Institute of Chemistry, Lecturer on Chemistry, and Head of the Chemical Laboratories at the London School of Medicine for Women.
"Frances," only child of an Irish gentleman of good family who died early, leaving her a ward of the English Court of Chancery. During an illness which supervened on the death of her mother, she was found, by a jury consisting of two or three English doctors (who were not her peers), guilty of two crimes, viz., incapacity for taking care of money, and the habit of using Oriental imagery to express thoughts too subtle or too sublime to find expression in ordinary English. She was imprisoned in a lunatic asylum. The familiarities and spiritual promiscuity of such places being intolerable to her sensitive instincts, she took refuge in a mode of self-protection often resorted to in such cases: she set up a claim to be called Queen, and surrounded herself with a sort of mock court etiquette. She took the title of "Queen of Servia " (Land of Slaves), and the signature "Frances Obrenovitch," and occupied herself in studying psychology and in acting as a sort of confidante, confessor, or chaplain to such of the patients (and they were not a few) as she could induce to listen to her exhortations. I met her when she had been already four years in captivity; she was, I think, the grandest spiritual force which ever came into my life. She was so little under any real delusion about her title that from the time she realised my respect for her spiritual instincts she forbade me to kiss her hand, or to address her as "your Majesty." She suffered terribly from the constant companionship of lunatics, some of whom were vicious, and of doctors and nurses, all of whom were ignorant of
2
