Aged twenty-nine, admitted 24th October 1822. This was an unmarried
woman, and another personage of royal blood. She fancied herself to be
Queen Charlotte, and assumed all the august dignity of her high degree,
exacting, or at least insisting, on due homage from the ladies amongst
whom she moved.
Three crowned heads at once, under the same roof, were perhaps a little
too much for the tranquillity of the region they inhabited, especially
as there appeared no symptom of a _Holy alliance_ amongst them, to
check the machinations of _illegitimate reformers_, for they were rival
queens, and maintained towards each other a degree of hostility truly
royal. Whenever their majesties appeared all at the same time in the
gallery, it became the theatre of a fierce and clamorous war of words,
attitudes, and grimace; each claimed to herself the exclusive right of
hereditary power, and disowned the other two as impostors and usurpers.
In such a contest, it was not to be expected that the neighbouring
powers could remain idle spectators; and, consequently, the allies of
each princess brought their auxiliary contingents into the field,
and contended in this tripartite war, with all the ardour of fancy,
vigour of voice, and volubility of tongue, that may be easily supposed
to have reigned where so many ladies joined the rival ranks. But on
those occasions the rage of conflict generally roused some neighbouring
imperious power, in the shape of a keeper, to interfere, when the
rival-queens were obliged to retreat to their respective apartments,
and defer the decision, to some future opportunity.
Queen Charlotte, alias Charlotte Harding, was discharged on the 12th
December 1822.