Opal Whiteley
| Opal Whiteley | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
Opal Irene Whiteley December 11, 1897 Colton, Washington, U.S. |
| Died | February 16, 1992 (aged 94) Napsbury, Hertfordshire, England |
| Resting place |
Highgate Cemetery, Highgate, London, England 51°34′01″N 0°08′49″W / 51.567°N 0.147°WCoordinates: 51°34′01″N 0°08′49″W / 51.567°N 0.147°W |
| Other names | Françoise Marie de Bourbon-Orléans |
| Education | University of Oregon |
| Occupation | Naturist, diarist |
| Years active | 1916 - 1948 |
| Notable work | The Story of Opal |
Opal Irene Whiteley (December 11, 1897—February 16, 1992) was an American nature writer and diarist whose childhood journal was first published in 1920 as The Story of Opal in serialized form in the Atlantic Monthly, then later that same year as a book with the title The Story of Opal: The Journal of an Understanding Heart. The diary gave Whiteley a celebrity status in her home state of Oregon, where she toured giving lectures on nature and the environment.
She lived her later life in England, where she committed herself to a psychiatric hospital in 1948; she spent the remainder of her life in psychiatric care until her death in 1992. Whiteley's true origins and the veracity of her diary were disputed during her lifetime, and continue to be questioned today.
Whiteley apocryphally claimed to be the daughter of Henri, Prince of Orléans, who died unmarried in 1901. According to Whiteley, she was taken to Oregon in 1904 and brought to a lumber camp where she was adopted by Ed and Lizzie Whiteley. While Opal Whiteley used several names during her lifetime, the one she preferred was Françoise Marie de Bourbon-Orléans. Family members claim that Opal was born in Colton, Washington, the first of five children. In 1903, after having spent almost a year in Wendling, Oregon, the Whiteley family moved to Walden, Oregon, near the town of Cottage Grove. Whiteley grew up in small towns near various lumber camps, usually in poverty.
Whiteley claimed that her mother often disciplined her with severe corporal punishment. Whiteley's diary includes many accounts of punishment by "the mamma". The negative portrait of her mother caused Whiteley to become estranged from her family, particularly since the other children claimed they were never abused.
Biographers have confirmed that at an early age, Whiteley was a noted amateur naturalist and a child prodigy who was able to memorize and categorize vast amounts of information on plants and animals. One of her schoolteachers, Lily Black, felt that Whiteley was a genius; she was two grades ahead of her age in school, and Black took advantage of the then-new interlibrary loan system to get books for Whiteley from the Oregon State Library. In 1915 newspaper editor Elbert Bede began a series of articles in The Oregonian about her filled with glowing praise.
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