Anna Leonowens “The Most Important Thing in Life Is to Choose Your Parents.”1 Anna Leonowens 11 11
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Anna Leonowens “The most important thing in life is to choose your parents.”1 Anna Leonowens 11 11 1831-1915 Anna Leonowens blurred the lines What Anna lacked in social advantages early between truth and fiction to create an in life, she made up for with ambition. She was extraordinary life story. To Victorian readers, an avid reader with a photographic memory, a she was the real-life English gentlewoman keen intellect, and a gift for languages. in a travel memoir about harem life in the Anna married Thomas Louis Leon Owens royal court of Siam (now Thailand). To a when she was 18 years old. They lived in India, feisty group of Halifax feminists, she was a then Australia, and later Malaysia where sister in the struggle for women’s rights, and a Thomas managed a hotel. It was a modest champion for women artists and artisans. existence. Thomas died suddenly in 1859, Years after her death, Anna’s early memoirs leaving Anna with two small children and were rediscovered and transformed into a no means of support. Sizing up her limited Broadway musical (The King and I) and a options, Anna chose to reinvent herself. grand procession of Hollywood movies and Six weeks after Tom’s death, the 27-year-old television adaptations. widow and her children arrived in Singapore Anna was a real woman. But who was she, with a freshly scripted past and a more elegant really? compound surname. She presented herself as 24-year-old Mrs. Leonowens; born in The real Anna began life in Poona, India, in Wales to a prominent family; educated in the unglamourous barracks of the British East British boarding schools; disinherited by an India Company. Her father was a sergeant evil stepfather; romantically wed to a high- who died before Anna was born. Her 16-year- ranking British officer who had died tragically old mother married another company man 1 \ Reputedly one at her feet, of heat stroke, following a tiger of Anna Leonowens when Anna was six weeks old. hunt. She had lost her fortune, she said, and favourite quotations, all contact with her birth family. She stuck to reported by her granddaughter Avis that fantastic story for the rest of her life. Her Fyshe. (Bombay Anna, children grew up believing it was true, and her 79) readers and friends believed it, too. THE NOVA SCOTIA NINE | Anna Leonowens 12 In 1862, she seized the opportunity of a lifetime, teaching the 67 children and many wives of King Mongkut in the royal court of Siam. With these improved credentials, Anna Anna bolstered sales of her books with lecture found work in Singapore as a private teacher tours in the U.S. and Canada. She had an to the children of British military officers. encyclopedic knowledge of Asian history and In 1862, she seized the opportunity of a culture, and a gift for storytelling. She took lifetime, teaching the 67 children and many elocution lessons to improve her delivery. To wives of King Mongkut in the royal court of expand her reputation, she wrote articles for Siam. Anna served the king and his family for Youth’s Companion, a popular magazine for five-and-a-half years. Her income enabled young people. her to live comfortably with her young son When daughter Avis married in 1878, it was Louis and provided her daughter Avis with a with Anna’s full approval. Thomas Fyshe met boarding-school education in England. But every qualification for a son-in-law. He was the long hours, the complex culture, and the smart, ambitious, well-connected, and willing separation from Avis wore on Anna’s nerves. to make room in his household for Anna. She left Siam in 1867 and never returned. She The newlyweds and Anna settled in Halifax, retrieved Avis from England, deposited Louis where Thomas worked as the respected “head in Ireland for his turn at boarding school, and cashier” (general manager) of the Bank of headed to the United States. 2 Nova Scotia. 2 \ Anna’s son Louis Anna and Avis settled in New York where The adjustment from literary celebrity to tea- went on to live his Anna opened a school for kindergarten own adventurous pouring matron was difficult for the spirited teachers before launching her writing career. life, eventually Anna. In 1882, she wrote to an American Her first two books,The English Governess at returning to Siam and friend: “I felt, when in the midst of a grand becoming a wealthy the Siamese Court (1870) and Romance of the party of all the grandees here, like giving a businessman. Harem (1873), blended eyewitness journalism, wild war whoop, and running amuck … I was social criticism, and sensational gossip. The burning to do something desperate, to