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Authors: Elizabeth Mahon
Tags: #General, #History, #Women, #Social Science, #Biography & Autobiography, #Biography, #Women's Studies
Scandalous Women: The Lives and Loves of History's Most Notorious Women (36 page)
BOOK: Scandalous Women: The Lives and Loves of History's Most Notorious Women
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On the ides of March 1862, Anna Leonowens arrived in Bangkok on the little steamer
Chao Phya
along her son, Louis, age six, clinging to her skirts; his ayah; and a large Newfoundland dog named Bessy. The Bangkok air was already thick with humidity that made it hard to breathe. She was thirty years old, widowed, and about to start a new life as the governess at the royal court of Siam. A showy gondola shaped like a dragon and lit by blazing torches drew up alongside the steamer. To her shock, she was greeted by a bare-chested man wearing nothing but a sarong who turned out to be the prime minister. After being questioned incessantly through an interpreter, Anna haughtily demanded to be taken to their accommodations. When she was told that he had no knowledge of the arrangements, she burst into tears of mortification. It was an inauspicious beginning to an amazing adventure.
Chao Phya
along her son, Louis, age six, clinging to her skirts; his ayah; and a large Newfoundland dog named Bessy. The Bangkok air was already thick with humidity that made it hard to breathe. She was thirty years old, widowed, and about to start a new life as the governess at the royal court of Siam. A showy gondola shaped like a dragon and lit by blazing torches drew up alongside the steamer. To her shock, she was greeted by a bare-chested man wearing nothing but a sarong who turned out to be the prime minister. After being questioned incessantly through an interpreter, Anna haughtily demanded to be taken to their accommodations. When she was told that he had no knowledge of the arrangements, she burst into tears of mortification. It was an inauspicious beginning to an amazing adventure.
Anna’s story would later be immortalized first by American missionary Margaret Landon and then by the team of Rodgers and Hammerstein in the hit musical
The King and I
.
27
The real-life story of Anna Leonowens is far more fascinating than the romanticized tale of the Victorian governess who showed the King of Siam how to waltz. From the moment that Anna Leonowens disembarked that day, she reinvented herself, obscuring the origins of her life and inventing a new life for herself as a proper Victorian lady. During the rest of her lifetime, Anna’s deception was never discovered. Like many other women who reinvent themselves, Anna actually became the character that she created. The ruse allowed Anna to lead a wildly adventurous and influential life. She remains the only foreigner to spend years inside the royal harem of Siam. She became a travel writer, crossed Russia on her own, immigrated to the United States, where she became a well-known author who hobnobbed with the literary figures of her day, and finally in her seventies settled down in Canada to help raise her eight grandchildren.
The King and I
.
27
The real-life story of Anna Leonowens is far more fascinating than the romanticized tale of the Victorian governess who showed the King of Siam how to waltz. From the moment that Anna Leonowens disembarked that day, she reinvented herself, obscuring the origins of her life and inventing a new life for herself as a proper Victorian lady. During the rest of her lifetime, Anna’s deception was never discovered. Like many other women who reinvent themselves, Anna actually became the character that she created. The ruse allowed Anna to lead a wildly adventurous and influential life. She remains the only foreigner to spend years inside the royal harem of Siam. She became a travel writer, crossed Russia on her own, immigrated to the United States, where she became a well-known author who hobnobbed with the literary figures of her day, and finally in her seventies settled down in Canada to help raise her eight grandchildren.
Anna Harriette Emma Edwards was born a poor, mixed-raced army brat in 1831 in Ahmadnagar, India. Her father was an enlisted soldier in the Sappers and Miners of the Indian army who died several months before she was born. Her mother, who was of Anglo-Indian heritage, married another enlisted soldier six weeks after Anna’s birth. Anna and her half siblings grew up in the army barracks, with only a screen dividing their cramped back corner from the noise of the rest of the soldiers. Although the living and sanitary conditions were poor, it was a vibrant place to grow up. The family moved constantly due to her stepfather’s work with the company before they settled permanently in Poona. One gift of her childhood that Anna developed was a lifelong interest in other cultures, which would prove to be her greatest asset.
Anna attended a regiment school, typically a one-room classroom filled with kids of all ages. The schools used what was called the Madras system, where the older kids taught the younger ones. She did well in school, and it left her with a hunger to continue to learn more. As she got older, no doubt Anna was picked to teach the younger children. By the time she was eighteen, she probably had several years of teaching under her belt. As well as English, Anna also spoke Hindi, Persian, and Marathi, and began learning Sanskrit. After a yearlong courtship, at the age of eighteen, she married on Christmas Day in 1849 a young Irishman named Thomas Leon Owens, who worked as a clerk in the commissary general’s office.
After the death of their two oldest children, the couple immigrated to Australia to seek a fresh start, which caused a rift with her family. Both of her surviving children, Avis and Louis, were born in Perth. But Australia proved not to be the paradise they had hoped for. Anna had tried to open a school for young ladies but it failed. Instead the little family moved to Penang, Malaysia, where Thomas managed a hotel until he died in 1859 of apoplexy.
