When the party came to the Grand Hall in which King George and Queen Mary sat arrayed in their coronation robes, with six Princesses of the Royal House standing around them, “Bara Salaam,” said the Begum, as she bowed to the Emperor of India.
Before the scene which shows Queen Victoria receiving the news of her accession to the throne the little lady halted.
“She was very beautiful,” she said, “and so wise and kind and sympathetic.”
It was the tribute of one woman ruler to another.
“She was very beautiful,” she said again, “and so small. In Bhopal we think small people beautiful.”
The Begum’s inches were some sixty-two.
She glanced approvingly at the model of Tom Thumb, and proudly placed her grandson by the figure of the Russian giant to accentuate her admiration for small people.
As she passed through the Chamber of Horrors, with its guillotine and gallows, she said, with some degree of satisfaction, “We do not execute in Bhopal.”
“I thank you,” she said, as she departed in state; and her retainers added an official word of praise: “The Begum has found Madame Tussaud’s extremely interesting.”