The Lacquer Lady

by F. Tennyson Jesse, Joanna Colenbrander (Introduction)

An account of a young girl who leaves Brighton for the Kingdom of Mandalay and Burma where she becomes the favourite of the Burmese Queen. When she falls in love the destiny of that magnificent kingdom is changed forever.

Genres: Historical Fiction, Fiction, Classics, British Literature, Travel, Novels

383 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1929

About the author

Full name: Fryniwyd Tennyson, an English criminologist, journalist and author (she also wrote as Wynifried Margaret Tennyson)

Reviews

[JimZ · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was not fond of this novel. It was too long. The author went on and on and on about this, that, and the other thing. She could have just as well told us what she told us in 383 pages (Virago Modern Classic) in half that amount. In my egotistical opinion. 🤨

Just as she wrote her novel ‘A Pin to See the Peepshow based on historical events, she wrote this novel based on historical events. It is mostly in regards to the prelude leading up to (and somewhat less during) the Third Anglo-Burmese War (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_A... ).

Burma now is Myanmar. Back in 1880, part of it was independent (called Upper Burma). It was ruled by a despotic king, Thibaw, and queen, Supaya-lat. They massacred many members of their own family so that their rule could not be usurped. One of the major protagonists in the story is Fanny Moroni (...then Fanny Bagshaw after she got married). She was truly selfish and was not concerned about the cruelty of the king and queen for she was granted special privileges for being friends with the queen. Plus, she fell in love with a Frenchman after her husband died and was more concerned with that than the abject cruelty of the queen and king. Well she may have been love with the Frenchman, but he was just interested in having sex with her. He takes a short trip back to France and marries a fiancé that he has (unbeknownst to Fanny) and comes back and when Fanny finds out from him that he got married, boy is she pissed off! She had thought for all intents and purposes that they were married. He has plans along with other Frenchmen to get special treaties signed with the king Thibaw that will increase France’s power in the region, and Fanny knows all of this — she knew all that stuff when she loved him but now she hates his guts and out of hateful spite tells some key British people what the French plan to do in Upper Burma, and the British kick the king Thibaw and queen Supaya-lat out of Upper Burma and annex the region for the British crown. Ha! That’ll teach people to mess around with Fanny!

It is interesting how Jesse ended up writing this novel. She got a letter from an acquaintance to come and visit her in India, and once there she eventually became friends with another person who was being transferred to Burma. Once there she met a Rodway Swinhoe, who knew about a number of things about the events and the people who make up this novel. She spent two more years in Burma doing research and actually tracking down people who were still alive and were characters in this novel, including Fanny whose real name was Mattie Calogreedy! In the preface to her novel, F. Tennyson Jesse said that “she was still alive when I first wrote the book in 1929, though she had lost all her charm.” That sounds like a rather brutal thing to say. 🤨

Anyway, you have to be impressed with her – she was responsible for unearthing all of the stuff in the novel that actually took place. Without her, I wonder if these historical events would have come to light.

I was reading an article in a historical journal, and it was discussing the third Anglo-Burmese War, actually using the book, The Lacquer Lady’ as a reference! (See: https://gerflint.fr/Base/Inde7/shah.pdf)

Although not my cup of tea, I won’t give up on her oeuvre, however. If anyone has recommendations on what book I should read of hers next, please let me know! 🙂

Reviews:
• http://agirlwalksintoabookstore.blogs...
• https://www.librarything.com/topic/59790
• https://laura0218.livejournal.com/101...

[Tocotin · Rating 4 out of 5]

What am I to do with this book? What is this book? I want to give it five stars and I want to give it one star; I’ve been thinking of it since I started reading it, long after I finished it; I want it on paper, not only on my Kindle. This book.

It is a story of three, or maybe four girls, and about the last days – or is it years? it is years – of the Kingdom of Ava, that is, of Burma before the British aggression. Let’s not mince words, the British are the aggressors here, even though the author is British too and is proud and affirming of her country’s actions. Why yes, this book is full of racism, colonialism, Orientalism, full to the brim. There is the n-word used by white characters to describe non-white people (Chinese, Indian, Burmese, anyone really). The Burmese are constantly compared to children and to animals; one of the main characters, Supayalat, the last queen of Burma, is coded as a reptile. That’s one-star stuff.

