Katie and Chummie: Death in the Family

Abstract

Throughout the First World War The Times published daily casualty lists — ‘Rolls of Honour’ — that reflected the terrible toll the war was taking on the young men of Britain. At the end of October 1915, Prime Minister Herbert Asquith reported to Parliament that there had been nearly half-a-million casualties.2 Among the dead and missing officers listed on 26 October of that year appeared the following: ACCIDENTALLY KILLED. Beauchamp, Sec. Lt. L. H. 8th S. Lancs Regt.3 Leslie Heron Beauchamp was, of course, Katherine Mansfield’s brother, and it was his death that is widely acknowledged to have been the catalyst that precipitated a fundamental shift in the nature of her work. As she impressed upon her father in a letter, ‘the loss of our darling one […] has changed the course of my life for ever’.4 There have been those who feel that Mansfield’s reaction bordered on the histrionic, given what they see as the very limited contact between the siblings over the years. Margaret Scott observes, however: ‘There are evidences — unpublished until now — that Leslie was always important to KM. […] All the pain and grief she felt were truly felt.’5 In this essay the nature and extent of this brother-sister relationship will be explored, with particular reference to relevant correspondence in the Alexander Turnbull Library (ATL) and to hitherto unexamined War Office records in the National Archives.