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

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He must be able to work 23 hours 593/4 minutes out of the 24, drink, ride,
shoot, swim, swear, fight, sketch, talk, bow nicely to a woman, flatter a
Cabinet Minister, drive an engine, sail a boat, pick a lock, obtain information
from a policeman, tip the winner, carry on a conversation with a deaf-mute,
go without a dinner and avoid getting a red nose. Unless a man has all these
capacities and about a thousand others he will never make more than his salt
as member of the Press. 1
Whether he was writing against the evils of capital punishment, the difficult working
conditions of the Australian seaman or the need to substitute arbitration for the
fighting in the Boer War, the necessity to have more news of the way and less
censorship of it, Brady was exercising many of the skills which he saw as part of the
journalist’s stock-in-trade. Throughout all his writings ran an irrepressible humour
and optimism – thoroughly blended with patriotism; this led to readable articles, if not
always written in greatly – endearing “literary” style.
He became more literary in his editorial work with The Native Companion, On taking
over its editor’s chair from Bertram Stevens in 1907, Brady started a new series of the
magazine and as was his custom, began with a literary manifesto (or rather, an artistic
one):
The New Series of The Native Companion, enlarged, will be illustrated by Line
Drawings. No Photos, no Half-tone Blocks will be used. This is a somewhat
new departure in modern magazine publication. The Editor’s idea is to give
the Artist a chance. The artistic eye, which is the window of the aesthetic soul,
perceives something more in a subject than the lines of a photographic
instrument. It is that ‘something more; which The Native Companion, in its
own way, and in the fulness of time, hopes to develop, the publication has been
put before the personality; the individuality of the contributor was subserved
to the idiosyncrasy of the editor. As a result, the writer and the artist worked
more to please the editor than to please themselves, to express that which is in
them – nearest to the heart. In order to give a Voice to Australian Genius,
which will be something more than the photographic repetition of our own
literary policy, we have decided not to adopt a literary policy at all. 2
Of course, while such a statement no doubt appeared attractive to the prospective
contributor, it was one impossible to sustain in practice. To have no policy was t print
everything offered to the journal, and this of course, would plainly be impossible in
terms of the production of a readable magazine of any literary merit whatsoever. But
Brady meant that The Native Companion would not make a statement of policy which
would prevent the free expression of ideas on important topics merely because they
were against the personal policy of the editor – a different state of affairs. But here
was merely another example of the Brady flamboyancy – the desire to achieve an
effect without full concern for the implications of th4e activity. It was not really
irresponsible of him; it was rather a display of what might be called journalistic flair –
a quality the man often exhibited, especially when prospects ahead looked favourable,
as they did at this time.
1 “In Rags –Amateur Journalism in Australia: The Troubles of Newspaper Proprietors”, Bird-O’-
Freedom, 20.4.1895, p.5
2 The Native Companion, 29.5.1907