Silvia Pettem is a Colorado-based historical researcher, writer, and author of more than 20 books on history, biography, missing and unidentified persons, and true crime. She also has a knack for pulling intriguing women out of the past. “Separate Lives” is set in the late 19th century. “In Search of the Blonde Tigress” exposes and expands upon a true crime story from the 1930s, while “Someone’s Daughter” follows a murder investigation from the 1950s. Pettem lives with her husband and two cats in the mountains west of Boulder. She can be reached through her website, silviapettem.com.
This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
SunLit: Tell us this book’s backstory. How did you first learn about Mary Rippon?
Silvia Pettem: My interest in Mary Rippon began in late 1993 in the small basement room in Norlin Library on the Boulder campus that houses the University of Colorado’s archives. I was interested in the Victorian era and in women’s history, so the librarian suggested I look at some primary source documentation about Mary Rippon. Her name was familiar to me, as it is the name of the university’s outdoor theater where Shakespeare’s plays are performed every summer.
Despite the widespread use of Mary Rippon’s name, however, I had only recently learned that she chaired the German department as the university’s first female professor. And I had assumed that up until her death in 1935, she had led a quiet, scholarly, spinster’s life.
When I studied her photographs in old yearbooks, a plain, gentle-looking woman stared back at me — but I soon discovered that “Miss Rippon,” as she was called, took extraordinary steps to clothe part of her life in secrecy. In fact, her private life would have been considered scandalous at the time, and because of that she kept a low profile during her distinguished 31-year career — never involved in controversy, always praised in the local press.
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The historical view of the perfect Miss Rippon was altered suddenly in February 1976 when an elderly man from the East Coast made his way down the steps to the archives and donated two photographs to the university. Although the items in this first donation were unrelated to Mary Rippon, the man identified himself to a Colorado Alumnus reporter as “Wilfred Rieder, a descendant of Mary Rippon.” The article caused a minor uproar among librarians, faculty, and long-time Boulder residents. How could the never-married “Miss Rippon” have a descendant? At that time there were no known records or documentation of a secret life.
A decade later, Wilfred Rieder made a second donation — this time of Mary’s plain leather diaries, journals, and account books. He also told another alumni publication’s reporter that he was Mary Rippon’s grandson. He explained that in 1888, Mary had entered into a romantic relationship with one of her students and had become pregnant. She secretly married, gave birth to a baby girl during a year’s sabbatical in Germany, and then returned to Colorado where she resumed her teaching career.
I was hooked! I spent the next several years reading and studying the donated documents before I started writing the first edition of “Separate Lives,” published in 1999.
SunLit: Tell us about creating this book. What influences and/or experiences informed the project before you sat down to write?
Pettem: When I first held Mary’s diaries in my hands, her delicate handwriting pulled me into her day-to-day life. I knew, then, that Mary Rippon’s story needed to be told. The opportunity to write “Separate Lives” was just too good to pass up. In looking back, it literally fell into my lap. As a University of Colorado alum and author of books and articles on Boulder history, I was well aware of Mary’s setting and surroundings. But it was Mary’s writings that allowed me to vicariously experience her life and times and try to imagine her life through her own eyes.
To help achieve that goal, I wrote my first draft in the first person –– as if I were Mary, and as if I were writing my own memoir. Her diaries were very cryptic, and the process of deciphering them allowed me to “get inside her head.” In my attempts, I believe I gained insight into some of her very private thoughts, even a glimpse into her soul.
SunLit: Place this excerpt in context. How does it fit into the book as a whole? Why did you select it?
Pettem: In Chapter 13, Mary is a 37-year-old woman who made a choice that affected the rest of her life. The excerpt is pivotal in adding depth and intrigue to Mary’s character and introduces her “hidden years” –– specifically the 1887-1888 academic year at the beginning of her love affair with her student, Will Housel.
“Separate Lives”
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The remainder of Mary’s story focuses on the societal forces that led to Mary’s public and private lives and reveals how and why she managed to separate them. The book (as a whole) chronicles her life, as well as Will’s and that of their daughter, Miriam. This new edition continues into the 21st century with what can best be described as “ongoing ripples” in Mary’s life story.
SunLit: What did the process of writing this book add to your knowledge and understanding of the “separate lives” that Mary Rippon led?
Pettem: Mary’s separate lives are inconceivable to most readers today, and they were hard for me to believe, as well –– until I put her situation into the context of her times. When I started reading late-19th-century books, newspaper articles, and magazine stories, I was able to immerse myself into the historic context of the Victorian era.
