambulance Corps of the American Red Cross
American Red Cross
The American Red Cross , also known as the American National Red Cross, is a volunteer-led, humanitarian organization that provides emergency assistance, disaster relief and education inside the United States. It is the designated U.S...
, until his health broke."
Convalescing in Paris, he wrote a new book of mainly war poetry, Rhymes of a Red Cross Man, in 1916. The book was dedicated to the memory of Service's "brother, Lieutenant Albert Service, Canadian Infantry, Killed in Action, France, August 1916."
With the end of the war, Service "settled down to being a rich man in Paris.... During the day he would promenade in the best suits, with a monocle. At night he went out in old clothes with the company of his doorman, a retired policeman, to visit the lowest dives of the city.". During his time in Paris he was reputedly the wealthiest author living in the city, yet was known to dress as a working man and walk the streets, blending in and observing everything around him. Those experiences would be used in his next book of poetry, Ballads of a Bohemian (1921), "The poems are given in the persona of an American poet in Paris who serves as an ambulance driver and an infantryman in the war. The verses are separated by diary entries over a period of four years."
In the 1920s Service began writing thriller novels. The Poisoned Paradise, A Romance of Monte Carlo
Monte Carlo
Monte Carlo is an administrative area of the Principality of Monaco....
(New York, 1922) and The Roughneck. A Tale of Tahiti
Tahiti
Tahiti is the largest island in the Windward group of French Polynesia, located in the archipelago of the Society Islands in the southern Pacific Ocean. It is the economic, cultural and political centre of French Polynesia. The island was formed from volcanic activity and is high and mountainous...
(New York, 1923) would both be made into silent movies
Silent Movies
Silent Movies are 13 solo guitar compositions by Marc Ribot released September 28, 2010 on Pi Recordings.-Reception:The Allmusic review by Thom Jurek awarded the album 4 stars stating "For those interested in one of the more compelling and quietly provocative and graceful guitar records of 2010,...
.
In 1930 Service returned to Kilwinning, to erect a memorial to his family in the town cemetery. He also visited the USSR in the 1930s and later wrote a satirical "Ballad of Lenin's Tomb
Lenin's Mausoleum
Lenin's Mausoleum also known as Lenin's Tomb, situated in Red Square in the center of Moscow, is the mausoleum that serves as the current resting place of Vladimir Lenin. His embalmed body has been on public display there since shortly after his death in 1924...
". For this reason his poetry has never been translated into Russian
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
in the USSR and he was never mentioned in Soviet encyclopedias.
Service's second trip to the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
"was interrupted by news of the Hitler-Stalin pact. Service fled across Poland
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
, Latvia
Latvia
Latvia , officially the Republic of Latvia , is a country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by Estonia , to the south by Lithuania , to the east by the Russian Federation , to the southeast by Belarus and shares maritime borders to the west with Sweden...
, Estonia
Estonia
Estonia , officially the Republic of Estonia , is a state in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland, to the west by the Baltic Sea, to the south by Latvia , and to the east by Lake Peipsi and the Russian Federation . Across the Baltic Sea lies...
and the Baltic
Baltic Sea
The Baltic Sea is a brackish mediterranean sea located in Northern Europe, from 53°N to 66°N latitude and from 20°E to 26°E longitude. It is bounded by the Scandinavian Peninsula, the mainland of Europe, and the Danish islands. It drains into the Kattegat by way of the Øresund, the Great Belt and...
to Stockholm
Stockholm
Stockholm is the capital and the largest city of Sweden and constitutes the most populated urban area in Scandinavia. Stockholm is the most populous city in Sweden, with a population of 851,155 in the municipality , 1.37 million in the urban area , and around 2.1 million in the metropolitan area...
. He wintered in Nice
Nice
Nice is the fifth most populous city in France, after Paris, Marseille, Lyon and Toulouse, with a population of 348,721 within its administrative limits on a land area of . The urban area of Nice extends beyond the administrative city limits with a population of more than 955,000 on an area of...
with his family, then fled France for Canada." Not long after, the Germans
Germans
The Germans are a Germanic ethnic group native to Central Europe. The English term Germans has referred to the German-speaking population of the Holy Roman Empire since the Late Middle Ages....
invaded France, and "arrived at his home in Lancieux ... looking specifically for the poet who had mocked Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
in newspaper verse."
