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The Unrequited Love of Robert Service on Vancouver Island
"We all were made or marred long ago";
Stumbling on a hidden cache of letters, discovering a secret love affair, identifying a mysterious figure in the subject's life-these revelations are stuff of fiction by the likes of Henry James and A.S. Byatt. Robert Service: Under the Spell of the Yukon (Heritage, 2006 240 pp.) by Enid Mallory proves that such surprises do unravel for real life biographers as well as fictional ones.
Enid Mallory is the first of Robert Service's biographers to make extensive use of recently discovered letters written to an early love (although she did not find the new material herself).
For anyone unfamiliar with the man who wrote some of the most-repeated poems ever written in Canada-most notably the "The Cremation of Sam McGee"; and "The Shooting of Dan McGrew";-Service emigrated from Glasgow in 1896 with $15 in his pocket and his visions of becoming a cowboy. Service had quit his banking job at age 21 and sailed steerage class to Montreal, carrying with him a copy of Robert Louis Stevenson's The Amateur Emigrant, a letter of reference from the bank and a Bill Cody outfit.
Recent revelations about previously unknown letters by Service came about serendipitously when his previous biographer James Mackay speculated in a 1995 radio interview about the identity of C.M., the dedicatee of Service's first book Songs of a Sourdough. One of C.M's granddaughters happened to hear the program and she called radio host Tom Allen to tell him more about the relationship.
This romantic episode of Service's life has a special interest to British Columbian readers because the young woman in question, Constance McLean, was the daughter of Malcolm McLean, who in 1886 became Vancouver's first mayor. Although his tenure as mayor was brief, he pulled the city together after the Great Fire that devastated the city the year he was elected, and he set aside the land that became Stanley Park. He later served as police magistrate for the city until his death in 1895.
The love affair between Service and Constance McLean percolated while he was working on the Eureka stock farm in Cowichan Bay on Vancouver Island. It was the biggest farm in the district, established in 1883 by George Corfield, who built up great herds of Holsteins and Jerseys. When Service first arrived at the turn of the century he served as Corfield's official cattleman. He was relieved from this grueling work only he was tossed into the air by a bull.
After he was injured, Service became the storekeeper on the Corfield ranch and he was hired to tutor Corfield's sons. During his four years at Corfield's, Service attended dances, sang in the choir at St. Peter's Quamichan, joined the South Cowichan Lawn Tennis club (the earliest club of its kind in Canada), acted in theatrical groups and entertained by playing the guitar.
During one dance at nearby Duncan's Station (the forerunner of present-day Duncan), he met Constance McLean who was visiting her uncle in the district, Dr. Perry. Service was so smitten, he went back to his attic room and wrote "The Coming of Miss McLean"; and promptly mailed it to her. This previously unpublished love poem, which Mallory includes in her book, was in the cache of letters that McLean's daughters found in 1960. The originals are now in Queen's University Archives in Kingston, Ontario.
The lost-and-found poem has a characteristic Service ring to it:
Yes, she'll go away from Duncan's on the train
And their hearts will ever beat a sad refrain;
For the one they can't forget, the One they'll e'er regret,
The dancing fair, entrancing Miss McLean.
Service is world famous for his fanciful rhymes about the Klondike, but Mallory notes that some of his earliest poems were printed in Victoria's Daily Columnist after the editor met him on a fishing trip to the Cowichan Valley. Constance McLean seems to have been the inspiration behind his first major publication, a poem called "Apart and Yet Together,"; for which he received the princely sum of five dollars in 1903. It appeared in Munsey's Magazine, a New York journal with a circulation of 700,000.
Service was notoriously reticent about his personal life so the identification of Constance Mclean and the poem are significant discoveries. Service wrote two autobiographies late in the game, Ploughman of the Moon: An Adventure into Memory (1945) and Harper of Heaven: A Record of Radiant Living (1948), in which he generally withheld the names of family and friends. Such omissions may have been a legacy of the embarrassment he suffered after choosing the name Sam McGee randomly from the list of bank clients when he worked in Whitehorse. After "The Cremation of Sam McGee"; became popular, the owner of the name turned up and withdrew all his money from the bank.
