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Anna had been ill in the fall of 1865 and, though she recovered, in the summer of 1866 and on through 1867 she still felt worn out. She began to think seriously about taking some time away from Bangkok. Anna’s plan was to start with a visit to Singapore. But her real goal was to take passage from Singapore with Louis for what would be their first visit to England, to see Avis again at last. Avis would be twelve years old in October 1866. She was arriving at the age when girls were finished with school. Louis was completely at home in Siam and seemed to belong there, generally reporting, “I am very happy. All the people loves me and Mama” (Bristowe, 33). But both he and Anna wanted to meet their Enniscorthy relatives, and she was eager for him to have some advanced schooling in Ireland. Anna felt that her workload in Siam had become heavier and heavier. She had all her teaching, and the number of her students had steadily increased. She had close ties with many of the women and children in the palace, and they often asked her for favors. Her relations with her employer, the king, had also become more complex as well as more vexed. Anna had come a long way from being simply a governess, as her range of professional tasks had increased . She was involved in many small but significant ways in the business of state, in terms of writing letters in English and also in terms of His Majesty’s relations with the foreign community. One indication of the kinds of tasks Anna performed as an employee of the king of Siam can be seen by a letter Mongkut wrote to her from his summer palace in Petchaburi on April 6, 1866. It was a reply to a letter from her about some state business. He asked her to convey the king’s thanks to the British consul George Knox, who had visited her and “assured [her] that he will be standing in favorable assistance to me and my government even but privily for the [hostile step of the] French Imperial deputee and monipilies 153 eleven The Paths to Good-bye of spirit sale[s]” (LC, VI C, 4:6, 14). The French were hoping to set up a monopoly of the importation of liquor to Siam by making it one of the terms of a new treaty they were working out. As well as being a convenient secretarial go-between in diplomatic matters that could be kept private, Anna also received the king’s confidence in terms of some of his practical plans. The April 6 letter contains a long paragraph evaluating the representative of an English company who was proposing terms for building a telegraph line. More tellingly, the letter closes with a “very private post script.” In it the king takes up the worrisome question of Anna’s advice that he publicly and officially name Prince Chulalongkorn as his heir (not the custom in Siam). The king was responding to Anna’s apparent previous assertion that she gave this advice because there were some in Siam who did not like the king and therefore at his death would not support Chulalongkorn as king. Mongkut argued vehemently that he did not see how anyone would have told her such a thing because from her arrival everyone in Siam, including the foreigners, had believed that she was “really my partisan even may be my spy!” Therefore, he logically concluded, “who would say such before your audience!” Apart from the specific arguments of this letter, the telling point of it all is how much it reveals about Anna’s true role in the Grand Palace.The British consul passes on private political messages to the king through her, promising support against the French. Mongkut casually discusses the issue of whether a particular businessman has the best terms for installing a telegraph service in Siam. And he ends with a postscript that clearly reveals an ongoing argument between Anna and King Mongkut as to how best to proceed to secure his eldest son’s ascension to the throne of Siam after Mongkut’s death. It is obvious from his own rebuttal that Anna has previously argued to this absolute monarch that many of his people might not like him, and that Mongkut has considered her argument. It is also obvious that Anna was perfectly capable of arguing...

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