he whispered inside her mind were prophetic.
At first, Opal’s casual remarks regarding next week’s weather or the sex of unborn calves seemed nothing more than playtime babble, but the accuracy of her predictions soon made it impossible to deny her gift. Word of her prescience spread. Neighbors dropped by the Crosby farm in North Conway daily, seeking advice from the little girl. Stories appeared in the state’s newspapers and strangers by the drove crowded onto the white frame farmhouse’s elm-shaded front porch.
Inevitably, this led to offers from a legion of one-ring circuses and fly-by-night carnivals. The elder Crosbys were seriously tempted. Their dairy business remained marginal at best, and any extra income seemed a blessing. Young Opal rejected all such commercial considerations, believing divine gifts were not to be sold for profit. A wealthy investor arrived from Boston, waving a big check in exchange for advice on future stock market developments. Opal refused to help. Her inner voice remained obstinately mute.
The onset of puberty brought about changes beyond the merely biological. At fifteen, Opal announced she was the reincarnation of Isis, ancient Egyptian fertility goddess, and conducted her first séance in the town meeting hall. Looking more innocent schoolgirl than pagan goddess, her dark beribboned braids tumbling across a home-sewn gingham dress, Opal was bound and chained within a sealed wooden cabinet.
After volunteers extinguished the kerosene lamps, manifestations began almost immediately. Bells rang, trumpets blared, tambourines and chairs levitated. Many present in the old colonial building claimed they saw luminous spirits hovering among the hand-hewn rafters. The story ran in the Manchester Union and was picked up by several big-city newspapers. The myth of “Isis reborn” began to spread.
This time, more substantial offers arrived. Telegrams from Edward F. Albee, head of the Keith Circuit, and Martin Beck of the Orpheum Circuit proposed national vaudeville tours. Broadway beckoned when both Flo Ziegfeld and Charles Dillingham sent personal representatives to New Hampshire, contracts in hand. To poor farmers like the Crosbys, the suggested salaries seemed astronomical. Opal would earn more in a month than the dairy farm took in during an entire year.
It didn’t turn out that way. Lacking their daughter’s clairvoyance, the Crosbys imagined a glorious future in the “Follies” or the Hippodrome’s “Big Show.” Isis made other plans. Barely sixteen, the fertility goddess eloped with a sixty-three-year-old textile tycoon.
Walter Clarke Fletcher descended from an old New England family, a long line of merchants and ministers; doctors, lawyers; Yale men, Episcopalians; one a colonel in the Continental Army. His grandfather had built a small woolen mill on the Housatonic. At the start of the Civil War, his father owned three more and finagled a government contract for military blankets. By the time the ink dried at Appomattox, Gordon Prouty Fletcher was a millionaire many times over. Educated abroad, young Walter broke the family’s Old Blue tradition. On the continent, he developed a taste for vintage wine, baccarat, and women who were decidedly not Episcopalian.
On his return to the United States in 1894, Walter left the Fletcher estate in Hartford and commissioned architect Richard Morris Hunt to design an imposing chateau for him in New York, on the corner of Fifth Avenue and Eighty-fifth Street. To this home overlooking Central Park he brought a succession of wives, who raised half a dozen children, none of whom interested him any more than did the textile business. They all survived his indifference and, by some miracle, so did his ever-expanding woolen mill empire. Not even persistent bad luck at the gaming tables made any appreciable dent in his enormous fortune.
The children were all grown by the time Walter Fletcher carried his new teenage bride over the threshold
At first, Opal’s casual remarks regarding next week’s weather or the sex of unborn calves seemed nothing more than playtime babble, but the accuracy of her predictions soon made it impossible to deny her gift. Word of her prescience spread. Neighbors dropped by the Crosby farm in North Conway daily, seeking advice from the little girl. Stories appeared in the state’s newspapers and strangers by the drove crowded onto the white frame farmhouse’s elm-shaded front porch.
Inevitably, this led to offers from a legion of one-ring circuses and fly-by-night carnivals. The elder Crosbys were seriously tempted. Their dairy business remained marginal at best, and any extra income seemed a blessing. Young Opal rejected all such commercial considerations, believing divine gifts were not to be sold for profit. A wealthy investor arrived from Boston, waving a big check in exchange for advice on future stock market developments. Opal refused to help. Her inner voice remained obstinately mute.
The onset of puberty brought about changes beyond the merely biological. At fifteen, Opal announced she was the reincarnation of Isis, ancient Egyptian fertility goddess, and conducted her first séance in the town meeting hall. Looking more innocent schoolgirl than pagan goddess, her dark beribboned braids tumbling across a home-sewn gingham dress, Opal was bound and chained within a sealed wooden cabinet.
After volunteers extinguished the kerosene lamps, manifestations began almost immediately. Bells rang, trumpets blared, tambourines and chairs levitated. Many present in the old colonial building claimed they saw luminous spirits hovering among the hand-hewn rafters. The story ran in the Manchester Union and was picked up by several big-city newspapers. The myth of “Isis reborn” began to spread.
This time, more substantial offers arrived. Telegrams from Edward F. Albee, head of the Keith Circuit, and Martin Beck of the Orpheum Circuit proposed national vaudeville tours. Broadway beckoned when both Flo Ziegfeld and Charles Dillingham sent personal representatives to New Hampshire, contracts in hand. To poor farmers like the Crosbys, the suggested salaries seemed astronomical. Opal would earn more in a month than the dairy farm took in during an entire year.
It didn’t turn out that way. Lacking their daughter’s clairvoyance, the Crosbys imagined a glorious future in the “Follies” or the Hippodrome’s “Big Show.” Isis made other plans. Barely sixteen, the fertility goddess eloped with a sixty-three-year-old textile tycoon.
Walter Clarke Fletcher descended from an old New England family, a long line of merchants and ministers; doctors, lawyers; Yale men, Episcopalians; one a colonel in the Continental Army. His grandfather had built a small woolen mill on the Housatonic. At the start of the Civil War, his father owned three more and finagled a government contract for military blankets. By the time the ink dried at Appomattox, Gordon Prouty Fletcher was a millionaire many times over. Educated abroad, young Walter broke the family’s Old Blue tradition. On the continent, he developed a taste for vintage wine, baccarat, and women who were decidedly not Episcopalian.
On his return to the United States in 1894, Walter left the Fletcher estate in Hartford and commissioned architect Richard Morris Hunt to design an imposing chateau for him in New York, on the corner of Fifth Avenue and Eighty-fifth Street. To this home overlooking Central Park he brought a succession of wives, who raised half a dozen children, none of whom interested him any more than did the textile business. They all survived his indifference and, by some miracle, so did his ever-expanding woolen mill empire. Not even persistent bad luck at the gaming tables made any appreciable dent in his enormous fortune.
The children were all grown by the time Walter Fletcher carried his new teenage bride over the threshold
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