Romance of the Harem

ANNA AND THE KING OF SIAM--Margaret London--John Day ($3.75).

When Anna Leonowens entered the service of the King of Siam, that progressive monarch had 9,000 women in his harem. They lived in a small city adjoining his palace. In the center was a garden and artificial lake, where the princesses bathed and picked water lilies. There was a theater, a gymnasium, a temple where Anna Leonowens taught English. There were blacksmith shops, slave quarters, barracks for the amazon guards. King Mongkut and a few priests were the only men allowed inside its high stone walls.

From 1862 to 1867 Anna Leonowens lived there. When she got out she wrote articles for the Atlantic Monthly, lectured, turned out two forgotten books: The English Governess at the Siamese Court, and The Romance of the Harem. Last week her story was revived.

Singapore Schoolmarm. Anna arrived in the Far East in November 1849, by 1862 was reduced to teaching school for officers' children in Singapore.

When the King of Siam invited Anna to Bangkok, the royal summons read: "And we hope that in doing your education on us and on our children (whom English call inhabitants of benighted land) you will do your best endeavor for knowledge of English language, science, and literature, and not for conversion to Christianity. . . . We beg to invite you to our royal palace to do your best endeavorment upon us and our children. ..."

What makes Anna and the King of Siam quietly engrossing reading is that ts fantastic story is true. Author Margaret Landon heard about Anna during her own ten-year stay in Siam. She read Anna's books and, in a chance meeting in 1939 in Evanston, Ill., met people who had known Anna. Anna and the King of Siam consists of 391 pages (with neat line drawings by Margaret Ayer) condensed from Anna's own discursive, old-fashioned writing. It is "75 percent fact, and 25 per cent fiction based on fact." Gilbert & Sullivan King. The King of Siam was a character out of Gilbert & Sullivan -- except that when he tortured people, they died. When Anna arrived at Bangkok she met the full force of cold, Oriental impoliteness. She was insulted, neglected, frightened, sneered at, as soon as she was safely in the King's grasp.

The thick-necked, barbaric, half-naked Prime Minister of Siam himself met her at the ship -- but only to tell her that she was most unwelcome, that no arrange ments had been made for her care. Anna gritted her teeth, stayed on.

After being humbled for days, she was taken to the King. Hundreds of courtiers and noblemen lay prostrate on the deep red carpet of the palace. The King watched her with his "hard shrewd bird's eyes." He marched up & down in front of her, placing one foot, encased in a golden, gem-encrusted slipper, directly before the other, as if performing some intricate drill. Suddenly he shouted: "How old shall you be?" Anna was so angry she replied: "One hundred and fifty years old, Sire." The King coughed, laughed, coughed, said, "In what year were you borned?" When Anna said, "1712," the King asked, "How many years shall you be married?" When Anna replied, "Several years," the monarch thought hard, finally roared out, "How many grandchildren shall you have by now? Ha, ha! How many?" The King had won. It put him in such good humor that he took Anna by the hand and led her to his wives and his 67 children.

Royal Progressive. The King was a believer in progress. He even let his wives leave the harem occasionally to go to a cremation. Twice a week, at midnight, the King held a secret council of the San Luang, the Royal Inquisition. This nocturnal Gestapo kept spies in all influential households, kidnapped subjects. It was dreaded. Its members communicated with each other by a stealthy, warning tapping.

Anna had no trouble with them. They thought she was a member.

Anna was a more subversive influence than anyone knew. She read Uncle Tom's Cabin to the slaves. Her favorite pupil among the King's wives, Son Klim, signed her letters, "Harriet Beecher Stowe Son Klim." Once Anna found the wives bidding for an 18-months-old white baby girl, the child of a native woman and an English sailor. Anna bought both mother and child for $72 to save them from slavery.

Anna did not get in as much trouble over religion or her antislavery views as over protocol. On a royal invitation, it was said, she had put the name of the U.S. consul below that of the English consul, and the American protested to the King.

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