Anna and the King of Siam by Margaret Landon (HarperCollins)

If it hadn’t been for America’s love of Broadway musicals after World War II, Anna Leonowens would have sunk into well-deserved obscurity long ago. The author of two memoirs of her five-year stay in what was then called Siam, back in the middle of the nineteenth century, Mrs. Leonowens had a brief flurry of fame with her stories of teaching English to the many children of King Rama IV. She faded from public attention until Margaret Landon, the wife of an American missionary who had lived in the south of Thailand for ten years, was handed a copy of An English Governess at the Siamese Court. Both this and its successor, The Romance of the Harem, had been out of print for more than fifty years but they captured Landon’s imagination. 

After an impressive amount of research, she came out with a fictionalized version of Anna’s time in Siam, Anna and the King of Siam. It became a bestseller and drew the attention of theatrical impresarios and Hollywood moguls, ensuring that Anna’s fame spread worldwide. The Broadway show tunes became enduring classics and Deborah Kerr, sumptuously dressed in Victorian gowns made from Thai silk, made Anna an unforgettable historical figure. As she swooped across the throne room floor with her royal partner, Yul Brynner, singing Shall We Dance, who could fail to be enchanted? Thailand, aka Siam, that’s who.

Mrs. Leomowen’s books, Margaret Landon’s novel, and all three of the movies that stemmed from the Broadway musical, are banned in Thailand because the portrayal of King Rama IV in these works insults the memory of the monarch and the institution of the monarchy. Even in this century, when few people in other countries know or care about the “English Governess,” her name is still reviled in the Kingdom of Thailand and books refuting her claims are still popular. 

Margaret Landon tracked down copies of Anna’s two books, met Anna’s granddaughter who gave her copies “of letters and other pertinent material,” and unearthed a volume in the Library of Congress that was a collection of letters written by Rama IV.  Even so, the book she wrote, she confessed,  was “seventy-five per cent fact, and twenty-five per cent fiction based on fact.” (Since she accepted Anna’s invented facts with touching faith and a certain amount of naivete, her figures of fact and fiction are a bit skewed.)

Eighty years later, her novel is almost unreadable. The best parts of it are the portions that draw upon facts. Unfortunately they’re sunk by the remaining portion of the book that’s fictional, and by Landon’s stilted writing, which was probably modeled on Anna’s Victorian literary style. 

Within the supposed facts, there are strange glitches. Anna’s son is often referred to as Boy, with no explanation. Since he’s originally introduced as Louis, this is a weird and puzzling insertion. A Thai prince who appears at the novel’s beginning as an absurd and frightening figure later shows up as an honored physician.  His fluency in English and  the fact that he was the first Thai doctor to use quinine as a treatment for malaria is never mentioned to counteract that first buffoonish portrayal. Another bizarre episode implies that a diamond ring given to Anna by the King was an indication that he wished to add her to his collection of wives, Credulity is completely strained by the story of a royal wife who becomes so proficient in English under Anna’s tutelage that she’s able to read Uncle Tom’s Cabin and then translate it into Thai. Most shocking is a graphic description of flesh being cut from the body of a revered monk and fed to the temple dogs before the corpse is cremated, a disgusting bit of pure invention that Landon must have known was false. 

The most engaging portions of the novel are the letters written by Rama IV. The King’s English is idiosyncratic but his sentences are much more readable than the overwrought effusions that are excerpted from Anna’s own letters. 

Dramatic episodes of cruelty toward women of “the harem” are interspersed with lengthy and dull accounts of colonial incursions upon the sovereignty of Siam. Slavery weighs heavily upon Anna’s heart and mind and much later, when King Rama V, her former student, emancipates the slaves of Thailand, she gleefully takes credit for this. 

It’s difficult to understand how such a priggish woman could have given birth to so many versions of her invented life. Strangely, the life of her son Louis has been ignored, although it’s far more worthy of a book. Years after his mother took him back to England, he returned to Thailand as an adult, became a captain in the King’s Royal Cavalry, and founded a company that still exists in Thailand under the name of Louis T. Leonowens Co, Ltd. While Anna’s name is excoriated, it’s delightful to think that Thailand has kept “Boy”  as a part of his chosen country’s history.~Janet Brown