During World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
Service lived in California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
, "and Hollywood had him join with other celebrities in helping the morale of troops – visiting US Army camps to recite his poems. He was also asked to play himself in the movie The Spoilers
The Spoilers (1942 film)
The Spoilers is a 1942 film directed by Ray Enright. The movie is set in Nome, Alaska during the Nome Gold Rush, with Marlene Dietrich as Cherry Malotte, Randolph Scott as Alexander McNamara, and John Wayne as Roy Glennister, and culminates in a spectacular saloon fistfight between McNamara and...
(1942), working alongside Marlene Dietrich
Marlene Dietrich
Marlene Dietrich was a German-American actress and singer.Dietrich remained popular throughout her long career by continually re-inventing herself, professionally and characteristically. In the Berlin of the 1920s, she acted on the stage and in silent films...
and John Wayne
John Wayne
Marion Mitchell Morrison , better known by his stage name John Wayne, was an American film actor, director and producer. He epitomized rugged masculinity and became an enduring American icon. He is famous for his distinctive calm voice, walk, and height...
." "He was thrilled to play a scene with Marlene Dietrich." After the war Service and his wife returned to his home in Brittany,
to find it destroyed. They rebuilt, and he lived there until his death in 1958, though he wintered in Monte Carlo on the French Riviera
French Riviera
The Côte d'Azur, pronounced , often known in English as the French Riviera , is the Mediterranean coastline of the southeast corner of France, also including the sovereign state of Monaco...
. Service's wife and daughter, Iris, travelled to the Yukon in 1946 "and visited Whitehorse and Dawson City, which by then was becoming a ghost town. Service could not bring himself to go back. He preferred to remember the town as it had been."
Service wrote prolifically during his last years, publishing six books of verse from 1949 to 1955 (with one more appearing posthumously the following year). It was at Service's flat in Monte Carlo that Canadian broadcaster Pierre Berton
Pierre Berton
Pierre Francis de Marigny Berton, was a noted Canadian author of non-fiction, especially Canadiana and Canadian history, and was a well-known television personality and journalist....
recorded, over a period of three days, many hours of autobiographical television interview, for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, commonly known as CBC and officially as CBC/Radio-Canada, is a Canadian crown corporation that serves as the national public radio and television broadcaster...
, in the spring of 1958, not long before Service died.
Service wrote two volumes of autobiography
Autobiography
An autobiography is a book about the life of a person, written by that person.-Origin of the term:...
- Ploughman of the Moon and Harper of Heaven. He died in Lancieux and is buried there in the local cemetery.
Writing
Robert Service wrote the most commercially successful poetry of the century. Yet his most popular works "were considered doggerel by the literary set." During his lifetime, he was nicknamed "the Canadian KiplingRudyard Kipling
Joseph Rudyard Kipling was an English poet, short-story writer, and novelist chiefly remembered for his celebration of British imperialism, tales and poems of British soldiers in India, and his tales for children. Kipling received the 1907 Nobel Prize for Literature...
." – yet that may have been a double-edged compliment. As T.S. Eliot has said, "we have to defend Kipling against the charge of excessive lucidity," "the charge of being a 'journalist
Journalist
A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...
' appealing only to the commonest collective emotion," and "the charge of writing jingles." All those charges, and more, could be levelled against Service's best known and best loved works.
Certainly Service's verse was derivative of Kipling's. In "The Cremation of Sam McGee," for instance, he uses the form of Kipling's "Ballad of East and West."
In his E.J. Pratt lecture "Silence In the Sea," critic Northrop Frye
Northrop Frye
Herman Northrop Frye, was a Canadian literary critic and literary theorist, considered one of the most influential of the 20th century....
argued that Service's verse was not "serious poetry," but something else he called "popular poetry": "the idioms of popular and serious poetry remain inexorably distinct." Popular poems, he thought, "preserve a surface of explicit statement" – either being "proverbial, like Kipling's 'If
If—
"If—" is a poem written in 1895 by British Nobel laureate Rudyard Kipling. It was first published in the "Brother Square Toes" chapter of Rewards and Fairies, Kipling's 1910 collection of short stories and poems...
' or Longfellow
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was an American poet and educator whose works include "Paul Revere's Ride", The Song of Hiawatha, and Evangeline...
's 'Song of Life
A psalm of life
"A Psalm of Life" is a poem written by American writer Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.-Composition and publication history:Longfellow wrote the poem shortly after completing lectures on German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and was heavily inspired by him...
' or Burns
Robert Burns
Robert Burns was a Scottish poet and a lyricist. He is widely regarded as the national poet of Scotland, and is celebrated worldwide...