Service's other reason for not mentioning his first love was that the protracted relationship was a painful memory. When they first met, Service was in no position to support a wife, let alone propose marriage to a socially prominent Vancouver woman. This predicament was similar to the frustrated romance that adversely affected Thomas Hardy for the rest of his writing days.
Robert Service left the farm and tried to enter university, but failed the entrance exam. His lack of professional success not only depressed him, but also caused some acrimonious exchanges between the lovers. Constance's descendants reported that her copy of Songs of a Sourdough fell open at "Quatrain,"; a poem that describes a debate between a first person narrator who believes that "We all were made or marred long ago"; and a speaker who counters that "Thy life is thine to make or mar.";
Service's experience as a bank clerk in Scotland helped him to find a position at the Bank of Commerce in Victoria. He and Constance continued to exchange letters and meet for some time after the bank had assigned him to its branch in the Yukon. Only Service's side of the correspondence has survived, and it indicates that during a 1908 leave in Vancouver, Constance agreed to marry him.
Again, Service was stymied by social convention. The bank had a policy forbidding its employees to marry until they possessed thirteen hundred dollars. At the end of his leave, he wrote movingly to her of his misery aboard a ship that was taking him back up north, towards the Yukon.
Service's autobiographical account of this period paints a different picture. There he accentuates his delight at returning to the Yukon. Perhaps there is some truth in both, for soon afterwards the affair lost its intensity, became a friendship, and eventually ended. Ultimately it appears as if Constance's most serious rival as Service's muse was the Yukon itself. Until her side of their correspondence is discovered and revealed, the true nature of the relationship can never be known for certain.
[Joan Givner writes in the Cowichan Valley, not far from where Robert Service worked as a cowhand, store clerk and tutor.]
Stumbling on a hidden cache of letters, discovering a secret love affair, identifying a mysterious figure in the subject's life-these revelations are stuff of fiction by the likes of Henry James and A.S. Byatt. Robert Service: Under the Spell of the Yukon (Heritage, 2006 240 pp.) by Enid Mallory proves that such surprises do unravel for real life biographers as well as fictional ones.
Enid Mallory is the first of Robert Service's biographers to make extensive use of recently discovered letters written to an early love (although she did not find the new material herself).
For anyone unfamiliar with the man who wrote some of the most-repeated poems ever written in Canada-most notably the "The Cremation of Sam McGee"; and "The Shooting of Dan McGrew";-Service emigrated from Glasgow in 1896 with $15 in his pocket and his visions of becoming a cowboy. Service had quit his banking job at age 21 and sailed steerage class to Montreal, carrying with him a copy of Robert Louis Stevenson's The Amateur Emigrant, a letter of reference from the bank and a Bill Cody outfit.
Recent revelations about previously unknown letters by Service came about serendipitously when his previous biographer James Mackay speculated in a 1995 radio interview about the identity of C.M., the dedicatee of Service's first book Songs of a Sourdough. One of C.M's granddaughters happened to hear the program and she called radio host Tom Allen to tell him more about the relationship.
This romantic episode of Service's life has a special interest to British Columbian readers because the young woman in question, Constance McLean, was the daughter of Malcolm McLean, who in 1886 became Vancouver's first mayor. Although his tenure as mayor was brief, he pulled the city together after the Great Fire that devastated the city the year he was elected, and he set aside the land that became Stanley Park. He later served as police magistrate for the city until his death in 1895.
The love affair between Service and Constance McLean percolated while he was working on the Eureka stock farm in Cowichan Bay on Vancouver Island. It was the biggest farm in the district, established in 1883 by George Corfield, who built up great herds of Holsteins and Jerseys. When Service first arrived at the turn of the century he served as Corfield's official cattleman. He was relieved from this grueling work only he was tossed into the air by a bull.
