My Dear Mr Frazer...

I hope this note finds you in good health and spirits.

I have been here in Somerset for several days now, on the sad business of attending the funeral of my Cousin, Matthew Sinclair. Fortunately, I have had opportunity to spend pleasant time with my family as well, and I have had time to reflect on the strange turns my life has taken of late.

Among these reflections, I find myself thinking about all the people I have met since I came to Town in April, all the unusual things I have seen and done.
I number you among the people I have most enjoyed meeting and working with. I have been very pleased with our discussions of Natural History, our German lessons, and the times when your work and my work have coincided. From our first meeting, I was favorably impressed by the way you accepted my intellect and education and my other skills and qualities.

I have spent most of my adult life attempting to appear ordinary and respectable. In my current employment in Sir Cosmo's household, I find it more and more difficult to appear ordinary, as I am surrounded by extraordinary people and continuously called upon to do extraordinary tasks. You seem to take it all with equanimity.

In the brief time I have known you, it has become clear to me that despite the sometimes secretive nature of your work, you value honesty. Therefore, I have determined to tell you something about myself which few people know,. It may come to general light in the course of events, but I would like you to hear it directly from me.

Perhaps it is cowardly of me to enclose this "revelation" about myself within a sort of biography, as though my circumstances will somehow excuse any untruth. Nevertheless, I choose to present my story in this way. I hope you will not find it tedious.

I dare to hope that you will still accept my friendship and tolerate the secrets of my past. I pray that this disclosure will help rather than hinder our professional relationship. Even if you find my story too shocking and wish to discontinue our personal association, I am certain that I can rely on your gentlemanly instincts to keep my story to yourself. Yours Truly,

Miss Ruth E Sinclair

I was born in 1838 to Morton Peter Sinclair and Leticia Sinclair (neé Mayberry).

My Mother is the last of four daughters of Sir Wendell Mayberry, a Baronet of Modest fortune. My Father is a respectable solicitor. His Ethical Standards are above reproach, and as a result his means are strained.

My Father is very well educated, and he loves knowledge for its own sake. Since I was very small, we have shared all manner of books, literature, history, and science. By his indulgence I became more thoroughly educated than most ladies of my station. Some consider that it has spoilt me for any womanly purpose.

I have two younger sisters, and no brother. My Mother has often bemoaned the fact that I was not a boy. In her mind I would have made a wonderful continuance of the Sinclair family business. I am not so sorry, though, as I have only middling interest in Law.

My Mother's next great hope was that I would marry Mr Edward Morris, the young man my father took on as a Clerk with the intent to bring him up to partnership, to eventually take on the business. Indeed, it was generally assumed that I would marry him and he did his best to be agreeable. I can't say just why, but I was indifferent to him. I probably would have married him out of familial duty and suffered a very mediocre life, save that my next sister, Mary, found him much to her liking. I shall always treasure the look of joy in her eyes when I told her that I would not insist on precedence in marrying first, and that Mr Morris seemed to prefer her charms to mine.
I like Mr Morris very much as a brother-in-law and as father of my nieces. My Father chose his successor well, I think, and my sister's preference ensures that our family will continue to benefit from Sinclair and Morris, Solicitors.

My particular interest has always been the study of Nature. I have always preferred to be out-of-doors, away from the noise and nonsense of people. Animals and even plants function from practical requirements, while humans insist on the elaborate and unproductive construction of "Manners." I prefer the direct action of the Natural world.

Even when I was quite small, I would sit in the garden, watching the ants and aphids on the rose bushes. I learned to climb trees in order to watch birds. As I grew up, I studied every treatise on Entomology and Botany that I could lay hands on.

My Mother did all she could to sway me toward domestic concerns over Naturalist studies, to no avail. In my heart I dreamed that my obvious gifts and compelling interest in Nature Studies would win over the scholars, and they would admit me to their society.

My first paper, "A Survey of Rabbit Behaviour," was based on painstaking, detailed observation of the wild rabbits living in and around pasturage near my home.
I admit the work was somewhat naive in content, but I maintain that it was well written and the observations were sound.