Then there is the language and the narration, thick, flowing river of an omnipresent narration, switching and gliding from one character to another, rising up to wash over a district, a city, a country, the whole world, and then diving down to a darkened room or a palace courtyard. There is something in the voice of this book that makes me want to cite pages after pages of it.

And then there is the story of three girls, or possibly four. The main character is the beautiful, silly, spoiled Fanny, who goes straight from an English school for young ladies to the golden city of Mandalay, where her Italian father is working for King Mindon, the second-last ruler of the Alompra dynasty. Fanny’s mother is half-British and half-Burmese, and wants to introduce Fanny at the palace. So Fanny travels to Burma with her not-exactly-good friend Agatha, whose father is a missionary, and who is dreaming of becoming a missionary herself, and maybe even – oh! – a martyr. The initial chapters about Fanny and Agatha at school, about their growing up, their thoughts and hopes, their slowly forming impressions of themselves as full persons are breathtaking.

The third girl is Hteik Supayalat herself. It’s because of her that I happened upon this book. I wish I could put a picture of her in this review, but I can’t – please go to the Wiki article about her and take a look at Supayalat and her husband sitting on the Lion Throne, and then tell me if you’ve ever seen a better picture of two young criminals – even if you don’t believe in all the stories about her. It was not Supayalat who was supposed to become the main queen, but her older sister Supayagyi; but during the coronation, Supayalat pushed in next to her sister, got herself crowned, and then for the first (and last) time in Burmese history forced a complete monogamy on her husband. The book does not offer more than a glimpse of her personality, but it is a fascinating glimpse all the same. Supayalat is cruel, wild, full of ambition, and absolutely fearless; my favorite scene in the book is the one between her and her mother the Queen of the Middle Palace. Oh, by the way – this book more than passes the Bechdel test, and it is women and girls who rule, act, and move its world, for better or for worse; as much as the author in her Britishness denounces the “effeminate” Orient, she is engulfed by the feminine element and bewitched by the women of her story. It also includes one of the most sympathetic male characters I’ve had a pleasure to meet.

The most interesting thing about this book is the claim of the author that she’d based it on true events and characters. It is supposedly true that Queen Supayalat had a favorite European lady-in-waiting – that’s Fanny – and that they both had a hand in the downfall of the Kingdom of Ava, and that the whole story was told to Ms Tennyson Jesse by the fourth girl, the daughter of an Armenian minister of King Mindon – the girl who in the book is named Selah Aratoon (and who was my favorite character). But true or not, the story is certainly believable, and the details of the life in the Mandalay Palace and in Mandalay itself are one of the best parts.

How can I even finish this review? I can’t. I haven’t said much of what I wanted to say about this brilliant, dusty curiosity of a book. It’s one of the best I’ve read this year.

[A · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lovely telling of the true story of the silly half-European girl whose indiscretions helped bring about the fall of the Kingdom of Ava. F. Tennyson Jesse's picturing of the slowness of time passing still rests in my mind. The best parts are the descriptions of Burma, almost a character in the book.

A friend in Asia loaned me an old copy of this book at the time I was visiting Burma in 1988 and was caught up in the bloody repression of the 8888 uprising. Trapped up-country, seeing first-hand the cruelty and violence these seemingly gentle people were capable of, I was reading this book until we were finally able to escape.

Thoroughly enjoyed the book.

[Debbie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book had a slow start for me but once I was about 1/3 of the way through I could not put it down.

[Ruth · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really liked this 1929 book about a young, beautiful, and capricious Italian/Burmese girl, Fanny, and her adventures, marriages, and affairs as she comes of age in the last days of the kingdom of Burma (1880's), which actually, she is sort of instrumental in destroying. It's historical fiction so I felt like I got a little glimpse of what life was like in that disappeared place & time. And Fanny was fun.

[Woolfhead · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautifully imagined historical novel, based on a true story. Reflects colonial attitudes of the time about race.