After her husband’s death, Anna could have repaired the rift with her family and gone back to India. She would have probably found it easy to remarry as her mother and grandmother had done. Anna chose to be independent instead and journeyed to Singapore. It meant she would need to completely reinvent herself as a genteel widowed Englishwoman. The stigma attached to being of mixed heritage was huge. Deciding to become a teacher, Anna knew that no British officer would allow their children to be taught by a mixed-race woman. She created a new background, including just enough true details of her life to make it easy to remember. Singapore’s other advantage: no one knew her there and it would be easier to maintain the fiction.
Anna’s new story was that she was born in Wales to an army captain, and that she lived with family friends until she was fifteen. Her father was killed by Sikhs during the rebellion in Lahore. Not getting along with her stepfather, she met a reverend and his wife who recognized her aptitude for languages and in 1849 they took her with them on a tour through Egypt and Palestine. Returning to India, she married Tom Owens, who she now claimed was an army major. After the loss of her first two children, she and her husband moved to London for three years, until he was assigned to Singapore. Her husband later died of heatstroke during a tiger hunt.
The chance of a lifetime dropped into her lap when she heard that King Mongkut of Siam was looking for an English governess to teach his children. He had been burned by the wives of the American missionaries he’d hired, who had tried to convert his children to Christianity. It had taken him several years before he decided to try again and he still had not found a suitable replacement. Among the British in Singapore, pickings were slim. And not many Englishwomen were willing to leave the relative safety of the British colony for the wilds of Siam. Anna had a deep and abiding interest in other cultures since her upbringing in India and she was available. After three years, her school was not doing too well, thanks to the inability of British army officers to pay their fees on time, although it cemented her reputation as an educator. The move to Siam seemed to offer respectability and security, and a chance to move away from the prying eyes of Singapore society. Although she asked for 150 Singapore dollars, she settled for 100. The job was hers.
Before she left for Siam, she sent her daughter, Avis, to boarding school in England. She did so secure in the knowledge that her daughter would be getting the English education that she herself claimed to have. Since Louis was still young, he stayed with his mother. Siam was the first place that Anna lived that was not a British colony. She was venturing into new and unfamiliar territory. Anna didn’t meet her new employer until she had been in Siam for several weeks, and she almost blew it when she cheekily replied to his question about her age by replying that she was 150. Fortunately the king had a sense of humor.
Although she later portrayed him in her books as a combination of Genghis Khan and Krusty the Clown, her new employer, King Mongkut, was a frail and ascetic former Buddhist priest who had ascended the throne upon the death of his half brother. His years as a priest traveling around the country gave him a unique opportunity to see the lives of his subjects up close. Like Anna, he was fluent in several languages, and he was a strong believer in the power of education. King Mongkut wanted his children to be prepared to deal with the West, to have the tools to keep Siam independent. Siam would be the only nation in Asia not to be colonized by the West.
So was there any hanky-panky going on between the king and his new English governess? Sorry to burst musical theater lovers’ bubbles, but no. The king was not only pushing sixty, but he had plenty of nubile women in his harem to satisfy his needs. Anna was over thirty, tall, independent, and opinionated. She was also English, of the very people that Mongkut was trying to keep at bay. On Anna’s part, her husband was the only man that she had ever loved, and she’d lost him. There would be no other man in her life but her son. The famous waltz scene and the longing glances in the musical and film are just romantic fiction.
Anna had been given a unique opportunity, to educate Mongkut’s wives and children, including his heir, Chulalongkorn. She soon found that she was expected not only to teach but also to help Mongkut with his correspondence in English and French and to serve as a sounding board, providing her perspective on Western attitudes and customs. Anna, however, made it clear from the beginning that she was not one of Mongkut’s servants. In what could have been a foolhardy move, she insisted on accommodations away from the claustrophobic atmosphere of the palace so that she could have a measure of privacy.
Mongkut had two failings in Anna’s eyes. One, he seemed to condone slavery and he required his subjects to grovel on the ground at his approach. The second was the royal harem. Although she wasn’t shocked at the idea of the harem itself, she was disturbed at the life the women were forced to lead. It was a life she found intolerable: confined, under constant surveillance, utterly dependent upon the king’s whim. Women in the harem included wives, concubines, slaves, the king’s sisters and aunts, and dependents of the previous monarch. Anna had free access to the women’s quarters. She played with their children, told them stories of life outside the harem, and answered their questions about her life. Soon they saw her as their champion, whispering their grievances in her ear, hoping she would take up their cause with the king.
Anna knew nothing about Siamese history. Because of her ignorance, she had no idea how far Siam had come under Mongkut’s reign. The king had hired Western mercenaries to train Siam’s troops. He had signed trade agreements with several countries, including England and the United States. Under his reign, Bangkok became an international city as more and more Western businessmen flocked to the country, bringing with them Western technology and innovation, which Mongkut embraced.
