Opal Irene Whiteley (December 11, 1897 – February 16, 1992) was an American nature writer and diarist who gained international fame for the publication of her childhood diary, which featured meditations and observations of nature and wildlife. Raised in logging camps in rural Oregon, Whiteley was considered by some a child prodigy, and expressed intense interest in both writing and science in her youth. As an adolescent, she began tutoring and holding lectures on natural history and geology in her community, earning a reputation as an amateur naturalist, as well as becoming a noted speaker for the Young People's Society of Christian Endeavour.
While attending the University of Oregon, Whiteley toured the state giving lectures on nature and the environment. In 1918, she self-published The Fairyland Around Us, which combined factual scientific information along with mystical observations of nature. In 1919, she traveled to Boston to seek wider distribution of the book. There, she met Atlantic Monthly publisher Ellery Sedgwick, who instead suggested that she publish her childhood diary, the fragments of which she had kept stored since her youth. Over a series of months, Whiteley meticulously reassembled the diary, which was first released in serial form in the Atlantic Monthly in March 1920. It was published in book format in September 1920 under the title The Story of Opal: The Journal of an Understanding Heart. The publication of the diary earned Whiteley international fame, though it was widely speculated that she had actually written the work as an adult.
Throughout her life, Whiteley claimed to have been the biological daughter of French naturalist Henri, Prince of Orléans, who died during an expedition in India in 1901, after which she was allegedly sent to Oregon and adopted. She frequently went by the name Françoise Marie de Bourbon-Orléans, in reference to her alleged father. The details surrounding her family history have been the subject of wide speculation, with several biographers attributing the claims to delusions stemming from mental illness. Following the publication of her diary, Whiteley relocated to England, where she was eventually committed to a psychiatric hospital in 1948. She spent the remainder of her life in psychiatric care until her death in 1992 at Napsbury Hospital.
In 1986, writer Benjamin Hoff published The Singing Creek where the Willows Grow: The Rediscovered Diary of Opal Whiteley, a biography accompanying her full diary, which won the National Book Award in 1988. The diary has been republished in several other editions, and Whiteley's life story has been adapted in film and theater productions.
Biography
Early life and writings (1897–1915) Opal Irene Whiteley was born December 11, 1897, in Colton, Washington, the first of five children of Charles Edward and Lizzie Whiteley. Charles was of French Canadian ancestry. Beginning in childhood, Whiteley apocryphally claimed to be the daughter of French naturalist Henri, Prince of Orléans, and an unnamed Austrian duchess. By Whiteley's account, she was taken to Oregon in 1904 and brought to a lumber camp, where she was adopted by the Whiteleys, whom she claimed were in fact not her biological parents. In reference to her alleged father, Whiteley frequently went by the name Françoise Marie de Bourbon-Orléans throughout her life.
In 1903, after having spent almost a year in Wendling, Oregon, the Whiteley family moved to Walden, near the town of Cottage Grove, where Opal was raised largely in poverty. Beginning at age six, she began writing a personal diary in which she observed the animals and natural world around her, sometimes using crayons, and utilizing her own phonetic form of spelling. Whiteley was noted by her teachers and family members as a voracious reader who spent much of her time reading and writing.