[Timothy J · Rating 3 out of 5]

I knew of F. Tennyson Jesse from her authorship of several of the 'Notable British Trials' paperbacks and her well-known 1934 novel 'A Pin To See The Peepshow' (based on the tragic case of Edith Thompson), dramatised on the stage and on TV. I was intrigued by this very different 1929 novel, also based on real-life facts and characters, in the lead-up to the 1880s British conquest of the Kingdom of Mandalay (Upper Burma). It's a colorful and absorbing story about a stirring and little-known corner of history, very well-written, and its artlessly selfish protagonist Fanny Moroni is fascinating. The novel's subject and setting, of Westerners at and around a 19th century oriental court buzzing with intrigue and the threat of being annexed by a European power, is reminiscent of Anna Leonowens' memoirs, Margaret Landon's account and the famous musical THE KING & I based on them. I agree with the blurb on the back of the Virago paperback edition that 'The Lacquer Lady' is "a neglected masterpiece".

[Linden · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a Virago.

[Austen to Zafón]

WHY IT'S ON MY TO-READ LIST: W. S. Maugham liked it. A Burmese novel set in the 1880. Jesse lived near Maugham on the Côte d'Azur.

[Edward Champion · Rating 3 out of 5]

F. Tennyson Jesse writes fairly solid prose, but I could care less about Fanny. This is a tour of Mandalay and Burma that is little more than whiny white privilege. Even with a regicide kicking in about a third of the way through, the plot here is fairly colonialist and by-the-numbers. Burma never really comes alive except from a wildly vanilla perspective. Which makes Jesse Kipling-adjacent, I suppose, though without anything especially profound or original to say.

[May]

Reflection of lives around the era of the Kingdom of Ava

[Yadawan Peuchpisuth · Rating 3 out of 5]

I cannot talk much since it was written for a long time and I glad that once I tried to read it.

ภาษาค่อนข้างอ่านยาก แต่เป็นอีกมุมมองของตัวละครที่น่าสนใจและมีมิติมาก ตัวเอกอย่างแฟนนีที่เป็นลูกครึ่งอิตาลี-พม่า เคยศึกษาในอังกฤษ แต่กลับมาใช้ชีวิตในบ้านเกิดเมืองนอนของแม่ เธอเข้าถึงขนบและธรรมเดิมถึงขั้นได้เข้าวัง แม้รูปลักษณ์จะดูเป็นคนนอกแต่ใกล้ชิดกว่าที่คิด เรื่องอาจจะแปร่งไปจากความเป็นประวัติศาสตร์บ้าง เพราะเรื่องราวแต่ขึ้นแน่นอน และเพียงแค่อิงประวัติศาสตร์บางส่วน พร้อมก็ซ้อนเร้นวัยเยาว์ของหญิงสาวผู้เคยลงรักเครื่องเงินในวังไว้

[Aung Naing · Rating 3 out of 5]

The last days of Thibaw, the last king Burma, was told through the eyes of British missioneries maid of honor.

[Dina Luna · Rating 5 out of 5]

I didn't want this book to end. Like, ever.

As a self-confessed Burmaphile, this is the 15th book I've read that is set in the land we now call Myanmar. A land that has been gripped by endless political strife, inter-ethnic turmoil and bloody military coups.

Based on the true-life account of a half-Greek, half-Burmese lady-in-waiting to the legendary Supayalat, the last Queen of Burma, The Lacquer Lady recounts the story of Fanny (reimagined by Tennyson as an Anglo-Italian-Burmese hybrid), sent from an all-girls boarding school in Brighton to live with her Italian father and Anglo-Burmese mother in the balmy idylls of metropolitan Mandalay.

Imagining a life of royal banquets and exotic palace dances, Fanny is initially disillusioned by her new life in Mandalay, where non-Burmese (Kalas) live segregated lives in the dusty alleyways of Kala Town, far removed from the sumptuous interiors and hedonistic mores of palace life.

Using the sheer force of her character, Fanny charms her way from the drabness of Kala-Town (the non-Burmese district of Mandalay) to the glittering halls of the Glass Palace, the residence of King Thibaw and his wife and half-sister (I know), Queen Supayalat. In a time when it was unheard of for Kalas to be granted special access to Burmese royalty, Fanny bucks convention and becomes the first European handmaiden to serve the petulant, power-hungry Queen, gaining special insight into the life of Burma's last royal family while also bringing about its eventual downfall...

Set against a backdrop of endless political scheming, shifting colonial loyalties and salacious royal intrigues, The Lacquer Lady is an unsung classic and evocatively brings to life a Golden Age in Burmese history as it rapidly draws to an untimely end...