's 'For A' That'," or dealing in "conventionally poetic themes, like the pastoral
Pastoral
The adjective pastoral refers to the lifestyle of pastoralists, such as shepherds herding livestock around open areas of land according to seasons and the changing availability of water and pasturage. It also refers to a genre in literature, art or music that depicts such shepherd life in an...
themes of James Whitcomb Riley
James Whitcomb Riley
James Whitcomb Riley was an American writer, poet, and best selling author. During his lifetime he was known as the Hoosier Poet and Children's Poet for his dialect works and his children's poetry respectively...
, or the adventurous themes of Robert Service."
Service himself did not call his work poetry. "“Verse, not poetry, is what I was after ... something the man in the street would take notice of and the sweet old lady would paste in her album; something the schoolboy would spout and the fellow in the pub would quote. Yet I never wrote to please anyone but myself; it just happened. I belonged to the simple folks whom I liked to please.”
In his autobiography, Service described his method of writing at his Dawson City cabin. "I used to write on the coarse rolls of paper used by paper–hangers, pinning them on the wall and printing my verses in big charcoal letters. Then I would pace back and forth before them, repeating them, trying to make them perfect. I wanted to make them appeal to the eye as well as to the ear. I tried to avoid any literal quality."
One remarkable thing about both of Service's best-known ballads is how easily he wrote them. When writing about composing "The Shooting of Dan McGrew," 'easy' was exactly the word he used: "For it came so easy to me in my excited state that I was amazed at my facility. It was as if someone was whispering in my ear." And this was just after someone had tried to shoot him. He continued: "As I wrote stanza after stanza, the story seemed to evolve itself. It was a marvelous experience. Before I crawled into my bed at five in the morning, my ballad was in the bag."
Similarly, when he wrote "The Cremation of Sam McGee,", the verses just flowed: "“I took the woodland trail, my mind seething with excitement and a strange ecstasy.... As I started in: There are strange things done in the midnight sun, verse after verse developed with scarce a check ... and when I rolled happily into bed, my ballad was cinched. Next day, with scarcely any effort of memory I put it on paper."
In 1926, Archibald MacMechan, Professor of English at Canada's Dalhousie University
Dalhousie University
Dalhousie University is a public research university located in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. The university comprises eleven faculties including Schulich School of Law and Dalhousie University Faculty of Medicine. It also includes the faculties of architecture, planning and engineering located at...
, pronounced on Service's Yukon books in his Headwaters of Canadian Literature:
- The sordid, the gross, the bestial, may sometimes be redeemed by the touch of genius; but that Promethean touch is not in Mr. Service. In manner he is frankly imitative of Kipling's barrack-room balladry; and imitation is an admission of inferiority. 'Sourdough' is Yukon slang for the provident old-timer ... It is a convenient term for this wilfully violent kind of verse without the power to redeem the squalid themes it treats. The Ballads of a Cheechako is a second installment of sourdoughs, while his novel The Trail of '98 is simply sourdough prose.
MacMechan did give grudging respect to Service's World War I poetry, conceding that his style went well with that subject, and that "his Rhymes of a Red Cross Man are an advance on his previous volumes. He has come into touch with the grimmest of realities; and while his radical faults have not been cured, his rude lines drive home the truth that he has seen."
Reviewing Service's Rhymes of a Rebel in 1952, Frye remarked that the book "interests me chiefly because ... I have noticed so much verse in exactly the same idiom
Idiom
Idiom is an expression, word, or phrase that has a figurative meaning that is comprehended in regard to a common use of that expression that is separate from the literal meaning or definition of the words of which it is made...
, and I wonder how far Mr. Service's books may have influenced it. There was a time, fifty years ago," he added," when Robert W.Service represented, with some accuracy, the general level of poetic experience in Canada, as far as the popular reader was concerned.... there has been a prodigious, and, I should think, a permanent, change in public taste."
Service has also been noted for his use of ethnonym
Ethnonym
An ethnonym is the name applied to a given ethnic group. Ethnonyms can be divided into two categories: exonyms and autonyms or endonyms .As an example, the ethnonym for...
s that would normally be considered offensive "slurs", but with no insult apparently intended. Words used in Service's poetry include jerries (Germans), dago (Italian), pickaninny (in reference to a Mozambican infant), cheechako (newcomer to the Yukon and Alaska gold fields, usually from the U.S.), nigger (black person), squaw (Aboriginal woman), and Jap (Japanese).
