Marmaduke — Reading Notes

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In Category - Exploration Survival Adventure Tales

Authors: Steel, Flora Annie Webster, 1847-1929 Digital Source: Project Gutenberg Gutenberg Release Year: 2012 First Publication Year: Not confirmed

Key Word: Inheritance and succession -- Fiction; Scotland -- Fiction Target Reader: Readers of public-domain and historical texts

Book Edition: Project Gutenberg digital edition Book Language: en

Edition facts

Words 81,925

Reading time 357 min

Text sections 10

For Marmaduke — Reading Notes, the stored edition analysis reports 81,925 words, 5 hr 57 min estimated reading time, and 10 detected text sections.

The text analysis averages about 16.8 words per sentence, while the detected sections provide another way to judge how the source is divided.

Project Gutenberg metadata also associates the work with “Inheritance and succession -- Fiction,” connecting these edition facts with the source record’s subject description.

Source: Project Gutenberg record #39857

Flora Annie Steel's 'Marmaduke' follows the Honourable Captain Marmaduke Muir's return to Scotland and his entanglement with Marrion Paul, a woman of lower station. The narrative shifts between broad Doric dialect and formal English, reflecting class tensions and emotional distance.

Editorial Edition Score 4.8/5

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Description quality20 pts
Title & short description10 pts
Source metadata20 pts
Text length15 pts
Chapters / structure15 pts
EPUB file integrity20 pts

Total of 100 points, scaled to a 2.5-5.0 range. Editions with an empty description or a missing EPUB file are not scored.

Edition quality

File: pg39857

Read the Text

They were as fine a couple physically as God ever made to come together as man and woman. They were almost alike in stature and strength--she slightly the smaller--and both seemed equal in abounding health, though he was florid and she somewhat pale with the pallor of the thick creamy skin that goes with red-bronze hair.

She spoke at last, the thin curves of her mouth clipping her words sharply.

"There's mony to tell me yon and crave kisses since you an' me was hafflins together, Mr. Duke," she said coolly. "I beg yer pardon, Captain Marmaduke!"

The Honourable Captain Marmaduke Muir, second son of the sixteenth Baron Drummuir of Drummuir, home on leave after an absence of ten years on foreign service, looked at the grand-daughter of his father's head piper and general majordomo as if considering anger. He was too good looking to be accustomed to such rebuffs from pretty girls, especially when they were manifestly beneath him in station. Then suddenly he laughed. The years had fled, and he was a boy again in fast fellowship with a small hoyden of a girl; a girl four years his junior, but infinitely his superior in common sense; a girl who had kept him out of many a scrape and who hadn't scrupled on occasion to box his ears, young master though he was. With a sudden flash of memory the occasion came back to him, and he saw himself, a strong lad of fourteen, wading a swollen stream with the ten-year-old girlie on his back, a string of handsome trouties he had been catching hanging like a tail from his hands clasped behind his burden. He heard the agonised cry in mid-stream, "They're slippin', Maister Duke, they're slippin'! Let me down till I hoosen them up!" He heard the stiff reply: "Let 'em slip; I'll no let ye down tae soak ye through!" And then the woeful battle of wills that ensued, while the trouties slipped from the string one by one. A battle which ended in a sobbing girlie ankle deep in water, an empty string, and a defiant lad with young crimson ears. He felt his mature ones tingle with amusement at the recollection, and at the recognition that the girlie was as ready of resentment as ever.

"Ods bobs, Marmie!" he cried, his face full of mischief. "It seems you've no forgotten the whaur-aboots of my lugs," and his hands went up to his face as if to protect them.

"I begged your pardon then, Captain Marmaduke, and I beg it again if I've offended----" she began defiantly.

He interrupted her with an absolutely charming smile, a deference that was unanswerable.

"And I beg yours for remembering what I should have forgotten. So we are quits and can surely shake hands on it like the good friends we always were, and"--here his voice took on additional charm--"always will be. Of that I am sure."

His bold blue eyes were on hers frankly, and she gave him back his look steadily. So they stood, shapely hand in shapely hand, for a second. Then his left fingers caught at hers and felt the first one inquisitively.

"Hullo, seamstress, that's new?" he queried, evidently pleased with his own cleverness in detection.

Marrion Paul drew her hand away sharply.

"I've been at the dressmaking in Edinbro' these six years since grandfather married," she replied coldly.

Marmaduke looked at Davie Sim incredulously.

"What, Davie! You old reprobate, who the deuce did you get to marry you?"

There was no answer. Possibly Davie did not hear, for he was rootling round the kitchen fire with the poker--a most unnecessary task that sweltering June day. Perhaps, also, it was flame-reflection which made his face show red under the wide Tam o' Shanter bonnet he invariably wore in his own house; why it would be difficult to say, except that outside the precincts of home he was for ever doffing it before somebody or another. For Davie Sims had been born hereditary servitor to the Drummuir family, and had every intention of dying in the same position.

