A photo portrait of Queen Victoria (r. 1837-1901) taken on the occasion of the wedding of Prince George, Duke of York and Princess Mary of Teck; George would reign as King George V from 1910 to 1936. The photograph was chosen for wide distribution during the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee in 1897, the year before the Aga Khan made his trip to London. Victoria made no secret of her liking for India and Indians, and the Aga Khan himself commented on the Indian servants that accompanied the Empress when holidaying on the French Riviera. See also Victoria and the Munshi.
SHE received me with the utmost courtesy and affability. The Queen, enfolded in voluminous black wraps and shawls, was seated on a big sofa. Was she tall or short, was she stout or not? I could not tell; her posture and her wraps made assessments of that kind quite impossible. I kissed the hand which she held out to me.
She had an odd accent, a mixture of Scotch and German — the German factor in which was perfectly explicable by the fact that she was brought up in the company of her mother, a German princess, and a German governess, Baroness Lehzen. She also had the German conversational trick of interjecting “so” — pronounced “tzo” — frequently into her remarks.
I was knighted by the Queen at this meeting but she observed that, since I was a prince myself and the descendant of many kings, she would not ask me to kneel, or to receive the accolade and the touch of the sword upon my shoulder, but she would simply hand the order to me. I was greatly touched by her consideration and courtesy.
Précis
In 1898 the young Aga Khan visited London, to be knighted by Queen Victoria at Windsor Castle. The Queen surprised him a little with her bundle of shawls and German habits of speech, but more when she neither dubbed him with a sword nor asked him to kneel, out of respect for his royal lineage. That gesture deeply moved him. (59 / 60 words)
