At the close of every year a thread of unspun cotton of seven fibers, consecrated by the priests, was reeled around all the walls of the Palace. From sunset until dawn a continuous cannonading was kept up from all the forts within hearing to rout the evil spirits that had infested the departing year. This was not considered enough, however, in view of the serious situation, so the gates were to be constructed. Pick and spade dug deep trenches outside the gates that already protected the Palace on the east and west. When all was ready the San Luang set twelve officers to hide near the excavations until dawn. Two were stationed within the entrance to call loudly to passers-by, using familiar names, as if they were neighbors or friends greeting individuals among the peasants or market folk who were always passing just before dawn. Hearing their names, some paused and asked what was wanted. Others stopped out of curiosity. Immediately the officers dashed from concealment and arrested six indiscriminately. From that moment their doom was sealed. No petitions, payments, or prayers could save them.
On the appointed day they were mocked with a banquet at which they were the guests of honor, and conducted ceremoniously to the excavations. The King and all the court made profound obeisance before them as they stood trembling in the deep fosse that had been dug at the center of the new gateways. His Majesty charged them earnestly:
“Guard with devotion the gate, now about to be entrusted to your keeping, from all dangers and from all calamities! Come in season to forewarn me if either traitors within or enemies without conspire against the peace of this people or the safety of this throne!”
As the King spoke the last words a heavy beam that had been suspended by two cords above the “hinds and churls” selected for this doubtful honor was released, so transforming six Bangkok ragamuffins into guardian angels—three for each gate.
It would have been difficult to persuade most of the court that this precaution had not been effective, for M. Aubaret either forgot his threats, or cooled off after thinking over the angry scene with the King. Perhaps a dose of the King’s English had reduced him to a sense of his situation. The King had written to him as follows:
To the Hon. the Monsieur Aubaret, the Consul for H.I.M.
Sir:—
The verbal insult or bad words without any step more over from lower or lowest person is considered very slight & inconsiderable.
The person standing on the surface of the ground or floor Cannot injure the heavenly bodies or any highly hanging Lamp or globe by ejecting his spit from his mouth upward it will only injure his own face without attempting of Heavenly bodies—&c.
The Siamese are knowing of being lower than heaven do not endeavor to injure heavenly bodies with their spit from mouth.
A person who is known to be powerless by every one, as they who have no arms or legs to move oppose or injure or deaf or blind &c. &c. cannot be considered and said that they are our enemies even for their madness in vain—it might be considered as easily agitation or uneasiness.
Aubaret said nothing more to the King and the Siamese embassy sailed for Paris without further interference. The only unfortunate person was Dr. Bradley, whom M. Aubaret was suing for libel for printing in the Recorder the story of his interview with the King. The latter in his anxiety to have no further trouble forbade all government employees and courtiers to testify on Dr. Bradley’s behalf. Mr. Knox offered to serve as counsel for Dr. Bradley; and Anna, who with Louis had witnessed the incident, wrote a letter confirming the story as it had appeared in the paper. Unaccountably this was not admitted as evidence by the American Consul, in whose court the trial took place. The consul, who knew very little law, required Dr. Bradley to prove his innocence rather than insisting that M. Aubaret prove Dr. Bradley’s guilt. When Dr. Bradley, taken unawares by this development, could not produce the witnesses who had supplied his paper with the story, he was convicted and fined. The foreign community indignantly collected a subscription of three hundred dollars and sent it to the doctor to pay the expenses of the trial and the fine.
Light and darkness! So it had been from the beginning and so it was to the end. Was the small good worth its cost, the cup of cold water, the binding of a wounded spirit, the occasional rescue, the word of teaching? L’Ore Anna had saved. Tuptim she had lost. Sometimes it was hard to decide whether the little she accomplished outweighed the pain of seeing continually evils she could not rectify. One day she would feel utterly futile, depressed; the next strong with the satisfaction of accomplishment.