"He married Penelope from the castle," came Marrion's voice relentlessly, "and his lordship gave her away."

"The devil he did," remarked the young man helplessly to both pieces of information, after a moment's pause due evidently to mingled outrage and amusement. "Well," he added, in male defiance of the woman's point of view, "I expect she makes him an excellent wife."

"Most excellent!" assented Marrion, with a curl of her lip. "So, as she happens to be gone on a visit, I have come back to stay a while--a little while--with grandfather."

Continue Reading →

From its first lines, Marmaduke announces a preoccupation with voice and register. The protagonist greets an old retainer in ‘the broadest Aberdeenshire accent’ before switching to ‘correct English,’ a code-switch that signals both his roots and his acquired polish. This linguistic dexterity becomes a narrative device: the story moves between the clipped, cool speech of Marrion Paul—‘the thin curves of her mouth clipping her words sharply’—and the easy, condescending gallantry of Marmaduke. The excerpts reveal a novel built on such contrasts, where dialect marks intimacy or exclusion, and where a single phrase can shift the balance of power between characters.

Dialect as a Measure of Distance

The opening chapter establishes dialect as a tool for negotiating social and emotional proximity. Marmaduke’s deliberate use of Doric with Davie Sim is described as ‘pure delight in the unfamiliar yet familiar dialect,’ suggesting it is a performance of belonging. Yet when he turns to Marrion, his tone becomes ‘easy gallantry’ and ‘condescension,’ and he slips into standard English. Marrion, in contrast, replies in Doric—‘There's mony to tell me yon and crave kisses’—using the local speech to assert her independence and to remind him of the gulf between them. The narrator notes that she speaks ‘coolly,’ her words ‘clipped’ by the dialect’s thin curves. This interplay recurs throughout the excerpts: dialect is not merely local colour but a precise index of power, resentment, and memory. When Marrion later recalls her years managing Marmaduke’s household, the narrative voice remains in standard English, but her thoughts are laced with the practical, unadorned language of duty. The novel thus uses linguistic register to map the emotional terrain between its two central figures.

The Weight of Unspoken History

Steel’s narrative voice often withholds direct explanation, letting objects and gestures carry the burden of the past. In a later excerpt, Marrion works on ‘tiny habiliments’ for other women’s babies, while the narrator reveals that ‘a certain box upstairs’ contains the clothes she made for her own child—‘the poor little dear which had lost its life.’ The revelation is slipped into a subordinate clause, as if it were an afterthought. The prose then pivots to Marmaduke’s perspective: ‘to a man a dead baby does not count for much—not even if no other follows it.’ This blunt, almost brutal aside is characteristic of Steel’s method: she lets the narrator’s voice harden into judgment without commentary. The accident that caused Marrion’s lameness is mentioned only in passing, and the reader must infer the emotional weight from the way she ‘folded up the tiny cap, putting it by with a wistful little smile.’ The narrative trusts the reader to connect these scattered details, creating a sense of submerged history that surfaces in gestures rather than confessions.

Pace and the Rhythm of Decision

The excerpts show a marked shift in narrative pace between the opening scene and Marrion’s solitary walk through London. The first chapter is dense with dialogue, physical description, and rapid shifts in tone—from the ‘joyous young voice’ to the ‘sudden silence’ that falls between the two characters. The prose moves quickly, matching the energy of a homecoming. Later, as Marrion decides to confront Marmaduke, the tempo slows. She goes to the British Museum, ‘not moving from place to place, but seated before some masterpiece, scarce seeing it.’ The sentences lengthen, and the narrator enters a reflective register: ‘In the great crises of life one does not weigh pros and cons; decision comes from outside.’ This philosophical interlude is punctuated by practical details—‘She would inquire about the journey on her way home’—and the chapter ends with a list of ‘startings and arrivals’ and ‘a new sense of elation.’ The contrast between the breathless opening and this measured, almost meditative passage suggests a novel that modulates its rhythm to mirror the protagonist’s internal shifts from impulsive action to deliberate resolve.

Readers attentive to voice will find that Marmaduke rewards close attention to who speaks, and how. The narrative rarely tells you directly what a character feels; instead, it lets a shift from Doric to English, or a sudden pause in the action, do the work. The excerpts suggest a novel where the past is never fully explained but is felt in every clipped syllable and folded garment. Approach it as a study in what is left unsaid.

I keep thinking about that ache in Marmaduke, how the Doric dialect feels like a wall he can't climb back over. It reminded me of a quieter book I loved, The City of Masks — Inside the Classic, which sits with that same loneliness of being close to someone yet utterly apart. Both leave a strange, tender weight behind.