robert service week continued, Ballads of a Bohemian

To-day is an anniversary. A year ago to-day I kicked over an office stool and came to Paris thinking to make a living by my pen. I was twenty then, and in my pocket I had twenty pounds. Of that, my ten ~sous~ are all that remain. And so to-night I am going to spend them, not prudently on bread, but prodigally on beer.
-Spring 1914 from "Ballads of a Bohemian"

Robert Service began his life as a poet and a wanderer at a young age. He was born in England in 1874, and at the age of 15 followed in his father's footsteps as a banker. Alas, his banking career was shortlived and in 1896 he immigrated to Canada where he took up ranching with his younger brother. The life of a farmer was also unable to hold him, after only 18 months he set off for California. He spent the next 6 years traveling up and down the Pacific Coast. He found the exciting western lifestyle that he was looking for and soon began writing. He wrote fast and furiously and published several volumes of poetry and a novel about the western life.

His travels included but were not limited to: living in New York, traveling to Louisiana, Cuba, Alberta, from which he returned to the Yukon by canoe. In 1913 he moved to Paris and when the war broke out he joined the red cross. In his lifetime he traveled extensively in Europe. Although he dearly loved Paris, when he married he purchased a villa in Brittany.

To this day, Canada claims him, but I'm inclined to think that for all the joy it brought him at the time, he was happy to leave the rough and tumble of the Yukon and gold miners behind to instead devote himself to the beauty of a less harsh life.

Hurrah! As I opened my eyes this morning to a hard, unfeeling world, little did I think what a surprise awaited me. A big blue envelope had been pushed under my door. Another rejection, I thought, and I took it up distastefully. The next moment I was staring at my first cheque.

It was an express order for two hundred francs, in payment of a bit of verse....So to-day I will celebrate. I will lunch at the D'Harcourt,I will dine on the Grand Boulevard, I will go to the theater.

Well, here's the thing that has turned the tide for me. It is somewhat in the vein of "Sourdough" Service, the Yukon bard.
I don't think much of his stuff, but they say he makes heaps of money. I can well believe it, for he drives a Hispano-Suiza in the Bois every afternoon. The other night he was with a crowd at the Dome Cafe, a chubby chap who sits in a corner and seldom speaks. I was disappointed. I thought he was a big, hairy man who swore like a trooper and mixed brandy with his beer. He only drank Vichy, poor fellow!
-from Ballads of a Bohemian


As I stroll down the Boul' Mich' the lingering light has all
the exquisite tenderness of violet; the trees are in their first
translucent green; beneath them the lamps are lit with purest gold, and from the Little Luxembourg comes a silver jangle of tiny voices. Taking the gay side of the street, I enter a cafe.
-from Ballads of a Bohemian