MORNING SERIAL

“GOOD night, Frank. Good night, Mrs Jones. And – thank you. Thank you very much.” “Good night!”

The visits to Frank’s house continued and Ieuan became a regular weekly caller. The young couple grew very fond of him and treated him as though he were a son. Frank lent him the Jack London books, a gesture which Mrs Jones assured he would show only to his most intimate friend, for he regarded them as his most valued possessions.

These Ieuan read avidly until he became as enamoured of the writer as Frank. Jack London’s tales of hoboing South in The Road, his stories of life and adventure in the South Seas and the frozen vastnesses of the Yukon thrilled him. But thrills and adventure were not enough. He read the essays on revolution, and the prophetic Iron Heel awakened him to the class struggle of which Frank had spoken to him often in the quiet evenings at the fireside in Prospect Place.

Here was a writer who had struggled against adversity, and, by sheer grit and determination, had won through to a position of eminence in the American world of literature. All his life had been devoted to the finest cause of the liberation of mankind.

Ieuan joined the public library. The first volumes he brought home from the bookshelves were two heavily bound biographies of Jack London, by his wife Charmain, and these gave him a glimpse of the writer as a man, a human personality distinct from the artist. And he came to love him as though he were a brother, moved to deep compassion and pity when he came to the closing chapters describing Jack London’s tragic death. He realised then how Frank must have felt, and the author’s countless admirers. The loss of such a virile, lovable and courageous man was a tremendous blow to progressively thinking people all over the world.

Influenced by Frank, he began to interest himself in politics. The desire to study and learn consumed him.