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

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A simultaneous campaign in The Bookfellow lent strength to Brady’s words. Edward
Dyson had written on the problems of the Australian author in this magazine earlier in
the year and A.G. Stephens himself had written leaders on it and kept it before the
public gaze throughout 1907. 1 It was heartening too, to read in Brady’s second issue
that the Protection movement was causing great interest. Optimistically he wrote:
“The movement promises to become so strong and insistent that the inaesthetic
politician will be compelled to give the matter favourable consideration.” 2 He
strongly hinted that the Universities were not doing nearly as much as they could in
the field of stimulating an indigenous literature. “Are they wide, liberal, progressive
and potent, or at they merely exclusive schools of a superior class, ruled by
unimaginative academicians, absolutely out of sympathy with Australian ideals?”
The tone of his question left no doubt in the reader’s mind where Brady’s conclusions
lay.
In a manuscript among Brady’s papers appears an article which an accompanying
note states was published in 1910 and 1917, but which cannot be traced in its
published form. In this article much is made of the exodus of Australian writers and
artists to other countries because of conditions pertaining locally. In strong terms
Brady stated:
Every Australian writer and artist that I have known in twenty years’
association has been fervidly patriotic, profoundly anxious to see Australia
take her place among the great nations of the earth. Yet our writers and
artists have left and are leaving Australia by nearly every out-bound steamer –
starved out! A state of affairs such as this is little short of a national calamity.
Stating that he had received three letters from such involuntary exiles in one mail (all
wished to return and enquired if conditions had improved), Brady denied that
Australia was either too small ot too new to attain cultural eminence. He recalled how
people thought of Russia as Tolstoy, not the Czar, and of the united States in terms of
Whitman. Decrying the Australian worship of athletes rather than artists, he referred
to the current immigration programme for English farm workers, stating that it would
take many such people to replace Lambert, Minns, Mahoney, Roberts, Lindsay,
Longstaff, Dyson, Dorrington, Becke, Ogilvie and Louise Mack. Urging a policy of
Protection he wanted to know: “Why freetrade in sonnets and protection for socks?” 3
As well as urging a system of protection in this manner, Brady must have informally
suggested other means of alleviating the plight of writers and artists. He proposed a
plan to some of his friends whereby a colony of artists and writers would be
established at Mallacoota, providing congenial working conditions for a community
of people with common goals and relative freedom from city pressures. This was not
a concrete plan, but mere kite-flying. But he soon discovered that not all creative
people agreed with this escapism or segregation, some believing that the struggle for
existence brings out the sensitivity and temperament needed for real creativity. Hugh
McCrae was one of these, writing to A.G. Stephens about the proposal, exhibiting the
whimsical satire for which he is rightly known and treating the whole suggestions in a
serio-comic manner:
1 “The Australian Author”, The Bookfellow, 10.1.1907. Stephens wrote a leader on this topic
31.1.1907 and most issues made some reference to it.
2 The Native Companion, 1.9.1907, p.51.
3 “The Exodus of Brains”, undated manuscript among Brady’s papers in National Library.