stir New York Times called her stories a guilty up the cold vapid formalism and the empty pleasure. “Your judgment is charmed to sleep,” minutiae of a still more empty life.” a reviewer said. Anna Leonowens | THE NOVA SCOTIA NINE 13 Anna did stir things up in Halifax. Starting colleagues fought to improve conditions for gently, she founded a literary club and a women in prisons and for immigrant women. Shakespeare club. She seized on the occasion She also led a council campaign to open a of Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee3 to home for truant boys, reasoning that children mastermind a more ambitious project, the who missed too much school would be better Victoria School of Art, later to become the off removed from their families. The idea Nova Scotia College of Art and Design gained some traction, but the facility was (NSCAD). Anna and others envisioned the never built. school as a centre for excellence, a training Even while calling Halifax home, Anna ground for skilled artisans, and an economic travelled extensively. After Emperor Alexander engine for the region. She was particularly II of Russia was assassinated in 1881, Anna interested in improving the employability of travelled to Russia as a correspondent for women. Anna lectured, cajoled, and organized Youth’s Companion, reporting on conditions fundraising events, and was a central figure at in that country. Her vivid stories grabbed the school’s grand opening in 1887. attention, and she was offered a job in Boston Anna in 1903. Anna also immersed herself in feminist causes. as one of the magazine’s editors, a position She was a founding member of the Local she declined. Her home was with the Fyshe Council of Women of Halifax, along with family, she said; and her true vocation was Edith Jessie Archibald and other influential the education of her grandchildren. To that citizens; and she was the first president of end, she organized extended study trips to 3 \ Queen Victoria ruled the British the Women’s Suffrage Association. Through Europe for herself, Avis, and Avis’s children, Empire for 64 years, these organizations, she lobbied fiercely for based mostly in Germany. Thomas stayed from 1837 to 1901. women’s rights, including the right to vote in behind in Halifax. Anna and Thomas wrote Her Golden Jubilee municipal and provincial elections and to serve to each other frequently, mainly to confer Year, marking 50 years on the throne, was a on public school boards. She and her council about the children’s education. Avis, it is major celebration in said, deferred to their wishes in all matters. Canada. THE NOVA SCOTIA NINE | Anna Leonowens 14 And now … Somehow in the slim spaces between duties Jessica Scott Kerrin is an artist, arts and adventures, Anna found time to write two administrator, and award-winning author of more books. Life and Travel in India (1884) children’s books, including the Martin Bridge was not a commercial success, but it gave her a adventure series for boys. She is a proud forum to restate the backstory of her childhood graduate of the Nova Scotia College of Art and marriage. Her fourth and final book, Our and Design and a former director of the Anna Asiatic Cousins (1889), was a progressive plea for Leonowens Gallery at NSCAD. She now works cross-cultural understanding. “The Hindoos within government to raise public awareness are our nearest of kin,” she wrote. She never about Nova Scotia’s culture and heritage. did reveal that she had East Indian kin on her Jessica knows the joys of a creative life, and mother’s side. the gritty challenges. She admires Anna’s can-do attitude and self-discipline. “Here Boris Karloff, the star of Frankenstein (1930) and other was someone who started off with limited Hollywood movies, was Anna’s grandnephew. He was born options,” says Jessica. “But she decided that William Henry Pratt in England in 1887, a grandson to Anna’s she was not going to be a victim.” sister Eliza. When a member of the Pratt family tracked Anna to Halifax in 1899, she refused any contact. There were no Pratts in Jessica is philosophical about Anna’s invented her invented past, and she was determined to keep it that way. past. “Everyone should get the opportunity for a do-over at least once in their life,” she reasons. “Why not?” In 1897, Thomas and Avis relocated to Montreal. Anna joined them there in 1901. Anna continued to give lectures and to lobby for good causes. She died in Montreal in 1915, taking to her grave the truth about her own origins. Anna’s lasting legacy to Nova Scotians is the school of art and design we now call NSCAD University. Who but Anna could have imagined a more fitting monument? Her whole life was a bold work of art and design.