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

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As it turns out, all this is true enough; but it is poor policy to show one’s hand so early
in the game; nor is this an isolated instance.
The fact that Brady is using his father’s notes as well as other sources leads to
confusion. There are places where these notes are quoted at length without any
special indication, so there are times when one is not sure which of two is speaking.
Obviously the publisher must share the responsibility for this state of affairs, and for
the lack of directness when almost a whole chapter (“Bandits in Decline”) is given to
a general discussion of bushranging without any great relevance to the actual
narrative. And while Brady’s understatement, a purely personal characteristic evident
in more of his writing, can be amusing, it can also become irritating as when he
recounts the Indian practice of scalping their captives.
The function of a biography is to shed light on its subject, to set him in his period and
to show what influences impinged upon him, as well as the results of this impact. A
good biography should also entertain as well as inform. Looked at in this light, Two
Frontiers is a limited success. Edward John Brady emerges as a man of action – a
tough man in all senses of the word - who fights the battle of life to the full. But we
do not see inside the man – to his feelings and motivations, nor his relationships with
others except at the most superficial levels, even when the author has first-hand
knowledge of the man as a member of his family. As a collection of incidents with
the common denominator of a brave, tough man; as a social document giving a picture
of a way of life long since passed, the book has interest and even value. But it
reflects, in no small measure, all the strengths and weaknesses of Brady’s prose. It
bears the stamp of his personality and his journalistic tricks of detail and style too
heavily and deeply. One is left regretting that a more disciplined control had not been
exercised over its writing and publication.
Similar strengths and weaknesses are to be found in the unpublished manuscript, John
Archibald: Life and Times of a Great Editor, written by Brady in the early 1940’s as
far as can be ascertained, for the volume itself is undated. 1 Several attempts have
been made to have it published, but it was regarded, quite rightly, as being too much
about Brady and not enough about Archibald’s life and achievement. Consisting of
over two hundred pages, the biography contains Archibald’s will in an Appendix and
a further seventy pages of impressions of the editor collected by Brady from
colleagues such as Norman Lindsay, Sir Lionel Lindsay, Roderic Quinn, Bertha
Lawson, Joseph Furphy, Bernard O’Down, Marie J. Pitt and a dozen others – views
which add considerably to the picture of Archibald.
Regarding Archibald as the “pioneer of this country’s cultural expression”, Brady
states in the Foreword that “Without the opportunities that he created for us out of his
unique editorial perception and native patriotism, our foundational literature might
have been a pale imitative thing – bloodless and conventional.” While this is true to a
degree, it ignores the fact that Australian literature had already begun, in a small way
with Harpur and to a larger degree with Kendall, to be Australian-oriented rather than
looking towards England, but certainly Archibald gave the movement impetus and
form through his policies. Having said this, Brady might reasonably have been
expected to bring out in the biography, by clear argument and documented details, the
validity of this claim and the manner in which it was accomplished, but it is valid to
judge that he did not achieve this.
1 Two copies of this manuscript have been located. One is owned by Oscar Mendelsohn, Melbourne,
and the other was bought, compassionately, from Brady’s widow by the New South Wales Branch of
the Australian Journalists’ Association.