It's that time of the year...

...when bushes wear necklaces.


To L.H.B (1894-1915)
by Katherine Mansfield

Last night for the first time since you were dead
I walked with you, my brother, in a dream.
We were at home again beside the stream
Fringed with tall berry bushes, white and red.
“Don’t touch them: they are poisonous,” I said.
But your hand hovered, and I saw a beam
Of strange, bright laughter flying round your head.
And as you stopped I saw the berries gleam.
“Don’t you remember? We called them Dead Man’s Bread!”
I woke and heard the wind moan and the roar
Of the dark water tumbling on the shore.
Where – where is the path of my dream for my eager feet?
By the remembered stream my brother stands
Waiting for me with berries in his hands…
“These are my body.  Sister, take and eat.”


On October 6, 1915, just one week after spending leave in England with his sister, and a little over one week before that sister’s birthday, Leslie Heron Beauchamp died in Ploegsteert Wood, near Messines, Belgium.  He was instructing troops in the use of grenades when one malfunctioned, causing his death from loss of blood within a short space of time.   

Beauchamp’s sister was the writer Katherine Mansfield (1888-1923). For the rest of her life, she was haunted by his death. (She also died in the month of October.)




Bryony berries are toxic, though not deadly. I don't know if they were what these children called 'dead men's bread'  (they grew up in New Zealand) but I imagine it was just a ghoulish sense of  humour that later came to symbolise a tragic accidental death.