History of Anna Leonowens
In 1862, King Mongkut was looking for a new English teacher to teach his wives and children to replace the missionaries who tended to include religious teachings. Anna arrived in Siam with her son Louie. After 5 years working at the royal court, she took a 6 month leave to tour America. During this time, King Mongkut died and Prince Chulalongkorn assumed the throne.
After leaving Siam, Anna spent some years in America, where she wrote her first article published in the Atlantic Monthly in 1869 about some of her experiences at the Court in Siam. The writing of her two books, "The English Governess at the Siamese Court" and "The Romance of the Harem", followed. Overnight, her presence as a lecturer was in demand and she began meeting many famous literary personalities.
Both of Anna's books are filled with questionable and embellished information. In these books, she upgrades herself, presenting herself in the role of the King's most trusted adviser and a widow of means when, in fact, she was a woman with a highly questionable background from a situation of poverty.
Anna was born in India in 1831 as Anna Edwards and not in Wales as Anna Crawford, in 1834 as she tells in her books. Her father, Thomas Edward,was a cabinet maker who enlisted in the Bombay infantry and died three months before Anna's birth (leaving her mother penniless). Anna however, describes her father to be Captain Thomas Crawford, who died during a Sikh uprising in India when she was just 6 years old, attending a school in Wales, with her sister, Eliza.
Upon Anna's father's death, when Anna was two months old, Anna's mother, who in all likelihood was Eurasian, re-married to a corporal in the Engineers. It was at this time that Anna and her sister were sent to school in England. According to Anna, she and her sister moved to India on the completion of their education at the age of 14 or 15 when in fact, Anna and her sister actually returned to India, upon the completion of their education at that age.
Her stepfather wanted to marry her
off to a man twice her age. To escape this situation, she went
on a long tour of the Middle East with Reverend Percy Badger.
Upon her return at 18 years old, she married Thomas Leon Owens,
a 22-year-old clerk. She did not elope, as she tells, at age 17,
to marry a dashing young army captain, Thomas Leonowens. Although
she says that they lived in London for a while before, Thomas
Leonowens, a major, was assigned to Singapore, the fact is that
Thomas Owens had trouble keeping a job. Consequently, they moved
around a lot. They had two children named Louis and Avis.
According to Anna, Major Thomas Leonowens suffered sunstroke on
a tiger hunt and later died leaving Anna with two small children
and no money. Actually, Thomas Owens, a "hotel keeper"
died of apoplexy in Penang, Malaya on May 8, 1959 and Anna moved
to Singapore. Friends rallied round to help and she began a small
school for officers' children. Her daughter Avis was sent back
to a boarding school in England. When in Singapore, Anna received
the invitation to go to Siam (now Thailand). She went to Siam
with her son, Louis.
There has been much controversy about what's in her books, and like the musical much of it is considered total fiction. Anna Leonowens told a lot of inaccuracies about her life. Even the title of Anna's book, "The Governess of Siam" is in and of itself misleading. Anna was not employed as a governess, but merely as a teacher of English. In addition, Anna did not figure highly in the Royal Court. It is unlikely that she had much access to the King since she would have been confined to the women's quarters where the women and children lived. King Mongkut kept extensive diaries and in the years that Anna was there, he only mentioned her once and then only briefly in a single passing reference. There were no underground dungeons at the Grand Palace or anywhere else in Bangkok as described in Anna's accounts of the period, and there could not have been in that watery soil. Nor was there any public burning, or, if there was, it escaped the attention of every other foreign resident, many of who also wrote accounts of the same period.
Anna may have invented such tales to add some spice to what would otherwise been uninteresting works, just as she also exaggerated her own influence. Her claim about what she was may have been nothing but an ambition to upgrade herself. Anna was a woman, living alone in Asia in the 1860's. There was a lot of class prejudice among the British aristocracy back then and Anna was from a poor racially mixed background. Perhaps she told the lies to avoid sinking into poverty. In order to succeed, she may have felt she had to pretend to be someone of a higher class than she actually was. On the other hand, that doesn't excuse the false stories she told about the Thai Royal Court in her memoirs.
Was she a resourceful women who was determined to make a better life for herself, or was she a dishonest women who was willing to become famous at the expense of the Thai people?
Avis graduated from school and opened a kindergarten in New York. She married a banker and moved to Halifax in 1878. Anna eventually settled in Canada and lived with her daughter and son-in-law where she spent the rest of her life.
In 1881, Anna went to Russia after
the assassination of Alexander ll. She journeyed alone, as a correspondent,
writing a series of articles.
When Louis grew up, he returned to Siam and prospered as a close
friend of King Chulalongkorn. King Chulalongkorn made him an officer
in the cavalry.
Anna never returned to Siam, not having been invited back. Her books and lectures offended the Thai people. However, thirty years after she left Siam, in 1867, she had the opportunity to see King Chulalongkorn. She was on her way to Leipzig when he arrived in London. She and King Chulalongkorn, the prince who was once her student, had a long conversation and at this meeting he gave her a large sum of money.
Anna died in 1915 at the ripe old age of 85.