"Oh, no" she said, "Anna Leonowens has once again been removed from the shelf, dusted off, and given a new metamorphosis - this time by Jodie Foster, no less. And from diaries yet. Let me tell you, the lady left NO diaries; the incident of the attempted coup against the Chakri Dynasty which forms the crux of the movie NEVER happened. The only parts approaching the truth are that there was a much-loved little princess who died, and Anna Leonowens did teach at the Court of Rama IV--but the rest--FORGET IT!
Sonia Krug lived in Thailand for 13
years and became intrigued with the story of the real Anna while
working on a research project involving King
Mongkut--Rama IV, at whose
invitation Anna Leonowens went to Siam. Here she shares some of
her findings with us. . . Once upon a time in the mid -1800's
there was a young widow with two small children alone and adrift
in the English colony of Singapore.
The lady was not unattractive and she was blessed with wit, intelligence and the grit necessary for survival, for the 1800's were not kind to women without men. She opened a school for children of British officers. In so doing she had to fabricate a new identity, for her old one would never do.
Thus was born Anna Harriette Crawford Leonowens. Never would British officers send their children to a school run by the daughter of a common cabinetmaker who had enlisted in the Bombay infantry, and a mother most likely of Anglo-Indian parentage. So Thomas Edwards, Infantryman, dead three months before Anna's birth, became Army Captain Thomas Maxwell Crawford from a distinguished but not wealthy family, killed during a Sikh uprising on the subcontinent. Mary Anne Glasscock, daughter of a gunner in the Bengal Artillery and a local mother, became Selina Edwards from an ancient Welsh family. Instead of being born in India in 1831, Anna claimed birth on November 5, 1834 in Wales. Years later Anna would claim "her complexion had been ruined by the Orient."
Anna's mother remarried, this time to a corporal in the Engineers, who was soon--for reasons unknown--demoted to private. Anna and her sister Eliza were sent for schooling to relatives of their father, returning to India in their early teens and to a life which must have been appalling and squalid. Eliza at 15 was married off to a sergeant of 38, and a similar fate must have been in store for Anna. As a means of escape 14-year-old Anna went off to the Middle East with one Reverend Badger, then serving as an assistant chaplain. It seems the good chaplain had a liking for young girls for he later married one of 12!
Anna claimed to have hated her stepfather for usurping her homestead in Wales so violently that she never mentioned his name to her children. Yet his name appears alongside that of her mother on the list of guests at her wedding. At 18 Anna married a 22-year-old clerk--Thomas Leon Owens, who was unable to hold any job for very long. The record of Thomas' death in Penang from apoplexy lists his occupation as "hotel master". In Anna's world the hotel master became the dashing young Major Thomas Leonowens, who, rushing home to be with his wife after a tiger hunt, died of sunstroke in her arms.
By the time she arrived in Singapore with two small children Anna had broken all ties with her family. These children bring up an interesting point as well. There is a record of two children born to Anna and Thomas who died in infancy--there is no record as to where or when Avis and Louis were born. Louis related that their mother could never remember the exact date of their birth, so he and Avis always celebrated their birthdays together on October 25, Louis being one or two years younger than Avis.
Now there was at this time a king on the throne of Siam who was interested in having his children learn English, the language he felt of vital importance. His consuls in Asia were instructed to locate a competent teacher willing to come to the Siamese Court. So it was that the consul in Singapore notified His Majesty of an English schoolmistress, a widow with two children. Anna's school, although she managed to send Avis to England for an education, was not a success. Thus did the story of Anna and the King begin.
Anna Leonowens spent five years, four months and some few days in the Siamese Court. She was hired as a teacher of English, and in addition helped with His Majesty's correspondence. No more. No less. That she was courageous, indominatable, and intelligent is certain. Dr. Bradley, the medical missionary who introduced smallpox vaccine, surgical operations, and the first printing press--and who on occasion met with and treated King Mongkut--relates the following incident in his diary:
Anna, together with some other foreigners, witnessed an altercation between the French Consul, a less than appealing gentleman, and Dr. Bradley. When the Consul complained to the King about Dr. Bradley, only Anna was willing to give His Majesty an accounting of what had actually transpired. This was a time when King Mongkut was delicately balancing between the French and the English, taking great care to offend neither--and so makes Anna's defense all the more admirable. The Consul was later recalled--not because of this incident alone, but because of other unpleasantries he perpetrated as well.
In 1867 Anna left Siam either for reasons of health or with a year's leave to arrange for the education of her son Louis in England. From all appearances she left with every intent to return, and correspondence exists regarding the terms of her return to Siam. Any chance of this return, however, ended with the King's death in 1868.
As a proper English gentlewoman it would seem Anna would have gone home to England. She did not. In fact, during her years in Siam she assiduously avoided the few British families in residence--they would have instantly seen through the façade. Anna instead went to the United States to live among the missionaries with whom she had become friends. Once again she was left without visible means of support. Thus she drew on what she knew best, her teaching and writing capabilities.
