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

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Entertaining and beguiling as they are, it is soon obvious that they are really only
three young confidence men. Their tale is told to the editor of The Arrow 1 complete
with spelling errors, faults in grammar and juvenile mispronunciations. Although
some of these are undoubtedly humorous they soon become tedious in the extreme
and detract from any force they tale might have. Its chief interest might well be to the
student of language interested in the boyhood slang of the period. It is surprising to
find there modern slang terms such as “rort”, “guyver”, “cooshy” having their present
meanings. There are many coined words, such as the rather appropriate
“sanctimonimaniacs”, and broad humour always, especially when the larrikins
“board” in a tomb in the old Devonshire Street Cemetery before they go worldwalking.
The cove that the grave belonged to was a deacon or somehink in a church,
an’ Charley he shifted ‘im in with an ole lady what has been renowned for
piety an’ good works, so ‘er inscription sed, an’ the deacon an’ the ole woman
they got along all right enough together. 2
The obvious comparison with this sort of writing is with Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer
or Huckleberry Finn. Yet Twin has enough literary sensitivity to use this kind of
writing sparingly in proportion to the whole book, while Brady does not. Twain’s
boys speak rougher, less lucid dialect, but recognising that its continual use can be
wearing, he sets it amongst more orthodox passages, but Brady exercises no such
discretion and the serial suffers as a result; it is not until Brady’s last serial, “A
Younger Quixote”, that he uses dialect with restraint and moderation. With all its
faults however, the “Juvenile World Walkers” has its entertaining moments, building
up a picture of the three enterprising young rascals who, for all their cunning, make
many of the mistakes usually made by the new-chum in the bush (such as making tea
from salt water). Country people are again revealed as unsophisticated but shrewd,
idealist and severely practical. The most that can be said of this serial is that it filled
the space in Brady’s magazine, not doubt caused some amusement among those
readers who took the trouble to wrestle with its tortuous language, but it is not really
worth discussion or preservation. One character worthy of mention is Carbine, a
horse who lived on Bathurst burrs, prickly pear and Scotch thistles and who was so
thin that observers concluded he was “only walking around to avoid funeral
expenses”.
The next serial, remarkable chiefly for its length of forty episodes (with an extra
bridging instalment to the next serial) is variously entitled “War in the Transvaal” or
“The South African War”. Australia’s first real involvement in a war (the Soudan
Contingent had returned, much to the Bulletin’s amusement, mainly with accidental
and self-inflicted wounds? Was in the Boer conflict and it drew much attention from
the press. This was a topical serial, therefore, and on a controversial subject. Again is
evidenced Brady’s fertile imagination, his dry humour, the many sly innuendoes
aimed at all kinds of people institutions and human foibles in general. As before, the
narrator is accompanied by the faithful Cumbo, whose mutilation of the English
language is hard to endure but who is necessary to the long, fragmentary and
spasmodic plot. There is little overall coherence in the serial; the general effect is
almost surrealistic in its constantly changing fortunes, its zany, fast-moving events,
many of then straining the reader’s credulity, and the bantering lightness of its tone
and commentary. Was is fought “on an extended Christian scale” and described with
vividness, vigour and humour, along with an ironic analysis made of the frailties and
gullibility of humans.
1 24.6.1899 to 15.9.1899
2 24.6.1899, p.4.