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

The old restlessness, which had captivated Brady on so many previous occasions,
began to make its presence felt again. Soon the paper carried the announcement that
the partnership between Brady and Susan Penrose was dissolved, owing to the
pressing nature of his city business, and after selling his interest to his partner for 220
pounds, he left Grafton. He had gained valuable experience, had increase his
confidence in his own abilities, but had again demonstrated that perseverance was not
his strongest personal trait. Deciding to turn his journalistic experience to good use,
along with his wide-ranging commercial, political and literary contacts, he set up the
Commonwealth Press Agency in Elizabeth Street, Sydney to sell advertising space in
city and country newspapers and to provide a Sydney Letter of current metropolitan
news to those country papers which would accept it in return for advertising space. 1
In this capacity, Brady supplied publicity for political parties, for advertising
campaigns (such as for surplus dried fruit) and advertised sporting and social events.
Although this activity kept him very busy, he was still always on the look out for
other avenues of finance. He proposed publishing an Australian Annual Sporting
Review and Calendar to collect records and sporting results, but this project bore no
fruit. Eustace Tracey stated in friendship that if all Brady’s schemes had born fruit, he
would have been an extremely wealthy man instead of the indigent he usually was. 2
But even so, it is true to say that these years were some of the best for Brady, as he
recalls:
The office of the C.P.A. (E.J. Brady sole proprietor) is in full swing. Poets,
artists, canvassers journalists, politicians come and go. I wear a silk hat and
a frock coat for business reasons. I have a pleasant home at Watson’s Bay, a
host of good friends and a fair number of commercial supporters. Life is
entirely interesting. I am building up! Making a fair average income, writing
verses at the weekend, sea bathing on Sunday morning in a secluded rock pool
just under the Hornby light with friendly fellows from the Bay and an
occasional acquaintance from uptown. 3
The Press Agency’s income was soon supplemented, furthermore, by six pounds
weekly which Brady received as editor of the Labor paper The Worker, from August
1904. There was a kind of poetic justice in this event for as Black had earlier
succeeded Brady as editor of The Australian Workman, so now Brady followed him to
The Worker. The appointment was made by Hector Lamond, Secretary of the Board
of Control, and was terminable upon four weeks’ notice from either side. Perhaps
remembering the previous experience with Bray, Lamond stated that no new
departure from policy could be made without approval of the Board of Control or the
Manager. 4
1 The agency was registered 224.6.1903. It had been begun by a young man whom A.C. Rowlandson
spoke of as “that brilliant but irresponsible young Australian, the late W.B. Melville, (who) left one
fine morning to pursue elusive fortune in South Africa”. R. Wynn and others, The Late Alfred Cecil
Rowlandson: Pioneer Publisher of Australian Novels (Sydney 1922), p. 15. Melville generously gave
Brady a list of all his advertising contacts in city and country newspapers.
2 During an interview with the writer, Melbourne, May 1969. Tracey worked with Brady for many
years and later proved a very firm friend when conditions for Brady were difficult.
3 Handwritten foreword to Sydney Harbour, 1937, in Mitchell Library
4 Lamond to brady, 15.9.1904, in National Library
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