Robert W. Service
(1874-1958) burst upon the scene in 1907 with this collection of poems,
published first in Canada as Songs of a Sourdough, where it was an immediate success. Born of a
Scots family in England, he was living at the time in Whitehorse, Yukon, as an
employee of the Canadian Bank of Commerce. He had already knocked about the
West from Mexico to Vancouver. The bank job seems to have been an attempt to
settle down and draw a regular paycheck.
He had been writing
poems from boyhood and was encouraged to begin setting stories and impressions
of the Great White North to verse. Thus originated two of his most famous story
poems: “The Shooting of Dan McGrew” and “The Cremation of Sam McGee.” Those and
more poems harked back to the 1898 gold rush that centered on Dawson City, 330
miles (532 km) down the Yukon River, which Service had yet to visit.
Success allowed him
to eventually quit his day job and live as a writer, composing more books of verse
and a novel, The Trail of ’98
(1910). He acquired material for this book while living for a time in Dawson,
before settling in France with a French wife.
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| Klondike Camp, Yukon, 1898 |
The poems. Many of the poems are lyrical ballads, about
the spell that the Yukon casts over the men who come to find a fortune there.
The North is portrayed as a harsh mistress, luring many to their doom while
bestowing her rewards on only the strongest and fittest.
This theme is
spelled out in “The Law of the Yukon,” which tells of the merciless fate that
waits for the weak, unfit, crippled, palsied, and infirm. In the voice of the Yukon herself, it laments the influx
of the “dissolute, damned and despairful” men and women who are “the spawn of
the gutters.” Send no misfits or failures, she warns. Only the strong and the
sane will be granted treasures and sustenance.
The mining camps
with their saloons and gambling are “plague-spots” that serve only one good
purpose, to weed out the foolish and feeble. The Yukon will reward only those
who risk all in the “uttermost valleys, fighting each step as they go.”
Pregnant with “the seed of cities unborn,” she will be won by “men with hearts
of Vikings and the simple faith of a child.”
“The Parson’s Son”
provides a character study of a man ruined by the gold rush. After 20 years in
the Yukon, trading in skins and whiskey, he remembers the days when the few white
men there had “such a wild, free, fearless life beyond the pale of the law,”
each with his “squaw.”
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| Gold miner at work, Klondike, Yukon, c1898 |
But the gold rush
has been his ruin. Of Dawson he says, “No spot on the map in so short a space
has hustled more souls to hell.” He has spent thousands on women, drink and
gambling, ending up for a while in the “bughouse.” Now he lies dying on his
bunk, and when he’s dead, we learn, his body will be eaten by his sled dogs.
Similarly, a fallen
woman laments her lot in life in “The Harpy.” It matters not, she says, whether
you are married or offering your body for hire. Either way you must serve the
will of men. In “The Low Down White,” a man with half a lung waits for the
return of his Siwash woman, who has been out trading sex for money. She’ll
bring back three bottles, one for her and two for him.
Call of the Wild. A long opening poem, “L’Envoi” describes the addictive power of the North, though repellant, hellish, hostile, and menacing at first. Despite fighting hunger and scurvy, however, the gold seeker comes to love the stark beauties of the mountainous terrain in winter and the lush summers.
The poem introduces
a theme that is repeated often in the collection. While the life of the North
triggers great loneliness, a return to the South brings on restlessness and
boredom. “The Heart of the Sourdough” faults civilization for its “make believe
and show.” The gold-seeker
yearns to head back, engaging with the wild, even though it “abhors all life.”
Braving the elements, it matters not that he may die, like a wolf dog that fights and bleeds
“till the snows are red under the reeling sky.”
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| Camp, Chilkoot Trail, 1898 |
“The Lure of Little
Voices” describes how the poet feels the call of lonely places, which knew him
before the woman beside him in his bed. They love him like a comrade, and his
heart aches to be with them. He will leave his sweetheart, though it may be
cruel to do so.
In “The Call of the
Wild,” he challenges the reader to leave both friend and sweetheart to roam the
West or North. One finds there “eternal truths” that put the soothing lies of
convention and custom to shame. Mingle with “the mongrel races,” he says, and
feel “the savage strength of brute in every thew.” In “The Lone Trail,” he
admits that there are risks. You may die of thirst, fever, disease, or
freezing, but the adventure is worth the cost.
Sentiment. In “New Years Eve” a starving bum slips into a
waterfront bar in hopes of a free drink. He is lost in memories of a sweetheart
from 50 years ago and a scene of love on a New Year’s Eve. Then at the stroke
of midnight, the barman finds him dead.
In a long tribute to
the workingman, “The Song of the Wage-Slave,” a man tells of laboring 60 years.
He has worked for the wealthy, fat-bellied master, never shirking, a “primitive toiler, half
naked and grimed to the eyes.” Now he is “broken and twisted and scarred.”
He has never known
the tender mercies of wife or children, and “would gladly have gone to the gallows for
one little look of love.” Instead he has thrown away his money on “whiskey and
cards and women,” finding comfort at times in the arms of a harlot. His life
over, he will “die like a dog in a ditch.”
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| Robert W. Service, Dawson, c1910 |
Wrapping up. Readers expecting more poems in the vein of
“The Shooting of Dan McGrew” and “The Cremation of Sam McGee” will be
disappointed. They are the only story poems in the whole collection. Service
went on to produce numerous volumes of verse. The Yukon continued as the
subject of his Ballads of a Cheechako (1909).
After briefly
serving in the Ambulance Corps during WWI, he penned the poems in Rhymes of
a Red Cross Man (1916).
Besides The Trail of ’98: A Northland Romance (1909), he wrote several other novels of romance and
adventure. A few of his poems have served as the basis for films.
The Spell of the
Yukon is currently available
online at google books and Internet Archive, and for kindle and the nook. For
more of Friday’s Forgotten Books, click on over to Patti Abbott’s blog.
Sources:
Photo credits: Wikimedia Commons
Coming up: Saturday music, Elvis
I finished reading Best Tales of the Yukon not long ago and was blown away. I remember one or two Service poems from high school but didn't know much about his work in general. Wonderful stuff.
ReplyDeleteAs part of the gold-rush genre, tales of the Klondike are in a class by themselves.
DeleteThis is a fine summation of Service's work, much new to me. He epitomized the Victorian obsession with character, but only a certain sort of character, that which was "manly." One small surrender to any vice and the slippery slope would whisk you to your doom. The virtues of charity, mercy, forgiveness, redemption, are rarely present in this or most fiction of that period. That is especially true of western fiction. At Western Writers conventions, a friend, Dick House, would usually recite Service poems, which he knew entirely, in post-Spur banquet parties.
ReplyDeleteService's Scots background shows through in the excessive moralism. Physical and spiritual strength are perceived as virtually one and the same.
DeleteI have the Complete Poems of Robert Service and have read and reread sections of it many times. I took it to Alaska with me several years ago to reread parts yet again in Denali Park, Fairbanks and other stops.
ReplyDeleteWhat a great idea. As a fallback, I guess you could go to the street views in Google Maps and get a similar experience.
DeleteThis is an interesting coverage, Ron. Like everyone else, I've read a few of Service's poems, but I have not had much of an overview. Your column (or article) encourages a person to go back and read a little more.
ReplyDeleteBesides the two story poems, the verse in the book was all new to me--and unexpected.
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