Tag Archives: Marjory Fleming

Marjory Fleming by Oriel Malet

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Marjory Fleming by Oriel Malet was first published in 1946 by Faber and Faber, but it has more recently been reprinted by Persephone Books, it’s their number 17.

Marjory was born in 1803 in Kirkcaldy and buried there too at the age of just eight. We lived in Kirkcaldy for 26 years and her grave is in Abbotshall Church, near where we lived. After her death she was regarded as a bit of a child prodigy because she left behind her quite a lot of her writing which is now housed in the National Library of Scotland. Robert Louis. Stevenson wrote  “Marjory Fleming was possibly – no, I take back possibly – she was one of the noblest works of God.”

Oriel Malet has written a fictional account of Marjory’s short life. The family lived above a bookshop in the High Street, but from the age of 6 she was taken to live with her much wealthier cousins in Edinburgh. Cousin Isabella was keen to take on Marjory as a bit of a project and strangely Marjory’s parents were happy to giver her up to that branch of the family – for three years!

No doubt Marjory was very happy to be in a much wealthier and more sociable household, it’s thought that she may have met the young Walter Scott there as he was a friend of the family. I can’t help thinking that as she seemed to be the life and soul of her own family (maybe too much for her mother to handle) it must have been a wrench for her father whom she seems to have most resembled in personality.

Anyway, we don’t even know for sure what it was that killed Marjory but it was probably some form of meningitis. The memorial to her in Abbotshall Church was only erected in 1930. I did read Pet Marjory by Dr John Brown some years ago which had more of her actual writing in it as I recall.

Sadly my copy doesn’t have the dust jacket.

 

Marjory Fleming (Pet Marjory)

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I had thought that Marjory Fleming was just about forgotten now, plenty of people local to Kirkcaldy have never heard of her. So I was really surprised to discover that she was being discussed on Fleur Fisher Reads confessions of a Cornish bookworm – a lovely blog.I hadn’t heard of the Persephone book by Oriel Malet called Marjory Fleming but people seem to be enjoying reading it.

Fleur did reply to my comment that it sounds like I’m living in a lovely place so I think that Oriel has used her artistic licence as I would say that the Kirkcaldy area is one of the least scenic places in Scotland that I know of. It was probably very dirty and smelly when Marjory was living here too.

Marjory was happiest when she was living with her cousin in Edinburgh. Isabella encouraged Marjory to keep a journal, which she did until she died of meningitis when she was not quite 9 years old. I read it years ago and seem to remember that it was quite a charming but sad read given how quickly her life was over. She is buried in Abbotshall Churchyard, Kirkcaldy.

Probably nothing would ever have been known of her at all if it wasn’t for Sir Walter Scott who was a distant relative by marriage.

Abbotshall Church looks the same from the outside as it did when Marjory died in 1811 but internally it has been gutted and modernised, sometime around 1960 probably. Such a shame.