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

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The work for which Quinn is remembered was written mostly early in his life, but as
Brady said, he could afford to rest upon his laurels. He admired his gentleness and
his gentlemanlike demeanour as well as a certain quality of purity and romanticism
which he thought could best be described as childlike. Brady told Chisholm that he
thought Quinn should have been born in Athens or in England in Ben Johnson’s
time, or have been confrere with Marlowe and Shakespeare. Towards the later
stages of his life Quinn lived back in the past, reliving the 1890’s in thought and
spirit, while Brady envied the happiness his recollections brought him.
Quinn admired Brady’s work, especially that of his early period. After hearing
most of Brady’s poems read in manuscript, he still derived much pleasure from the
collected verse in The Ways of Many Waters. He wrote to Brady that he had read
them over and over so often that “I’m afraid any future verse of mine will sound
strangely like them. What a great picture maker you are! And how you catch the
spirit of dead old mariners – men who fought and drank and lusted in the days of
old.” 1 He tried to persuade Brady to attempt a great romantic poem with “love and
tragedy” but Brady did not succumb, perhaps fortunately. But such interchanges
were a solace to them both. At a time when their confidence had to be exchanged by
letter, Brady felt sorry for the separation, missing the intellectual challenge of
conversation. He lamented the loss to Quinn, referring to past joys and complaining:
“having sold my soul to the Devil of Duty aforetime, I am rarely in a mood for the
Real Things of Life – such as Literary Discussion.” 2
Even though Brady’s absence at Mallacoota meant that personal contact had to await
his visits to Sydney, which were reasonably frequent, the relationship between the
two never lost its original boyish enthusiasm. When Brady started as editor of The
Grip, Quinn sent a long letter for publication in the first issue, recalling how the two
had once set out to reform the world but probably had “never bettered a single man”.
But as he also admitted, those boyish enthusiasms did them good, helping to develop
in them a “desire to do humanity justice” and he evidences in Brady’s verse, which
he saw containing some “fine essentials – essentials which can only have their cradle
in the heart – without which no poetry was ever worth its salt.” 3
It was a sad day for Brady when Quinn died, although he had the consolation that his
friend had lived a long and satisfying life (he was eighty-two), far longer than the
fourth member of the association, Victor Daley, who had departed this life in 1905
at the age of forty-seven, and for whose family Brady had raised money as a
memorial gesture. Daley was the Bohemian of the group, a man of legendary and
practical jokes – Heptarch of the Dawn and Dusk Club to which many artists and
writers belonged. Brady tells of his first meeting with Daley, whose “Sunset
Phantasy” he had admired in the early Bulletin collection, The Golden Shanty. The
two met at Fred Bloomfield’s place, and along with Lawson and Bertram Stevens,
were taken out to dinner by W.A. Holman, then a young Parliamentarian. 4 This
meeting commenced a friendship which flourished, for the dash and high spirits of
this fellow-Celt appealed to Brady'’ good humour and flamboyance. Daley stayed
with him both at Bossley Park and for six months at Grafton. Writing of the
Bohemia of the 1890’s, full of ideas but empty of money, Brady recalled:
1
Quinn to Brady, 1.5.1899, in Mitchell Library.
2
Brady to Quinn, 7.10.1926, in possession of Walter Stone.
3
10.8.1901.
4
E.J. Brady, “Victor Daley”. The Bulletin, 16.4.1925.