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)