Recognition
Robert W. Service has been honoured with schools named for him including Service High SchoolService High School
Robert Service High School is a public high school in Anchorage, Alaska. Serving grades 9 through 12, the school was named for the poet Robert W. Service. Part of the Anchorage School District, the school opened in 1971 as the last of four high schools built by the district within a decade...
in Anchorage, Alaska
Anchorage, Alaska
Anchorage is a unified home rule municipality in the southcentral part of the U.S. state of Alaska. It is the northernmost major city in the United States...
, Robert Service Senior Public School (Middle/ Jr. High) in Toronto
Toronto
Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the largest city in Canada. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A relatively modern city, Toronto's history dates back to the late-18th century, when its land was first purchased by the British monarchy from...
, Ontario
Ontario
Ontario is a province of Canada, located in east-central Canada. It is Canada's most populous province and second largest in total area. It is home to the nation's most populous city, Toronto, and the nation's capital, Ottawa....
and Robert Service School in Dawson City, Yukon. He was also honoured on a Canadian postage stamp in 1976. The Robert Service Way
Arterial roads in Whitehorse, Yukon
-2nd Avenue:2nd Avenue is the main arterial, north-south route that roughly parallels the Yukon River in Whitehorse, Yukon, Canada. The downtown core of Whitehorse is developed partially along the route. 2nd Avenue is numbered as such as the second roadway from the Yukon River...
, a main road in Whitehorse, is named after him.
Additionally, the Bard & Banker public house in Victoria, British Columbia
Victoria, British Columbia
Victoria is the capital city of British Columbia, Canada and is located on the southern tip of Vancouver Island off Canada's Pacific coast. The city has a population of about 78,000 within the metropolitan area of Greater Victoria, which has a population of 360,063, the 15th most populous Canadian...
is dedicated to him, the building having at one time been a Canadian Bank of Commerce branch where Service was employed while residing in the city. In 2010 Phillips Brewery in Victoria released the Service 1904 Scottish Stone Fired Ale, available only on tap in three Victoria locations: The Bard & Banker, Irish Times, and Penny Farthing public houses.
Service's first novel, The Trail of '98, was made into a movie by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. is an American media company, involved primarily in the production and distribution of films and television programs. MGM was founded in 1924 when the entertainment entrepreneur Marcus Loew gained control of Metro Pictures, Goldwyn Pictures Corporation and Louis B. Mayer...
, directed by Clarence Brown
Clarence Brown
Clarence Brown was an American film director.-Early life:Born in Clinton, Massachusetts, to a cotton manufacturer, Brown moved to the South when he was 11. He attended Knoxville High School and the University of Tennessee, both in Knoxville, Tennessee, graduating from the university at the age of...
. "Trail of '98 ... starring Dolores Del Rio
Dolores del Río
Dolores del Río was a Mexican film actress. She was a star of Hollywood films during the silent era and in the Golden Age of Hollywood...
, Ralph Forbes
Ralph Forbes
rightRalph Forbes was an English actor in the American cinema. He was also a noted stage actor....
and Karl Dante in 1929 ... was the first talking picture dealing with the Klondike gold rush and was acclaimed at the time by critics for depicting the Klondike as it really was."
Folksinger Country Joe MacDonald set some of Service's World War I poetry (plus "The March of the Dead" from his first book), to music for his 1971 studio album, War War War
War War War
-Reception:The album did decently well taking 185th Position on the 1971 Billboard 200 list -Useful Links:* http://www.countryjoe.com/* http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBdeCxJmcAo* http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqHkMAo9Gos...
.
Dawson City cabin
Robert Service lived from 1909 to 1912 in a small two-room cabin on 8th Avenue which he rented from Edna Clarke in Dawson City, YukonDawson City, Yukon
The Town of the City of Dawson or Dawson City is a town in the Yukon, Canada.The population was 1,327 at the 2006 census. The area draws some 60,000 visitors each year...
. His prosperity allowed him the luxury of a telephone.
Service eventually decided he could not return to Dawson, as it would not be as he remembered it. He wrote in his autobiography:
"Only yesterday an air-line offered to fly me up there in two days, and I refused. It would have saddened me to see dust and rust where once hummed a rousing town; hundreds where were thousands; tumbledown cabins, mouldering warehouses."