I was well aware that I could not attend University, but I hoped that I might find a Patron among the Naturalists I admired, and undertake a scientific apprenticeship. To that end, I produced several painstaking copies of my manuscript and its accompanying drawings. in 1857, I sent copies to three naturalists whose work interested me.
One never responded. Another had his secretary send the manuscript back, apparently unread, saying he had no time for girls and rabbits. The last stung worst: he kindly suggested that my charming drawings would do great credit to the Somerset Ladies' Gazette.

The shame of such condescension prompted plenty of sulking, but did not prevent the continuation of my work.

I felt certain that if a young gentleman had submitted my Rabbit paper, it would have been given better consideration. I determined to test his theory by signing a male name to my next offering: Comparative Taxonomy of Some Cultivated Flowering Plants and Their Wild Relatives--Illustrated," which I completed in 1861.

I sent this paper to the same three scholars signed "Peter Sinclair." It's a common enough sort of name. It also happened to be the name of a cousin of mine, one who had departed our town in some disgrace a few years previous.

The replies I received were perhaps more cuttingly critical, but offered genuine suggestions. Dr Percival Bramton demanded that I send the revised manuscript within the month so that he could read it at the next meeting of his local Naturalists' Society. Suddenly, Peter Sinclair had Patronage!

Meanwhile, my family's means were increasingly strained. A series of lost suits and unpaid bills had diminished our income. Mr Morris was still more of a dependent than an earning asset. My father's health began to decline due to worry. It was time for me to make my own living.

In 1858, with no prospects or suitors on the horizon, I was taken on by the Perlebridge family as governess to their 13-year-old daughter. I improved her French, taught her a little drawing, and by dint of persistent nagging caused her to practise her piano lessons regularly. We got on alright, as I was replacing a Governess-nurse who had insufficient education or intelligence to teach the girl, and who had bullied her besides.

Still, I was not so indispensable that they didn't leave me behind to find a new position when they went abroad. I found a succession of similar positions, working with older and older children as I gained age and experience myself.

I continued to pursue my interests in Nature Studies. I learned to keep it mostly to myself after being reprimanded for teaching some of my charges too much about cuckoos. They wanted their girls to know all about embroidery and reading pretty poetry aloud, not about how the world can be a dangerous place.

I found a happy medium in teaching girls watercolor painting: I could take them out-of-doors to paint landscapes while I was secretly working on illustrations of botanical samples. Thus I continued writing and illustrating works on Botany, Entomology, and similar topics.

I continued correspondence with Dr Bramton and with others to whom he had recommended "Peter Sinclair's" works. Dr Bramton wanted to meet "Peter" in person, so I finally hit upon the scheme of having "Peter" leave the country, leaving his spinster cousin Ruth as his corresponding secretary. From that time in about 1862, I became the unregarded appendage to my own nom-de-plume.

I was free to continue my work. No one seemed to question how Peter could be writing about Natural History of Somersetshire while he was supposed to be in the Argentine. I just kept writing, illustrating and publishing under his name. I even managed to earn a small sum from the royalties of these papers, though most of what I made was put back into publishing and posting costs.

This continued though the circulation of 4 more papers:

-Foxes and Their Prey: Populations and Behaviours (1863)
-Observations on the Progression of Reestablishment of Wild Plant Growth in Fallow Fields (1864)
-Common Pollinators of Major Crops of Somersetshire (1866)
-An Illustrated Survey of Bee Species of Somersetshire (1868)

And the not-yet-published work:

-The Role of Moths in Pollination of Flowering Plants (ready for circulation 1870)

All this has kept me busy and mostly content until recently. I have always relied on two factors to maintain this secret: The disinterest of my employers in my personal work (and their unthinking assumption that only a gentleman can produce scholarly works), and on the continued absence of my cousin Peter.

Both of these factors have come into question of late, to the degree that I feel I must declare myself in my own way and accept the consequences. My closest colleagues are aware of this situation, and seem to accept all without any great concern.

My next question is whether to reveal my duplicity to the scholarly ranks. It appeals to me to show them how they had underestimated me from the start. Yet, this revelation is likely to cause my ("Peter's") works to be discredited and forgotten. I flatter myself to say that this would be a loss to the study of Nature.

Which truth shall I serve? The truth of my own accomplishments and errors? The truth of Knowledge and Understanding? Only the execution of the experiment will provide the empirical results.

Proceed to For once, no fighting required

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