After he was injured, Service became the storekeeper on the Corfield ranch and he was hired to tutor Corfield's sons. During his four years at Corfield's, Service attended dances, sang in the choir at St. Peter's Quamichan, joined the South Cowichan Lawn Tennis club (the earliest club of its kind in Canada), acted in theatrical groups and entertained by playing the guitar.
During one dance at nearby Duncan's Station (the forerunner of present-day Duncan), he met Constance McLean who was visiting her uncle in the district, Dr. Perry. Service was so smitten, he went back to his attic room and wrote "The Coming of Miss McLean"; and promptly mailed it to her. This previously unpublished love poem, which Mallory includes in her book, was in the cache of letters that McLean's daughters found in 1960. The originals are now in Queen's University Archives in Kingston, Ontario.
The lost-and-found poem has a characteristic Service ring to it:
Yes, she'll go away from Duncan's on the train
And their hearts will ever beat a sad refrain;
For the one they can't forget, the One they'll e'er regret,
The dancing fair, entrancing Miss McLean.
Service is world famous for his fanciful rhymes about the Klondike, but Mallory notes that some of his earliest poems were printed in Victoria's Daily Columnist after the editor met him on a fishing trip to the Cowichan Valley. Constance McLean seems to have been the inspiration behind his first major publication, a poem called "Apart and Yet Together,"; for which he received the princely sum of five dollars in 1903. It appeared in Munsey's Magazine, a New York journal with a circulation of 700,000.
Service was notoriously reticent about his personal life so the identification of Constance Mclean and the poem are significant discoveries. Service wrote two autobiographies late in the game, Ploughman of the Moon: An Adventure into Memory (1945) and Harper of Heaven: A Record of Radiant Living (1948), in which he generally withheld the names of family and friends. Such omissions may have been a legacy of the embarrassment he suffered after choosing the name Sam McGee randomly from the list of bank clients when he worked in Whitehorse. After "The Cremation of Sam McGee"; became popular, the owner of the name turned up and withdrew all his money from the bank.
Service's other reason for not mentioning his first love was that the protracted relationship was a painful memory. When they first met, Service was in no position to support a wife, let alone propose marriage to a socially prominent Vancouver woman. This predicament was similar to the frustrated romance that adversely affected Thomas Hardy for the rest of his writing days.
Robert Service left the farm and tried to enter university, but failed the entrance exam. His lack of professional success not only depressed him, but also caused some acrimonious exchanges between the lovers. Constance's descendants reported that her copy of Songs of a Sourdough fell open at "Quatrain,"; a poem that describes a debate between a first person narrator who believes that "We all were made or marred long ago"; and a speaker who counters that "Thy life is thine to make or mar.";
Service's experience as a bank clerk in Scotland helped him to find a position at the Bank of Commerce in Victoria. He and Constance continued to exchange letters and meet for some time after the bank had assigned him to its branch in the Yukon. Only Service's side of the correspondence has survived, and it indicates that during a 1908 leave in Vancouver, Constance agreed to marry him.
Again, Service was stymied by social convention. The bank had a policy forbidding its employees to marry until they possessed thirteen hundred dollars. At the end of his leave, he wrote movingly to her of his misery aboard a ship that was taking him back up north, towards the Yukon.
Service's autobiographical account of this period paints a different picture. There he accentuates his delight at returning to the Yukon. Perhaps there is some truth in both, for soon afterwards the affair lost its intensity, became a friendship, and eventually ended. Ultimately it appears as if Constance's most serious rival as Service's muse was the Yukon itself. Until her side of their correspondence is discovered and revealed, the true nature of the relationship can never be known for certain.
[Joan Givner writes in the Cowichan Valley, not far from where Robert Service worked as a cowhand, store clerk and tutor.]
Submitted on November 6, 2006 in By David.