After Service left for Europe, the Imperial Order of the Daughters of the Empire
Imperial Order of the Daughters of the Empire
The Imperial Order of the Daughters of the Empire is a women's charitable organization based in Canada. The club was originally titled the "Federation of Daughters of the British Empire", which was founded by Margaret Clark Murray in 1900...
(I.O.D.E.) took care of the cabin until 1971, preserving it. In 1971 it was taken over by Parks Canada
Parks Canada
Parks Canada , also known as the Parks Canada Agency , is an agency of the Government of Canada mandated to protect and present nationally significant natural and cultural heritage, and foster public understanding, appreciation, and enjoyment in ways that ensure their ecological and commemorative...
, which maintains it, including its sod roof, as a tourist attraction.
Irish-born actor Tom Byrne created The Robert Service Show which was presented in the front yard of the cabin, starting in 1976. This was very popular for summer visitors and set the standard for Robert Service recitations. A resurgence in sales of Service's works followed the institution of these performances.
Mr. Byrne discontinued the show at the cabin in 1995, moving it to a Front Street storefront. Since 2004 the show has been held at the Westmark Hotel in Dawson City at 3:00 p.m. every day during the summer months. Mr. Byrne collects Robert Service first editions, and corresponded with Mr. Service's widow for years.
At the Service Cabin, local Dawson entertainers dressed in period costumes and employed by Parks Canada offer biographical information and recite Service's poetry for visitors sitting on benches on the front lawn. Johnny Nunan performed this role through 2006. The present performer shares his first name (Fred). Following the presentation, visitors can view Service's home through the windows and front door. The fragility of the house, and the rarity of the artifacts, precludes any possibility of allowing visitors to enter the house itself.
Poetry
- Songs of a Sourdough (Toronto: William Briggs, 19071907 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Canada:* Peter McArthur, The Prodigal and other Poems* Robert W...
)- [U.S. as The Spell of the Yukon and Other Verses (New York: Barse & Hopkins, 1907)].
- Ballads of a Cheechako (Toronto: William Briggs, 19091909 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* Andrew Cecil Bradley, Oxford Lectures on Poetry* Founding of the Poetry Recital Society...
) - Rhymes of a Rolling Stone (Toronto: William Briggs, 19121912 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore takes a sheaf of his translated works to England, where they impress William Butler Yeats, Ezra Pound, Robert Bridges, Ernest Rhys, Thomas Sturge Moore, and others...
) - Rhymes of a Red Cross Man (Toronto: William Briggs, 19161916 in poetry-- Closing lines of "Easter 1916" by William Butler Yeats, first published this yearNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:...
) - Ballads of a Bohemian (Toronto: G.J. McLeod, 19211921 in poetry— Wilfred Owen, concluding lines of Dulce et Decorum Est, published this yearNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:...
) - Twenty Bath-Tub Ballads (London: Francis, Day and Hunter, 1939)
- Bar-Room Ballads (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1940)
- Songs of a Sun-Lover. A Book of Light Verse (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1949.)
- Rhymes of a Roughneck. A Book of Verse (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1950).
- Lyrics of a Lowbrow. A Book of Verse (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1951.).
- Rhymes of a Rebel. A Book of Verse (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1952).
- Songs for my Supper (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1953).
- Carols of an Old Codger (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1955).
- Rhymes for My Rags (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1956).
Fiction
- The Trail of Ninety-Eight, A Northland Romance (Toronto: William Briggs, 1909)
- The Pretender. A story of the Latin quarter (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1914).
- The Poisoned Paradise: A Romance of Monte Carlo (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1922)
- The Roughneck, A Tale of Tahiti (New York: Barse and Hopkins, 1923)
- The Master of the Microbe: A Fantastic Romance (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1926)
- The House of Fear, A Novel (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1927)
Non-fiction
- Why Not Grow Young? or Living for Longevity (London: Ernest Benn, 1928)
- Ploughman of the Moon, An Adventure Into Memory (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1945) - autobiography
- Harper of Heaven. A Record of Radiant Living (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1948) - autobiography
External links
- Selected Poetry of Robert W. Service (1874-1958) - Biography and four poems (The Cremation of Sam McGee, The Shooting of Dan McGrew, The Song of the Wage-Slave, The Telegraph Operator)
- Robert Service's war poetry
- Mossback Minstrelsy: The British Columbia Verse of Robert W. Service
- Robert Service at Electric Scotland
- Ballads of a Bohemian by Robert Service at Librivox.org
- RobertWService.com - The Original Homepage
- Interview from 1922