Anna’s time in Siam might have been more enjoyable if she had kept to her role as governess and secretary. Instead she took him to task about the harem and about the issue of slavery, treating him as if he weren’t aware of the need for reform. Anna, who was an admirer of Harriet Beecher Stowe, later claimed that her reading
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
to Chulalongkorn led him to reform the Siamese system of slavery when he became king after Mongkut’s death. It certainly wouldn’t be surprising if she had used the book in the schoolroom, not as a novel, but as a historical resource, to explain to her students the evils of slavery and their consequences. However, slavery in Siam was different than in the West; often it was voluntary and slaves could buy their freedom.
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
to Chulalongkorn led him to reform the Siamese system of slavery when he became king after Mongkut’s death. It certainly wouldn’t be surprising if she had used the book in the schoolroom, not as a novel, but as a historical resource, to explain to her students the evils of slavery and their consequences. However, slavery in Siam was different than in the West; often it was voluntary and slaves could buy their freedom.
The king didn’t appreciate her sticking her nose where it didn’t belong. King Mongkut was an absolute monarch who wasn’t used to having his actions questioned, least of all by a woman. In the end her meddling may actually have postponed certain reforms, because the king had no intention of letting Anna think that she had influenced him. To show her who was boss, he refused to give her the agreed-upon raise after she had been there three years and piled on more work.
So why didn’t he kick his mouthy governess to the curb? Despite her crusading, the king was pleased with her work and the attention she gave his wives and children. She had taken care of his favorite child, and Anna’s favorite pupil, Fa-Ying, when she was dying of cholera. As a sign of his gratitude he had elevated her status to Chao Khun Kru (Lord Most Excellent Teacher), given her an estate, and made her a noble. She inspired his children to learn English, she had an ear for languages, and her help was invaluable with his correspondence.
Anna left Siam in the summer of 1867 on the same ship that had brought her to Bangkok years before. She had had enough. Although her position carried great respect and even a degree of political influence, she was overworked and underpaid and had come to be regarded by the king as a “difficult woman and more difficult than generality.” She wasn’t well—she’d been ill with cholera twice, and she’d been attacked by unknown assailants twice and threatened more than once. She also missed her daughter, Avis. Five years was a long time to be apart from a child, and Anna dearly loved her children.
The plan was for her and her son, Louis, to travel to England to pick up Avis and then visit her husband’s relatives in Ireland, where she would put Louis in boarding school. She would then return to Siam. The plan changed when on an impulse she decided to take Avis on a trip to the United States. It had been a dream of hers ever since she met her first American friend in Singapore. It was a trip that lasted ten years. The question of whether or not to return to Siam was moot with King Mongkut’s death in 1868, his son ascending the throne as King Chulalongkorn.
After an attempt at running a school on Staten Island floundered, Anna decided to reinvent herself again, this time as an author. Through a friend she’d met in Singapore she had made the acquaintance of James Field, editor of the
Atlantic Monthly
. Putting pen to paper, Anna began contributing articles about her life in Siam, including “The Favorite of the Harem,” which the
New York Times
called in its review “an Eastern love story, having apparently a strong basis of truth.” She wrote two volumes of memoirs, which earned her immediate fame, and an entrée to literary circles in New York and Boston where she was able to meet Harriet Beecher Stowe, the woman whose work had inspired her for so long.
Atlantic Monthly
. Putting pen to paper, Anna began contributing articles about her life in Siam, including “The Favorite of the Harem,” which the
New York Times
called in its review “an Eastern love story, having apparently a strong basis of truth.” She wrote two volumes of memoirs, which earned her immediate fame, and an entrée to literary circles in New York and Boston where she was able to meet Harriet Beecher Stowe, the woman whose work had inspired her for so long.
Both memoirs,
The English Governess at the Siamese Court
and
The Romance
of the
Harem
, were heavily fictionalized, exaggerating and fabricating parts of the story to attract a general reader and increase sales. Her accounts ascribed acts of cruelty to King Mongkut, which slandered his reputation in the West, and which unfortunately reinforced the image of the Siamese as backward. While she praised his virtues and reforms, she also wrote that he was “envious, revengeful, as fickle and petulant as he was subtle and cruel,” that he bullied his wives, terrorized his servants, and trusted no one. Some reviewers and readers thought her writing showed ingratitude toward the man who had paid her salary and who had been nothing but kind to her and her son. The Thai government allegedly tried to buy up the whole first printing to destroy it. To the Siamese, the portrayal was a sacrilege. Mongkut was considered divine by his people.
The English Governess at the Siamese Court
and
The Romance
of the
Harem
, were heavily fictionalized, exaggerating and fabricating parts of the story to attract a general reader and increase sales. Her accounts ascribed acts of cruelty to King Mongkut, which slandered his reputation in the West, and which unfortunately reinforced the image of the Siamese as backward. While she praised his virtues and reforms, she also wrote that he was “envious, revengeful, as fickle and petulant as he was subtle and cruel,” that he bullied his wives, terrorized his servants, and trusted no one. Some reviewers and readers thought her writing showed ingratitude toward the man who had paid her salary and who had been nothing but kind to her and her son. The Thai government allegedly tried to buy up the whole first printing to destroy it. To the Siamese, the portrayal was a sacrilege. Mongkut was considered divine by his people.
BOOK: Scandalous Women: The Lives and Loves of History's Most Notorious Women
6.02Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads
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