Lady Townley and Hermione. The following season she was again engaged, and was seen in many characters, including Rutland in ‘Earl of Essex,’ Lady Gentle in ‘Lady's Last Stake,’ Zaphira in ‘Barbarossa,’ and Marchioness in ‘Doubtful Son.’ She never quite recovered her lost ground, however, and from this time disappears.
Miss Wallis had a graceful figure and a pretty, dimpled face. She had capacity for the expression of sadness but not of deep passions. Her comedy was pretty, but artificial and simpering. She had a voice pleasing but uncertain, deficient in range and imperfectly under control. She was charged with inattention and walking through her parts. Of these, Miss Dorillon, in ‘Wives as they were and Maids as they are,’ was perhaps the best. She was also successful as Joanna in the ‘Deserted Daughter,’ Julia in the ‘Way to get Married,’ and Jessy Oatland in the ‘Cure for the Heartache.’ She was unrivalled in parts which required simplicity, an unaffected deportment, modesty and sweetness. This seems to have been her own character, her purity and simplicity of life having won her a high character and many friends.
A portrait as Juliet, by John Graham, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1796, is in the possession of Robert Walters, esq., of Ware Priory, Hertfordshire. Romney painted her portrait in 1788, before she went on the Covent Garden stage, as ‘Mirth and Melancholy.’ This picture, sold for 50l. at Romney's sale, was engraved by Keating, and published 4 Jan. 1799. She seems to have been Romney's model at a later date.
[Genest's Account of the English Stage; Monthly Mirror, various years, especially September 1797; Theatrical Inquisitor, 1813; Gilliland's Dramatic Mirror; Thespian Dict.; Notes and Queries, 8th ser. xii. 176, 294; Gent. Mag. 1797, ii. 613.]
WALLIS, GEORGE (1740–1802), physician and author, was born at York in 1740. He studied medicine, and, after gaining the degree of M.D., obtained a large practice at York. He was much attached to theatrical amusements, and besides other pieces composed a mock tragedy entitled ‘Alexander and Statira,’ which was acted at York, Leeds, and Edinburgh. In 1775 a dramatic satire by him, entitled ‘The Mercantile Lovers,’ was acted at York. The play possessed merit enough for success, but it sketched too plainly the foibles of prominent citizens of the town. Through their resentment Wallis lost his entire medical practice, and was obliged to remove to London, where an expurgated edition of the play appeared in the same year. In London he commenced as a lecturer on the theory and practice of physic, and in 1778 published an ‘Essay on the Evil Consequences attending Injudicious Bleeding in Pregnancy’ (London, 1781, 2nd edit. 8vo). He died in London, at Red Lion Square, on 29 Jan. 1802.
Besides the works mentioned, he was the author of:
- ‘The Juvenaliad,’ a satire, 1774, 4to.
- ‘Perjury,’ a satire, 1774, 4to.
- ‘Nosologia Methodica Oculorum, or a Treatise on the Diseases of the Eyes, translated and selected from the Latin of Francis Bossier de Sauvages,’ London, 1785, 8vo.
- ‘The Art of preventing Diseases and restoring Health,’ London, 1793; 2nd edit. 1796; German translation, Berlin, 1800.
- ‘An Essay on the Gout,’ London, 1798, 8vo.
He edited the ‘Works of Thomas Sydenham on Acute and Chronic Diseases,’ London, 1789, 2 vols. 8vo, and the third edition of George Motherby's ‘Medical Dictionary,’ London, 1791, fol.
[Gent. Mag. 1802, i. 186; Baker's Biogr. Dram. 1812; Watt's Bibliotheca Britan.; Reuss's Register of Authors Living in Great Britain.]
WALLIS, GEORGE (1811–1891), keeper of South Kensington Museum, son of John Wallis (1783–1818) by his wife, Mary Price (1784–1864), was born at Wolverhampton on 8 June 1811, and educated at the grammar school from 1820 to 1827. He practised as an artist at Manchester from 1832 to 1837, but, taking an interest in art education as applied to designs for art manufactures and decorations, he won one of the six exhibitions offered by the government in 1841 and joined the school of design at Somerset House, London. He became headmaster of the Spitalfields schools in January 1843, and was promoted to the headmastership of the Manchester school on 15 Jan. 1844, which position he resigned in 1846, as he could not agree with changes in the plan of instruction originated at Somerset House. In 1845 he organised at the Royal Institution, Manchester, the first exhibition of art manufactures ever held in England, and in the same year he delivered the first systematic course of lectures on the principles of decorative art, illustrated with drawings on the blackboard. These lectures led Lord Clarendon, then president of the board of trade, to ask Wallis to draw up a chart of artistic and scientific instruction as applied to industrial art. This chart is said to have been the basis of the instruction afforded by the present science and art department (Sparkes, Schools
