A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY OF EDWIN JAMES BRADY - Mallacoota ...

102
Considering the fact that many of Brady’s verses have elements of his own experience
obvious within them – place names, actual events of his boyhood and youth, his
journalistic experiences and emotional crises (for example the disappointments of his
early marriages), his travels to Malaya and Queensland particularly, as well as his
settling at Mallacoota, it is surprising to find so little trace of war. A trip along the
western road to Bathurst evokes nostalgic recollections of boyhood and yet goes
beyond this to arouse thoughts in him of previous travellers, of bearded diggers, of
Macquarie, his wife and “warlike guard and retinue”. In his imagination he hears “the
clank of iron chains” of the convict gangs who “With sneering lips and leering eyes –
gray ghosts of buried crime” build a way for new and more honest feet to tread. 1 Yet
having lived through two major wars and several minor ones, exposed to casualty
figures and ration books, war news and propaganda, there is almost no mention of
way or any place where Brady acknowledges its existence except in The Arrow
serials. “Call to Arms” is a rather stirring exception in verse, querying whether the
contemporary generation can equal the men of the 1914-18 conflict in integrity and
valour, to have the answer given: “By the old tradition, we will live – or die”; he
receives assurance from it. 2 The only other instance of note is a poignant lyric
regretting the burial of slain soldiers in foreign lands:
And, when returning Springtimes hold
A captive bush in chains of gold;
When, droning in the crested trees,
One hears the working song of bees,
And, rose and amethyst, the Morn
On dewy wings is hillward borne,
I would that he might nearer lie
Beneath his own Shoalhaven sky. 3
True, a querulous poem, “Man” declaims against slavery in any form and deplores
those times when a nation’s youth is doomed for slaughter, when “Hell’s bells
insanely chime / A Devil’s Mass” and “Moloch’s fiery altars glow / With lethal
steel”. 4 But it seems that a man with a social conscience so well-developed as
Brady’s might have used his art in adding his plea for peace and his urgings against
the follies of war.
Brady’s verses often show many signs of needing further polish and refinement.
However most of the manuscripts show a fair amount of change and alteration to
individual words. rarely did he alter the basic rhythm – in fact, he made too much of
it, bending and distorting the word-order to conform to the metre. When his forst
book of verse appeared in 1899, a reviewer commented that “the trail of Stephens is
conspicuous by its absence” but this was not strictly true. Stephens did assis Brady in
many of the verses which went into The Bulletin, often querying individual words and
particularly checking punctuation, which was not Brady’s strong point. A proof copy
of the title poem from this first book is among Stephen’s collection of newscuttings of
Brady’s verses. 5 Stephen’s comments are in the characteristic violet ink (“What’s a
ketos?”) and Brady’s alterations appear in red in his usual neat writing. The final
stanza, in which only one small change occurred, has not been reproduced.
1 “The Western Road”, Bells and Hobbles.
2 “Call to Arms (1940)”, The Bulletin, 28.8.1940
3 “A Grave in France”, The Bulletin, 27.4.1922
4 “Man”, Rhymes of Revolt manuscript.
5 In the Mitchell Library.