This notice was published in Overland Monthly and Out West Magazine, vol. 6, no. 3, March 1871, pp. 293ff. Opinions expressed are of the original author, not of this site's Guide. The notice gives a sense of the reception of Anna Leonowens' work in her own time.
The English Governess at the Siamese Court: Being Recollections of Six Years in the Royal Palace at Bangkok. By Anna Harriette Leonowens. with Illustrations from Photographs presented to the Author by the King of Siam. Boston: Fields, Osgood & Co. 1870.There are no longer any penetralia anywhere. The private life of the most sacred personages is turned inside out, and bookwrights and newspaper correspondents penetrate everywhere. If the Grand Lama of Thibet still secludes himself within the Snowy Mountains, 'tis but for a season. For curiosity of late has cunning grown, and at its own good pleasure spies out the secrecy of every life. This may be Byron adapted to a modern subject, but it is neverheless true. After the New York newspapers have "interviewed" the Japanese Mikado, and have drawn pen-pictures (from the life) of the Brother of the Sun and Moon, who rules the Central Flowery Kingdom, there does not appear to be much of any thing left for the ubiquitous and unconquerable book-making observer. The mystery which has for ages surrounded the existence of Oriental potentates has been the last refuge of falsehood, fleeing from indomitable curiosity. Even this has gone at last -- rude hands having torn away the tantalizing curtains which concealed the dread arcana from the eyes of the profane world -- and sunlight has streamed in upon the astonished inmates, blinking and cowering in their nakedness among the gaudy shams of their languid existence.
Most remarkable of all these exposures is the simple and graphic story of the life which an English governess led for six years in the palace of the Supreme King of Siam. Who would have thought, years ago, when we read of the mysterious, gilded, jeweled palaces of Bangkok, the royal train of white elephants, the awe-inspiring paraphernalia of P'hra parawendt Maha Mongkut -- who would have thought that all these splendors would be uncovered for us, just as a new Asmodeus might take the roofs off the gilded temples and harems, and expose all the wretched contents? But this has been done, and Mrs. Leonowens, in her fresh, lively way, tells us of all she saw. And the sight is not satisfactory. Human nature in a pagan palace, burdened though it may be with a royal ceremonial and covered with jewels and silk attire, is a few shades weaker than elsewhere. The swelling domes, crusted with barbaric pearl and gold, worshiped at a distance by the awe-struck subjects of the mighty ruler, cover as much lying, hypocrisy, vice and tyranny as may have been found in the palaces of Le Grande Monarque in the days of the Montespans, the Maintenons, and the Cardinals Mazarin and De Retz. Poor humanity does not vary much, after all, whether we find it in a hovel or castle; and it is edifying to have the truism so often and abundantly fortified by evidence from the four corners of the globe.
The English governess at the Court of Siam had marvelous opportunities for seeing the whole domestic and interior life of royalty in Siam. An instructor of the King's children, she came to be on familiar terms with the august tyrant who holds the lives of a great nation in his hand. A woman, she was permitted to penetrate into the secret recesses of the harem, and could tell all that was fit to tell of the life of the multitudinous wives of the oriental despot. So we have all the minutia of the Siamese Court, not tediously drawn out, but graphically sketched by an observant woman, and charming from its novelty, if nothing more. There is, too, a touch of sadness in all she says of the poor women who languish out their lives in this splendid misery. The poor child-wife of the King, who sang a scrap of "There is a Happy Land, far, far away;" the concubine, beaten on the mouth with a slipper -- these, and all others like them, are the sombre shadows of the interior life of the royal abode. We close the book, heartily glad that we are not subjects of his Golden-Footed Majesty of Siam.
More on Anna Leonowens
Anna and the King of Siam, The King and I, her life in the country now called Thailand, etc. etc. etc.
