THE DIARY OF OPAL WHITELEY.*
Ormos is very much divided as to the genuineness of The Diary of Opal Whiteley, to which Lord Grey of Fallodon contri- butes a preface. Some critics hail it as "the most wonderful book about childhood that has ever been written," whereas, especially in the technical Press, by which we mean such papers as are devoted to the interests of teachers, it has been violently abused and called a fraud : " It is an insult to ask any intelligent reader who knows children to accept this mess of conventional sentiment as the work of a child."
The diary purports to be the work of a child during the years from five to eight. The child had a very curious origin, nothing being known of her parents except that they appeared to be people of some erudition and extremely fond of their little daughter. They seem to have been drowned in a boating accident, when the child was looked after by her nurse for some
• The Diary of Opal kgeleg. London : G. P. Putnam's Sons. lb. ed net.j
time, then handed on to an aunt or some other relation, and finally left under the care of a farmer and his wife on a ranch in a very remote district. The diary was, we are told, " printed " by Opal in large capitals on odd bits of wrapping paper and hidden away. One of Opal's foster-sisters is said to have found it and, in a fit of temper, to have torn it into tiny fragments. These fragments have now, "with almost incredible labour," been pieced together again, and occupy about three hundred printed pages. Lord Grey says in his preface that, in his opinion, the exact age at which its author wrote it has nothing to do with the interest of the book, and to regard it as the work of a child prodigy is to miss the special qualities for which it should be read. To most readers, how- ever, the question of the age of the writer will be of some moment. If a child between the ages of five and eight really had the industry to print, in letters nearly half an inch high, something like the eighty-four thousand words here published, besides the immense bulk which has, we are told, been omitted, we shall have considerably to revise our ideas of child psychology. Again, the extreme sentimentality, the type of humour and the style are almost as surprising. The following is typical of all but the humour, which is strictly of the "Buster Brown" or even sometimes "Mutt and Jeff" type After I did dish-towel all the dishes that we did use in the breakfast meal, the mamma did send me to get barks for the warming stove. While I was getting barks I did stop to screw. tineyes the plump 'wiggles that were in and under all the barks. Those plump wiggles will grow and change. They will grow and change into beetles. I have seen them do so. I have taken them from the bark and they did so grow into beetles— after some long time. In the nursery I kept them while they did so change. After the barks was in I did go my way to school. I went aside to Saint Firmin by Nonette. I made a stop where the willows grow. I love to touch fingers with the willows. Then I do feel the feels the willows feel. I did tell them all and every one about this being the going-away day of Charlemagne in 814 and the horning day of Henry VII. in 1457. Each pussy-willow baby did wear a grey silk tricot. He did look warm. He smiled Bonjour, petite Francoise,' in a friendly way. I think he does remember the days in summer when I did drink in inspirations dabbling my toes by his toes there in the singing brook When I did have talks with them for a little time, I did go on."
Perhaps the truth of the matter as to the genuineness
or not of the book may be that it is neither black nor white, but grey, for there is often no more definite line of demarcation between genuine and manufactured than between black and white. In many frame-makers' shops, beneath the legend "Pictures cleaned," you may see hung up a portrait of a gentleman in a ruff. One-half of him is almost completely black, but in the other half, every hair of his whiskers, every goffer of his ruff, is distinguishable. Can you say that the clean half is a fake ? It has been cleaned, it has been re- varnished and almost re-painted, and at last it is impossible to say either that it is genuine antique or that it is not fraud. Perhaps in the case of both picture and book it is safest to judge by the value of each as works of art. Here we are en firmer ground and can emphatically disagree with Lord Grey. The book is so incessantly sentimental as to be very tire.
some reading to most English people—Americans seem to have stronger stomachs. Again, the inverted style is tedious-- almost perhaps as tedious as the humour.
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