As for the condition of the nation itself, here is her conclusion as she prepared to leave Siam:
The King was fast failing in body and mind, and, in spite of his seeming vigor, there was no real health in his rule, while he had his own way. All the substantial success we find in his administration is due to the ability and energy of his accomplished premier, Phya Kralahome, and even his strength has been wasted. The native arts and literature have retrograded; in the mechanic arts much has been lost; and the whole nation is given up to gambling.
The capacity of the Siamese race for improvement in any direction has been sufficiently demonstrated, and the government has made fair progress in political and moral reforms; but the condition of the slaves is such as to excite astonishment and horror. What may be the ultimate fate of Siam under this accursed system, whether she will ever emancipate herself while the world lasts, there is no guessing.
Whenever she looked at Prince Chulalongkorn and others of her pupils, who were the new generation, the tomorrow of the country, she felt encouraged to hope. Whenever she thought about the heroism of women like Mae Pia and Tuptim, the consistent kindliness of Lady Thiang, the idealism of Lady Son Klin, she knew that they were not surpassed by the women of any nation in the world. But the system under which they lived! That was the crux of the matter!
Her own personal triumphs seemed small as she totaled them, yet she found on reflection she was glad of each one. She was glad to have been able to restore little Mae Khao to her father. The white baby whom she had bought at auction, only to lose by her own fall in the river, had reappeared unexpectedly. Anna and Boy had been riding down New Road one evening when they met Monthani with Mae Khao in her arms. She was now married to a Chinese merchant who was kind to her and fond of the child. Anna urged Monthani to bring Mae Khao to see her and the very next Thursday they had appeared. She washed and dressed the little girl in English clothes she had prepared for her, put shoes and stockings on her feet, and bound her head with a blue ribbon. Both mother and child were delighted, and came again and again. In the end Anna located Captain George Davis through J. C. Campbell, the inspector of customs, and he persuaded his former wife to relinquish their little daughter to him. He then resigned his position and took her back to his mother in England. A year later Anna had a letter from him dated Liverpool, telling her that he and his daughter were in his native land, and his little girl was happy under the care of his mother. A few Sundays before she had been christened “Anna Harriette” after the woman who had restored her to her father. She had behaved beautifully at the christening. When she grew up he intended to tell her how she had once been auctioned off in the Palace of Bangkok, and bought by the English lady whose name she bore. He added that he would never forget Anna’s kindness.
In her final year in Siam the event which meant more to Anna than any other occurred. On the third of January Lady Son Klin invited Anna to dinner. As usual she signed her note “Harriet Beecher Stowe.” The invitation itself was not unusual, but the importance Lady Son Klin attached to it was. She kept sending messengers all day reminding Anna of the appointment, and telling her to be sure to come, until Anna was certain she must be planning some very grand entertainment.
Anna was amused at the childlike concern. This childlike quality was one of Lady Son Klin’s chief characteristics. She was a highly intelligent, thoughtful woman, but she had never outgrown a naïveté that contrasted oddly with the keenness of her mind. Thus her translation of Uncle Tom’s Cabin was a sustained p
iece of good workmanship. But when she learned that Pegu, the country over which her ancestors had ruled, was now a British colony she urged Anna again and again to write to Queen Victoria that she, Princess Son Klin, was a British subject and could read and write English. Nor could she see any incongruity in her request. She was confident that Queen Victoria would be interested.
Neither could she ever make any clear line of demarcation between her own religion and Anna’s. When she had read and translated the Sermon on the Mount, she suddenly exclaimed: “Oh, your sacred Phra Jesu is very beautiful! Let us promise one another that whenever you pray to him you will call him Buddha, the Enlightened One, and when I pray to Buddha, I will call him Phra Jesu Karuna, the tender and sacred Jesus, for surely these are only different names for the same God!”
On that day in January after school Anna dressed herself and Louis in their finest to do honor to the occasion that her friend thought so important. Lady Son Klin had her head and shoulders out the window, looking down the street for them. As they appeared she rushed to greet them in her curiously sweet, cordial manner.
