Bombay Anna: The Real Story and Remarkable Adventures of the King and I Governess

6. Metamorphosis: “A Life Sublimated above the Ordinary”

On June 25, 1859, a woman got off a boat in Singapore. She was nobody special, part of that vast underclass of travelers in the far reaches of the British Empire in the mid-nineteenth century, and just a woman at that.There is no reason for us to know she existed, much less to know that she arrived in Singapore that June of 1859. But passenger arrivals in that port were recorded, I am happy to say.The boat was the Hooghly, coming from Penang, and the arrival notice in the following Saturday’s edition of the Singapore Straits Times announced the arrival of “Mrs. Leonowens and (2) children.” Anna stepped off that boat with a brand-new identity and began a new life. She had chosen her new biography with care. It had to be a story that would account for her having no money, no available family, and no ties to her past, and—at the same time—would render plausible that she was a gentlewoman , entitled by birth to be part of the higher social classes, and also educated enough to qualify for work as a teacher. The story Anna came up with was, in fact, a very clever choice. It explained how she came to be in Singapore on her own with no recourse to relatives or friends. It explained how she was both of good family and without access to family support. This was a crucial ingredient of the lie because Anna could not afford any links to her real past, which would open her up to exposure. She had to cut all ties to her true history. Successfully passing as white, British, and gentry required that no one ever find out about her mixed-race, lower-class origins. Her story also explained why, even without being able to produce any visible family, connections , or means of support, Anna’s supposed history would give her a claim on the goodwill of the upper-class British society in Singapore at that time. In inventing the story of her life, Anna could not have done better. She was, she said, Mrs. Leonowens, born in Wales and daughter of Captain Crawford, who died heroically in the Sikh rebellion, widow of Major 70 six Metamorphosis “A Life Sublimated above the Ordinary” Thomas Leonowens, with two children born in England. She was, regrettably , without family or income. Her grief-stricken mother, widowed in Bombay, had remarried a crude and materialistic man, and brought her teenage daughters out there from England. The crass stepfather disapproved of Anna’s marriage choice and all intercourse between them had ceased. Anna’s first child had died in Bombay, Anna’s mother died at virtually the same moment, and a second baby had died in New South Wales after their ship returning to England foundered there. She and her husband, after spending time back in England where they produced two children who lived—bless that English climate!—had returned east when he was reassigned to the Straits Settlements. But all her fortune had been lost in the bank failures after the terrible Indian Mutiny, and her beloved husband was dead, prostrated by heat after a tiger hunt. She found herself, alas, alone, unprotected , with little money, and with two children to raise. But she had come to Singapore full of determination. She was, after all, a British lady, well born and well brought up, well educated and firm of character, quite the right sort of person to earn a genteel living for herself and her dear children by educating the young. And so the new Anna was born. It was an excellent role, suited both to her passionate nature, so nourished by Tom’s love, and to her deep intelligence. m e t a m o r p h o s i s 71 figure 2. Singapore—from an original sketch (ca. 1857). Culver Photos. It was a role both highly romantic and requiring great strength of character. It disposed of her family in India, thus allowing the Indian Army “barracks rat” from Poona to cross the virtually uncrossable social divide of Victorian society, and have a chance to make something of her intellectual and personal potential. It allowed her to live in a world where her achievements had the possibility of matching her large talents and her at-least-as-large dreams. And just as important, on the simplest practical level...