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| Drawing by Merie Strates. |
Book Review – Opal-the journey of an understanding heart
Opal Whiteley opens her diaries and
her heart, slips her small hand into ours, and leads us on a gentle journey
back into her early childhood, chatting all the while, sharing her feelings and
instructing always on the knowledge she has gleaned from the world around her. Reading
this touching journal as if standing over her shoulder we relearn what we have
forgotten and appreciate what we long ago did overlook.
Whiteley lived in an Oregon lumber
camp in the early 1900’s. It is believed that she was orphaned; yet despite
living with an adopted family she remained lonely. The precocious young girl
took solace in nature, writing her thoughts in crayoned block letters on scraps
of paper. It is assumed that the diary was torn to shreds by a jealous sister,
but then painstakingly pieced together by Opal several years later to be
published in 1920, at which point, it became an overnight sensation 1 and it is easy to understand
why.
Her writings at six years of age,
afford an unadulterated perception of a child’s world imbued with a deep sense
of naivety and wonderment. This is not a retrospective narrative, nor is it a
self-indulgent volume of memoirs. Instead it is the ingenuous recording of the
experiences of her imaginative mind and the stirrings of her empathetic heart
as they occurred moment-by-moment, day-by-day. The continual almost obsessive
need for her to journalise ensures that her diary presents as a structured yet
lyrical account of daily life in the lumber camp. Voyeuristically, we witness snippets
of the intimate lives of young couples, we are close by when two of her young friends
die, and we endure with her, cruel punishments at the hands of her adopted
mama. We are compelled to read on not so much for the plot (which is restricted
to a series of short incidents) but more so to continue the experience of
reconnecting with our own inner child.
And so we
gladly follow as she goes on adventures with her creature folks; and watch with
pleasure as she interacts with the inhabitants of the lumber camp such as the man who wears grey neckties and is kind
to mice, the pensée girl with the
faraway look, and the girl who has no
seeing.
We are enchanted by her unfettered
imagination which transforms the mundane into the ethereal, the intangible into
tactile and the imagined into concrete.
At
night the wind goes walking in the field talking to the earth voices there. I
did follow her down potato rows and her goings made ripples on my nightgown.
Today
near eventime I did lead the girl who has no seeing a little way into the
forest where it was darkness and shadows were. I led her toward a shadow that
was coming our way. It did touch her cheeks with its velvety fingers. And now
she too does have likings for shadows. And her fear that was is gone.
We are delighted by her affinity
for all natural things whether they are personified -
Potatoes
are very interesting folks. I think that they must see a lot of what is going
on in the earth. They have so many eyes. Too, I did have thinks of all their
growing days there in the ground, and all the things they did hear.
Or not personified-
The
earthworms are out again. I wonder how it feels to stretch out long and then
get short again.
It is all too easy to become lost
in Opal Whiteley’s world, seduced by her imagery and touched by her compassion.
However her heightened sense of empathy and her ability to express herself so
well at so young an age led the public to challenge the authenticity of her
writings. Ten months after its publication, her diary at first hailed as
brilliant, was considered a hoax. Accused of literary fraud, Opal left for
England. In 1948, she was taken to a public mental hospital where she remained
until her death in 1992. Since then the question continues to be raised: is the
diary a hoax, or the genius of a young girl? 2
We reconsider her journal and are
somewhat downcast to discover that perhaps there is something too organised and
too literary in the cohesiveness and fluency of the diary. There seems to be
too, a sense of her being acutely aware of readers to whom she may well be
deliberately showcasing her unusually extensive knowledge of great historical
and artistic figures as well as a clear understanding of natural science, Catholic liturgy, European history and French vocabulary. All this is in discord with what
we normally expect of a six year old.
At points, her writing gives the
impression that it has been tailored to meet the tastes of an adult audience,
with allusions to the romantic pastoral scenes and what seems to be a
deliberate harking back to Victorian sentimentalism:
Lola
has got her white silk dress that she did have so much wants for. It has a
little ruffle around the neck and one around each sleeve like she did say. She
said she would stand up and stretch out her arms and bestow her blessing on all
the children like the deacon does- but she didn’t. She didn’t even raise up her
hands. She stayed asleep in that long box the whole time the children was
marching around her and singing, “Nearer My God to Thee.” She did just lay
there with her white silk dress on and her eyes shut and her hands folded and
she was very still all the time. Her sister did cry.
The juxtaposition of innocently
presented observations with those which appear to carry sophistication and controlled
irony leaves the reader even more uneasy and sceptical.
I
remember the first time I saw Larry and Jean and the bit of poetry he said to
her. They were standing by an old stump in the lane where the leaves whispered.
Jean was crying. He patted her on the shoulder. He said, “There, little girl,
don’t cry. I’ll come back and marry you by and by.’ And he did. And the angels
looking down from heaven saw their happiness and brought them a baby real soon-
when they had been married most five months, which is very nice, for a baby is
such a comfort.
We wonder why she responds to the
deaths of two of her young friends; Lola and the blind girl (who perished
terrified and tragically alone trying to escape her burning home) in the oddly
detached “uncomprehending” manner of an innocent child, yet she mourns the
death of Michael Raphael, “the great tree that I love,” with deep awareness.
We note inconsistencies in her
spelling that hint at contrivance (for example, physiology is accurately
printed but scrutinising charmingly phonetically misspelt as screw tin eye sing). Such misspellings
seem to occur only when there is an opportunity for play between puns and
homonyms. Other examples include invest
tag ashuns, pumpadoor, pit tea, adoors and (my favourite) cal lamb of tea.
There are numerous examples of what
could be regarded as calculated humour in the guise of child being unaware of
the implication of her words:
I
did look out the front window. There are calf tracks by our front door.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning waited yesterday while I did get her sugar lumps. I
think she will grow up to be a lovely cow. Her mooings are very musical and
there is poetry in her tracks. She does make such dainty ones. When they dry up
I dig them up and save them. I take them out of the drawer and look at them and
think: this way passed Elizabeth Barrett Browning.”
One wonders if a not so young Whiteley
was playing cat to the not so sacred cow of Barrett!
This is enough to make even the
most ardent admirer and supporter of Opal Whiteley to at least pause to
consider the real possibility of deception, but then we cannot resist the
seductive pull of her sentiment nor can we decry the enticing warmth of her
words:
I saw a
silken cradle in a hazel branch. It was cream with a hazel leaf halfway around
it. I put it to my ear and I did listen. It had a little voice. It was not a
tone voice. It was a heart voice. While I did listen, I did feel its feels. It
has lovely ones.
There is no denying that these are
the delicate words of an understanding heart. It is up to the individual reader
to decide how old that heart was when they were written and if it really
matters. I for one am more than happy to take the journey with that heart
regardless of its age, over and over again.
1 Biographical note: Opal the journey of an understanding
heart adapted by Jane Boulton 1984
2 © 1995 September Productions, Inc. ISBN 0-914101-02-1
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