The Centenary of 'The Spell of Sarnia' by Mrs Baillie Reynolds

The Spell of Sarnia, which was published one hundred years ago this month, is set on Guernsey (Sarnia is one of its older names). This is one of the Channel Islands, which are not part of the United Kingdom but belong to the English Crown in the monarch’s historical role as Duke of Normandy. Mrs Baillie Reynolds had clearly researched the island’s customs, folklore, laws and surviving Norman French language (Guernésiais) in some detail and is occasionally a little too keen to share her studies. Still, the island would be little-known to most of her readers and she conveys its unusual qualities evocatively.

Mrs Baillie Reynolds was the married name and writing name of Gertrude Robins (1861-1939), the author of about fifty popular novels. Typically, they have a strong romantic interest involving an enigmatic young man and a high-spirited young woman, who become entwined in some mystery. For such a prolific, well-established author she has received surprisingly little attention.

The romantic interest in The Spell of Sarnia focuses on Aymon Vauxlaurens, the last scion of a line of Seigneurs of a manorial estate in a far corner of the island. His family became impoverished, the great house has been sold, and it is now a sports club. He works as an insurance clerk in London. However, he has been summoned back to the island by his last known surviving relation, a Great Aunt. She urges him to buy, with his modest patrimony, a run-down former pharmacy once owned by the family. She thinks this holds the secret to a highly prized perfume, the Sarnian Bouquet, once perfected by the family but whose formula is now lost. The quest for the fragrance provides the chief mystery in the plot, along with the possibility of other legacies, and they are gradually uncovered in highly traditional treasure-hunting hiding places. Thus far the plot follows conventional routes.

However, Baillie Reynolds also depicts a strong folkloric element based on rural witchcraft. A neighbour of the Great Aunt is a white witch and she has seven times received a verse prophecy, somewhat in the manner of Nostradamus, concerning the young Seigneur. Some parts of it can perhaps be deciphered, but other parts are obscure, and the aged dame herself does not know what it means: she is only the messenger. The Seigneur is respectful but somewhat sceptical and wonders if she has been put up to it. A malevolent witch, adept in curses, is her opponent. The Seigner has his own opponent in an ambitious tycoon, the owner of the sports club, who is buying up other property on the island. 

How far Baillie Reynolds drew on genuine traditions of Guernsey witchcraft and folk customs must remain a bit moot. She was writing in the aftermath of Margaret Murray’s highly influential The Witch-Cult in Western Europe (1921), when ideas of surviving witch traditions were very much in vogue and were deployed by other writers in the interwar period.

As well as the ancient beldame there is a psychic young woman of notably otherworldly appearance and demeanour, Oriane Vidal, who also seems to have secret knowledge of the perfume. She possesses a crystal ball and induces Vauxlaurens to look into it after dinner one evening, revealing an apparent vision of the past. He puts this down to her mesmeric influence and the strength of her father’s vintage wine. She suggests his lineage may give him a sort of intense insight equivalent to second sight:

‘In this island . . . everything and everyone is condensed to a degree which would startle people who are not natives. You inherit the tradition of a family which has been bone and flesh of Guernsey for hundreds of years. You have been away—you have suddenly returned. The whole of your heredity rises as it were to meet you on the threshold . . . Your destiny lies here . . . lies here condensed. You feel it so strongly that it makes you uneasy . . .

In the fencing and misunderstandings that ensue between Aymon and Oriane I was reminded somewhat of the amatory complications in David Lindsay's Sphinx and The Violet Apple, and indeed this book helps to show the sort of context in which his novels appeared, including the way in which fantastical elements could be woven into an otherwise fairly typical romance story.

The novel culminates in two more overtly supernatural episodes, one involving mind control by hypnotic power, the other a demonic goat, though in both cases the possibility of delusion is left open. The author quotes a West Country phrase used as a protection against evil, ‘numny dumny’, a colloquial version of ‘in nomine domine’. Author Bob Mann has noted this is also used in ghost stories by Ulric Daubeny and A.L. Rowse.

Baillie Renolds’ tale is told with ease and charm, but the supernatural aspects offer another dimension and, despite gestures towards rationalisation, they are not disowned. This aspect does not really enter the realms of the truly unearthly, but it is much more than window-dressing: The Spell of Sarnia is a genuine work of supernatural fiction. The author revealed in an interview with The Bookman that she began by telling made-up ghost stories to her brother, so evidently this was a lifelong interest. Baillie Reynolds also conveys well Guernsey's distinctive historic resonances.

(Mark Valentine)

Best British Short Stories 2025

 

Best British Short Stories 2025 edited by Nicholas Royle (Salt Publishing), just published, includes my short story ‘Laughter Ever After’ (from Lost Estates, Swan River Press, 2024), and contributions from, among others, Roger Luckhurst, Wyl Menmuir, Alison Moore, Simon Okotie, Imogen Reid, C. D. Rose, and Iain Sinclair.

My story came about in an unusual way. I was contributing entries to Literary Hauntings, A Gazetteer of Literary Ghost Stories, co-edited with R B Russell and Rosalie Parker (Tartarus Press, 2022). We wanted to have at least one entry for every county, but this looked a bit tricky for some of the smaller shires, and we could not at first think of any ghost story set in Bedfordshire.

I therefore wrote a fictional entry (it is a tradition for such guides to have at least one of these) about the quest for a rare ghost story booklet published in Biggleswade in that county. It begins: 'In the unattributed ‘Laughter Ever After’, an assiduous collector of ghost stories is in pursuit of a tale he has read about in a gazetteer of ghost stories but has never been able to find.'

However, it was then suggested that the story at least (if not the booklet) ought to exist, and so I had a go at writing it. The story is about the protagonist seeking for the rare ghost story pamphlet described in the entry. There’s probably something about metafiction I ought to invoke here but I’m not sure I can work it out. Anyway, the fictional entry in the gazetteer is for a story about the quest for a rare ghost story booklet mentioned in a gazetteer, and the actual, but subsequent, story is about the quest for the same booklet.

As it happened, we didn’t need the invented entry anyway, because shortly after I discovered that the climax of The Beetle by Richard Marsh is a spectacular train crash just outside Luton railway station in Bedfordshire, with a notably grotesque disintegration of the villain. But we still kept the imaginary (but now becoming more real) entry.

There were two other components of the story. One was the journeys I made in my youth on the great green swaying United Counties buses to obscure South Midlands towns in search of I didn’t quite know what, probably just the journey itself (although admittedly Biggleswade doesn’t have quite the same ring as Ithaca). The other was a record that was always on the radio in those days, ‘The Laughing Policeman’ by Charles Penrose, who was born in Biggleswade, the son of a watchmaker. I had often wondered about what else he did and how he felt about being mostly known for this one rather peculiar song. 

If you like the sound of any of these things, rare ghost story booklets, book-collectors, bus rides or vintage music hall artists, all with a twist of wonder, well, this might be the story for you. And, if not, to judge from his earlier anthologies in the series, Nicholas Royle will also have gathered a gallimaufry of adventurous and unusual shorter fiction for your delight.

(Mark Valentine)