Married men with professional occupations were expected to support their wives and children, but society looked differently at women. Single women professionals were beginning to be accepted, but social norms dictated that if the single woman professional married, she would be taking a job away from a man with a family to support.
Some readers who don’t understand the concept ask why Mary didn’t get a nanny and live openly as both a professor and a mother. Others, who accept that –– in order to keep her job –– she needed to hide her husband and child behind a Victorian veil of secrecy, are incredulous that her few close friends kept the secret, as well.
People’s feelings and emotions in previous time periods are no different than our feelings and emotions today. That’s why, for instance, today’s readers can understand how Mary and Will’s love affair could happen. But historical context is essential in understanding how Mary handled it. And she did that by separating her private and public lives.
SunLit: What were the biggest challenges you faced in writing this book?
Pettem: Although I had a wealth of primary source documents (diaries, journals, and account books), I still longed for more facts. In some instances, I had to speculate, but in doing so I made it clear to the reader. The original edition was turned down by a reputable publisher who told me that he wouldn’t publish the book unless I cut out all speculation and fictionalized the story, instead. That I refused to do. In my opinion, what makes Mary’s story so interesting is that it is true.
Another challenge was my need to remain nonjudgmental. Mary fascinated me, but I didn’t always agree with her actions. As a mother, myself, I could not have left my young child, for years, on the other side of the ocean. I would have given up my career to be a stay-at-home mom. But Mary may have seen herself as the breadwinner in the family, and turning over parenting to Will a necessity. Personally, I see Mary as a better “mother” to her female students than to her own child. But in order to write her biography, I had to keep my feelings out of her story.
SunLit: What was your biggest takeaway from delving so deeply into Rippon’s story? Is there a theme or lesson readers should take from how she lived – especially given how differently women’s roles are regarded now?
Pettem: As noted above, it’s essential that historical characters be studied in the context of their times. In Mary’s time, “polite” society refrained from even discussing sexual intimacy between unmarried men and women. Today’s society considers unmarried lovers a norm. However, at the University of Colorado in 1888, there was no rule prohibiting a sexual relationship between a professor and a student as, obviously, no one thought the university needed such a rule. Today, the university requires that all intimate professor-student relationships be publicly disclosed.
Again, it’s not the people who have changed, but only societal norms.
Historical research is a type of detective work –– one needs to keep an open mind and follow the evidence to see where it leads. Sometimes, as in Mary’s case, the outcome is unexpected. As to how Mary lived out her life, she did have choices (good fodder for book club discussions). She made, and stuck to, the decision that was right for her. I admire her determination.
SunLit: This is an updated version of the book you self-published in 1999. How did you approach taking a fresh look at both your subject and what you wrote the first time around?
Pettem: After the original version sold out, I turned my attention to other books and various publishers. Lyons Press (a subsidiary of Rowman & Littlefield) published my most recent books. I found that I enjoyed writing on women from previous periods in time. (“The Blonde Tigress” focused on the 1930s, and “Someone’s Daughter” on the 1950s.) I wanted Mary Rippon’s story to continue to be told. My publisher readily agreed.
What about Mary and Will’s child, Miriam? What happened to her?
Pettem: Without giving away too much of the story, Miriam was born in Stuttgart, Germany, in January 1888. After staying in various European orphanages, and then living with Mary’s extended family in Illinois, she moved in with her father and his second family. Mary would visit, but always as “Aunt Mary.”
There were many parallels in Mary’s and Miriam’s lives. Both of their children were conceived out of wedlock, and both were university foreign language professors. Professionally, Miriam followed in her mother’s footsteps.
Except for Mary’s few close friends, the mother-daughter relationship was never disclosed during either Mary’s or Miriam’s lifetimes. Miriam’s son (the elderly man who donated Mary’s documents) was the informant for Miriam’s death certificate in 1957. In the place for “father’s name,” he wrote “Will Housel.” In the place for “mother’s name,” he simply wrote “unknown.” At that point in his life, Miriam’s son knew Mary was his grandmother. But he allowed his mother to take Mary’s secret to her grave.
Mary received wide acclaim for her teaching, but she was completely unrecognized as a mother. It’s evident, though, that she was content with her chosen path. Near the end of her life she confided to her diary, “Conventionality is the mother of dreariness.” There was nothing conventional about Mary Rippon.
SunLit: Tell us about your next project.
Pettem: I’m always looking for intriguing women from the past…