Dinner was served in the “study.” Two of Lady Son Klin’s sisters who lived with her were present, and the party numbered six. Since there were only five chairs around the table Prince Krita and Boy squeezed into one together. They were served by slave girls in the Peguan fashion, on little silver plates, the slave girls kneeling around the table. Fish, rice, jelly, and a variety of sweetmeats came first; then different kinds of vegetables; after them a course of meat, venison, and fowl of all kinds. The meal ended with sweet drinks, preserves, and fruits.
After this truly sumptuous feast the entertainment followed. It was a program of music provided not only by trained slaves but also by Lady Son Klin and her sisters. The air of suppressed excitement that had pervaded the dinner continued. Anna gathered that even the music was only preliminary to something else. As it ended Lady Son Klin rose and led Anna out to her garden.
There in rows knelt all her slaves, One hundred and thirty-two men, women, and children. Each of them was dressed in entirely new garments, and seemed to be palpitating with the same secret stimulation that made Lady Son Klin’s hand tremble on Anna’s arm. Lady Son Klin stood looking down on them from her verandah, smiling at them as they knelt below her, the women in flowered chintz panungs, the men in colors as bright but without the flowers, the children in the gayest outfits the local markets could provide.
With a look at Anna out of shining dark eyes she began to speak. “I am wishful,” she said in her sweet voice, “to be good like Harriet Beecher Stowe. I want never to buy human bodies again, but only to let go free once and for all. So from this moment I have no more slaves, but hired servants. I give freedom to all of you who have served me, to go or to stay with me as you wish. If you go to your home I am glad. See, here are the papers, which I shall give to each of you. You are free! If you stay with me, I am still more glad. And I will give you each four ticals every month after this day and your food and clothes.”
Anna stood silent. There was a lump in her throat. She had been taken completely by surprise. If she had done nothing more than teach this one woman, she knew now that her five hard years had been amply repaid by what she had seen this night. Surely it was only a token of the future!
Anna had put off telling the women and children that she was going until the time was near. The day she made her announcement she had hardly the courage to face them. For some time most of them refused to believe she was really leaving. When they could doubt it no longer they gave her such a demonstration of their love and devotion that she was overcome. Gifts of every sort poured in with embarrassing profusion. Many sent small sums of money to help Anna on the journey. The poorest and humblest slaves brought rice cakes, dried beans, sugar. In vain Anna tried to tell them as gently as possible that she could not take all these things with her. Still the gifts came until she thought she would have enough to provision the whole ship. Even Nai Lek, the dwarf, brought his little contribution, a coconut.
The King himself had been silent and sullen until the morning of her departure. At the end he relented. He embraced Boy and gave him a silver buckle, and a bag containing a hundred dollars to buy sweetmeats on the way. Then turning to Anna he said: “Mem! you much beloved by our common people, and all inhabitants of Palace and royal children. Everyone is in affliction of your departure. And even that opium-eating secretary, Phra Alak, is very low down in his heart because you will go. It shall be because you must be a good and true lady. I am often angry on you, and lose my temper, though I have large respect for you. But nevertheless you ought to know you are difficult woman, and more difficult than generality. But you will forget, and come back to my service, for I have more confidence on you every day. Good-by.”
Anna could not reply. Her eyes were full of tears. She realized that what she had not thought possible had taken place. She and the King were more than employer and employee, King and governess—they were friends.
He accompanied her to the temple to say farewell to the women and children. They knelt before her, filling the great room, weeping. This was hard enough, but when the King withdrew they were up and around her, embracing her, pressing little notes and last-minute gifts into her hands, reproaching her with tears for leaving them, princesses and slaves alike. Anna could stand it no longer. She rushed out and through the gate where they could not follow. But their voices floated after her, the women calling, “Come back! Come back!” and the children, “Mem cha, don’t go! Don’t go away and leave us!”
