ROBERT W. SERVICE: THE MAN WHO DIDN'T FIT IN by Michael Rigg

Robert W. Service (1874 - 1958)

“Gold!” One of the few words to spark bouts of mass hysteria—group insanity some might argue. And so it was just before the turn of the twentieth century. Discovery of gold near the Klondike River in Canada’s Yukon Territory in August 1896 unleashed a three-year epidemic known as the Yukon Gold Rush.

In total, “gold fever” infected over 100,000 people. They came from every corner of the continent, intent on reaching Dawson City, epicenter of the mining effort, where they hoped to find their personal end-of-the-rainbow. Of those starting the journey, only thirty or forty percent (approximately 30,000 to 40,000) made it to Dawson City, turned away along the route by a combination of expense, hardship, and death. Only about half of those who made it to the gold fields became prospectors. Only a few hundred became rich.

But this mass hysteria produced some unplanned riches—a bonanza of novels and verse describing the rush, the challenges, the victories, and the defeats. Among the authors tapping into this rich vein of success and heartache were Jack London (The Call of the Wild and White Fang), Tappan Adney (The Klondike Stampede), and my favorite, Robert W. Service.

Born on January 14, 1874 in Lancashire, England, Service spent his formative years in Scotland. He grew up reading the works of Rudyard Kipling and Robert Louis Stevenson and briefly studied literature at the University of Glasgow. In 1894, Service went to western Canada, where he worked in a variety of jobs, including as a cowboy and later as a bank teller, first in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory and in 1908—well after the Klondike Gold Rush had run its course—in Dawson City.

While the fever was gone, the memories remained. And Service drilled into the reminiscences of former miners and others, extracting material that formed the basis for the works earning him a reputation as “Bard of the Yukon.”

Service published numerous collections of poetry during his lifetime, including Songs of a Sourdough or Spell of the Yukon and Other Verses (1907), Ballad of a Cheechako (1909), and Ballads of a Bohemian (1921), as well as two autobiographies and six novels. He was a correspondent for the Toronto Star during the Balkan Wars of 1912-13, and served in World War I as an ambulance driver in France. After the war, he married Germaine Bougeoin and they resided mainly in the south of France until his death on September 11, 1958. Several of his novels were made into films, and he also appeared as an actor in The Spoilers, a 1942 film with Marlene Dietrich.

Were I to ask you to name some of his poems, you’d likely respond with “The Shooting of Dan McGrew,” “The Spell of the Yukon,” or “The Cremation of Sam McGee.” All excellent tales, indeed.

But my favorite is “The Men That Don’t Fit In.” It highlights a group of men (and women) captured by wanderlust and the need for adventure. And it serves as a reminder that, often, “It’s the steady, quiet, plodding ones” who survive life's struggles:

The Men That Don't Fit In

There's a race of men that don't fit in,

A race that can't stay still;

So they break the hearts of kith and kin,

And they roam the world at will.

They range the field and they rove the flood,

And they climb the mountain's crest;

Theirs is the curse of the gypsy blood,

And they don't know how to rest.

 

If they just went straight, they might go far;

They are strong and brave and true;

But they're always tired of the things that are,

And they want the strange and new.

They say: "Could I find my proper groove,

What a deep mark I would make!"

So they chop and change, and each fresh move

Is only a fresh mistake.

 

And each forgets, as he strips and runs

With a brilliant, fitful pace,

It's the steady, quiet, plodding ones

Who win in the lifelong race.

And each forgets that his youth has fled,

Forgets that his prime is past,

Till he stands one day, with a hope that's dead,

In the glare of the truth at last.

 

He has failed, he has failed; he has missed his chance;

He has just done things by half.

Life's been a jolly good joke on him,

And now is the time to laugh.

Ha, ha! He is one of the Legion Lost;

He was never meant to win;

He's a rolling stone, and it's bred in the bone;

He's a man who won't fit in.

Haunting, don’t you think? 

To learn more about Robert Service and the Klondike Gold Rush, check out: Robert W. Service | The Poetry Foundation and What Was the Klondike Gold Rush? - Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park (U.S. National Park Service).