An article based on her adventures in Siam appeared in the Atlantic Monthly. With the appearance of her first book the following year Anna found herself in demand as a lecturer. With her piercing brown eyes, beautiful voice, and lively imagination she was undoubtedly a wonderful lecturer and story-teller. She met and became acquainted with the most distinguished literary personalities of New York - James Russell Lowell, Oliver Wendell Holmes, William Cullen Bryant, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Julia Ward Howe, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Harriette Beecher Stowe.
Her audiences, both listening and reading, were largely composed of abolitionists, missionaries and suffragates. The mood of the time was that it was quite acceptable--even downright desirable--to take over heathen lands in order to teach the people the proper way to worship, while providing them with a more beneficial form of government. The people who attended her lectures and read her stories were hungry for tales of an autocratic, fiendish ruler--one who would on the slightest pretext fling annoying wives into the darkest, dankest of dungeons. Never mind that the watery soil of Siam could not support dungeons (a fact also overlooked by Margaret Landon during her so-called years of painstaking research in Siam after which she wrote Anna and the King of Siam.)
With the passing of time the king grew ever more barbaric, while the light of Anna's Christian goodness glowed ever brighter in the darkness. The story of Tuptim and her lover must most certainly have chilled and enthralled readers. All the required ingredients entered this woeful tale of the lovely Tuptim, brought to the palace against her will, who escapes and hides in a monastery to be near her loved one. When they are found the king, through Anna's intervention, agrees to spare their lives. The man will be exiled, Tuptim will work in the rice mill. Then upon learning they were together in a monastery, the king who had once been a monk and abbot, orders them publicly burned. This story appears only in the second book.
Why would so enticing a tale have been left out of the first book? Reason: It never happened. The real Tuptim lived to be a grandmother! Moreover there was a palace law instigated by Mongkut soon after he became King to the effect that any lady who had not borne a royal child could leave the palace if she should so wish. Tuptim had no reason to run away--she could easily have left! In fact only very few ladies did leave--perhaps life in the City of Women was not so bad after all. . .
But Anna's audiences were hungry for stories that reinforced their ideas of heathen lands, and Anna served them a banquet. No one knew her stories were lifted from other places, other times, and I feel sure she thought to harm no one. She had two children to support and only her wits and talent for story telling to rely on.
The children grew up. Avis graduated from college, opened a kindergarten in New York, married a Scottish banker and moved to Halifax in Canada. Louis who had become friends with the prince Chulalongkorn, who became Rama V, returned to Siam, entered the king's service, and eventually founded the Leonowens Trading Company which, though sold a few years ago, still bears his name.
Anna spent the rest of her life in her daughter's home, strictly guiding the upbringing of Avis' children, and later, upon the death of her daughter-in-law, Louis' children as well. It is said she spoke 11 languages, more if you counted in the dialects. Perhaps--but there is sufficient evidence to the point that she never learned to speak Thai, much less the court Thai required to talk to royal personages. Still her accomplishments speak for themselves. In Canada Anna campaigned vigorously for social justice for women, spearheaded prison reform, founded schools for the blind, reading clubs and an art college. She spoke out against truancy as well as other contemporary problems. She wrote, including two additional books, Life and Travel in India and Our Asiatic Cousins, and lectured extensively, giving her last lecture on Sanskrit at McGill University when she was 75!
Anna never dropped her façade. Leslie Smith Dow in Anna Leonowens: A Life Beyond the King and I describes a meeting between Anna and King Chulalongkorn in London in 1897, at which her granddaughter Anna Fyshe was present:
The young Anna sat in silence for some time while her grandmother and the king chatted on and on, reminiscing over stories and incidents she had heard before. Then, the king looked intently at her grandmother, and remarked, "Mem, why did you write such a wicked book about my father King Mongkut? You know that you have made him utterly ridiculous and now the whole world laughs at your descriptions of him and at his memory. Oh, why, how could you do it?" Young Anna held her breath. How would her grandmother answer?
The elder Anna had expected the king might refer to her book, but had not expected him to be so blunt. Anna had never been closer to having her carefully created myth exploded, and she had no wish to be embarrassed in front of her adoring grandchild. Anna knew she could hardly repudiate what she had written, for her books were now famous around the world. Surely King Chulalongkorn understood that she needed money. But she could hardly say that in front of her adoring granddaughter. Instinctively, she became defensive and, once again, overreacted in the presence of royalty: "Your Majesty must surely understand that if I wrote a book at all about my life at the Court of Siam, I had to write the whole truth. And the truth is that your royal father King Mongkut was a ridiculous and cruel, wicked man."
Young Anna Fyshe later recorded the incredible exchange in her journal: "Just like Grandmama," I thought, "nothing ever stumps her...". Finally the long talk came to an end. All seemed well once more and His Majesty was delighted with Grandmama's visit. We made our curtsies and parted as the best of friends.
The whole truth? It is said truth is a lie believed by some. So the stories continue on. And what of the king--the real king--scholar, statesman, diplomat, scientist, monk, abbot, loving father, enlightened ruler and reformer whose achievements would have placed him among the great men of Siam even if he had never been king? Well, this is a story for another time.