She hurried to Prince Chulalongkorn for her final and most difficult leave-taking. She had already bequeathed to him many of her poor “clients,” particularly the Chinese boy whom she had christened Timothy. The prince had written her a little note in his most careful English only a few days before:
Bangkok
July 1st, 1867.
My dear Mrs. Leonowens
I herewith send you a photograph of myself which I trust will meet with your approbation, and which I hope you will keep in remembrance of your pupil, whom you have had the honour of instructing for such a length of time.
Enclosed is a small present of $30 (dollars) for your kind acceptance; and in conclusion I can only wish you a pleasant and quick voyage to Europe, and that you may meet with every enjoyment on your arrival.
I beg to remain
Your faithful friend
CHOWFA CHULALONGKORN
His regret seemed too deep for words and he managed only a few. Taking both her hands in his own and laying his brow upon them he said, after a long interval of silence, “Mem cha, please come back!”
“Keep a brave and true heart, my prince!” was all that she could say.
On the fifth of July, 1867, Anna and Boy left Bangkok in the steamer Chow Phya. Uncertain of the future, she had sold her household goods at auction. All her European friends accompanied her down the river to the Gulf. Then they were alone, she and Boy, on the same ship that had brought them five years before, watching the shore line fade to a thin gray shadow.
40
FULFILLMENT
Anna reached England in September. By the end of October she had visited her husband’s Irish cousins at Enniscorthy, County Wexford, placed Louis in the Kingstown School, and sailed for New York with Avis. Her doctor had told her she needed a more bracing climate than either Ireland or England, and the Cobbs—for Mr. Cobb had married—were urging her to come to the United States. She had decided that she could return to Siam from there as well as from England.
After a visit with the Cobbs and one with the Mattoons, her old friends from Bangkok, Avis and she went to the Catskills for the mountain air. Anna had been burned very dark by the tropical sun. Her clothes, too, were different from the current fashion. The villagers whispered among themselves that she was the ex-queen of Syria living among them incognito, and fabulously rich! It was the first experience that either Anna or Avis had had of real snow and ice. They felt the cold
acutely, but the scenery enchanted them—the partly frozen Hudson, the endless white with blue shadows, the evergreens. Anna was already at work on a book of her Siamese experiences.
She had written to the King setting forth the terms under which she would return. After deliberation she had concluded that she could not go back unless her salary was adequate and the arrangements clear. Louis was not at all enthusiastic about having her return without him. He wrote from Ireland:
April 28, 1868.
“… I hope you wont go back to Siam because you will be in such a dangerous place and I will awals feel so unhappy thinking of you being among all those French peapel who hate you or praps a rober might come and may be do some thing to you or if you were walking up that green and one of those priests comeing up to you and saying something to you rudely or praps a cow or some strange thing come at you all those thing if any of them hapened to you what would I do the only thing is that I would die.”
The King’s letter when it came late in May was not entirely satisfactory. It was the last letter she was to have from him.
8th February 1868
To Lady A.H. Leonowens and her son Dear Louis
My Dear Maam & Louis
I have just received your letter under the date of 2nd. November on the 7th. Inst. I am very busy on these week as said in the preceding printed lines. My late lamented son’s remains were just in cremation on 6th Inst. and the ceremony of inauguration of his relicks is yet continuing until the present date his Nadial relicks will be returned to his Palace today Evening.
Regarding your request I have given verbal reply through Mr. D. K. Mason, Phra Siam Thurabat, the consul for Siam in London, who will return to his post from hence tomorrow morg. I cannot write you fully as I am very busy and much engaging. I beg to say briefly that I am very desirous of complying with your desire, but fear lest you by any cause would not be able to return to Siam soon, and many foreigners may rumour more and more that I am a shallow-minded man and rich of money &c. &c. as usual general rumour, many and many trouble me in various ways.—You had better be indebted to anyone in London yourself, when you was arrived here I can give you the required Loan at once and moreover if you please to—I can allow the Loan of $200 to you freely but it may be not.
Anna and the King of Siam Page 48
