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

The Jupiter of this luminous group was Victor Daley, a jovial migrant from
County Armagh, half Irish, half Scotch, whose ‘songs and sonnets carven in
fine gold’ display a poetic craftsmanship of highest quality. Daley was an
inspired castaway on a colonial shore, but the Australian atmosphere suited
his sunny temperament. He loved literature with a Celtic fervour. He was an
artist to the finger-tips, and despite his Bohemianism, the cleanest-minded
man I have ever know. This freckle-faced, bearded, brown-eyed little high
priest of local letters was always full of philosophy and humour. 1
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Daley’s verse was much appreciated by his fellows. It was more in the line of
Quinn’s than in the traditional pattern of bush themes. In fact, Daley remarked rather
scathingly how our “local lyre is strung with horse-hair” 2 and as a result of these
attitudes his own poetry is more universal in outlook than national. The “Sunset
Phantasy” which Brady admired is delicate, but lacks the emotional depth of a true
love lyric. A.G. Stephens regarded Daley’s poetry as “cold-blooded” and this is true.
Most of Daley’s contemporaries in the Dawn and Dusk Club considered Daley a
better poet than Lawson, quite rightly, seeing him having a “more subtle sense of
poetical construction, a finer ear, greater delicacy of touch, more culture and
sophistication”, 3 though he lacked Lawson’s life and genuineness of emotional
warmth and control
Brady’s enthusiasms run away with him when he talks of Daley’s work. He compares
him to Keats. Prout refers to Brady as Daley’s greatest aadmirer; Chisholm remarked
that such a claim seemed too sweeping until he read some of Daley’s poems many
times. He responded to Daley’s “Night” as he did to “Ode to a Nightingale”,
especially to the section:
Ah, Mother dear! broad-bosomed Mothr Earth!
Mother of all out joy, grief, madness, mirth!
Mother of flowers and fruit, of stream and sea!
We are thy children and must cling to thee. 4
Bertram Stevens gave Daley considerable space in his anthology, including the fragile
“Dreams” wherein the poet contemplates the transience of life in the face of the
creativity which produced “love-lyrics delicate as lilac-scent” and “soft idylls woven
of wind, and flower, and stream”. But even this delicate inspiration is short-lived:
My songs and sonnets carven in fine gold
Have faded from me with the last day-beam.
That purple lustre to the sea-line lent,
And flushed the clouds with rose and chrysolite;
So days and dreams in darkness pass away. 5
Many tales are told about Daley’s high spirits; the parading of the Daily Telegraph
around the town in a hearse, the dressing up as a bishop, and the gaining of money
from Traill by falsely pretending Grey had died, 6 all make interesting reading,
revealing a humour and a humanity thoroughly enjoyable. It is understandable,
therefore, that Brady felt a deep loss at Daley’s death. He and Quinn stood over the
grave, on the headstone of which was written:
1 “Literary Mateship”, a Brady manuscript among his papers in National Library.
2 Quoted by R. Croll, I Recall: Collections and Recollections (Melbourne, 1939), p.58.
3 “Denton Prout”, Henry Lawson: The Grey Dreamer, p.171.
4 A.H. Chisholm, The Joy of the Earth (Sydney, 1969), p.216.
5 Bertram Stevens (ed.) The Golden Treasury of Australian Verse (London, 1913).
6 Told by Brady in “Bohemians of the Eighteen Nineties – Victor Daley” in Life Digest, 1.7.1947.