by Anna Leonowens · 1870
Memoir · Classics · History
Anna Leonowens's recollections of six years teaching the children of King Mongkut of Siam. The book later inspired The King and I.
Content note: Many historians question parts of this account, and it reflects the views of a nineteenth-century European visitor, including toward slavery and the court.
MARCH 15, 1862.—On board the small Siamese steamer Chow Phya, in the
Gulf of Siam.
I rose before the sun, and ran on deck to catch an early glimpse of the strange land we were nearing; and as I peered eagerly, not through mist and haze, but straight into the clear, bright, many-tinted ether, there came the first faint, tremulous blush of dawn, behind her rosy veil; and presently the welcome face shines boldly out, glad, glorious, beautiful, and aureoled with flaming hues of orange, fringed with amber and gold, wherefrom flossy webs of color float wide through the sky, paling as they go. A vision of comfort and gladness, that tropical March morning, genial as a July dawn in my own less ardent clime; but the memory of two round, tender arms, and two little dimpled hands, that so lately had made themselves loving fetters round my neck, in the vain hope of holding mamma fast, blinded my outlook; and as, with a nervous tremor and a rude jerk, we came to anchor there, so with a shock and a tremor I came to my hard realities.
The captain told us we must wait for the afternoon tide to carry us over the bar.
