the first season she was seen as Emilia, Mrs. Haller, Mrs. Oakley, Gertrude in ‘Hamlet,’ Lady Allworth in ‘A New Way to pay Old Debts,’ Queen Margaret in ‘Richard III,’ Portia, Mariana in the ‘Wife,’ Evadne, Constance, Lady Frugal in Massinger's ‘City Madam,’ Queen Katharine in ‘Henry VIII;’ a new character in Serle's ‘Priest's Daughter,’ and probably some other parts. On 21 May 1845 she took an original part in Sullivan's ‘King's Friend,’ and played during the season 1845–6 Julie in ‘Richelieu,’ Mrs. Beverly, Belvidera, Isabella, Elvira in ‘Pizarro,’ Hermione, Lady Randolph, Clara Douglas in ‘Money,’ Alicia in ‘Jane Shore,’ and many other parts. She then retired from the management of Sadler's Wells, and, in a spirit of apparent rivalry, undertook that of the Marylebone Theatre, which opened on 30 Sept. 1847 with the ‘Winter's Tale.’ She took, not too wisely, parts such as Julia in the ‘Hunchback,’ Lady Teazle, and Lady Townley in the ‘Provoked Husband,’ for which her years began to disqualify her. She revived in November the ‘Scornful Lady’ of Beaumont and Fletcher, altered by Serle, playing in it the Lady; and in April 1848 the ‘Double Marriage’ of the same author, playing presumably Juliana. Retiring with a loss, it is said, of 5,000l., she supported Macready at the Haymarket during his farewell performances. On 28 July 1851 Sadler's Wells was opened for a few nights before the beginning of the regular season to give Mrs. Warner an opportunity of playing her best known characters before starting for America. What proved to be her last appearance in England was made in August as Mrs. Oakley in the ‘Jealous Wife.’ She met with great success in America. Signs of cancer developing themselves, she came to England, underwent an operation, and revisited New York. Unable to fulfil her engagement, she returned to London a hopeless invalid. On 10 Dec. 1853, in part through her husband's fault, she went through the insolvency court. A fund, to which the queen and Miss (afterwards Baroness) Burdett-Coutts contributed, was raised, and a benefit at Sadler's Wells brought her 150l. Charge of her children, a boy and a girl, was taken respectively by Macready and Miss Burdett-Coutts. After enduring prolonged agony, Mrs. Warner died on 24 Sept. 1854 at 16 Euston Place, Euston Square.
Mrs. Warner was an excellent actress, standing second only in public estimation to Helen Faucit (Lady Martin) and Mrs. Charles Kean. She was equally good in pathos and in tragic emotion. Her chief success was obtained as Evadne. Dickens spoke of her in that character as a ‘defiant splendid Sin.’ In Emilia and the Queen in ‘Hamlet’ her rather lurid beauty was effective. Her Lady Macbeth lacked something, but her Imogen won general recognition. Both energy and intensity were at her disposal, though she was open to the charge of ranting. A portrait of her, showing a long thin face, is in Tallis's ‘Dramatic Magazine,’ and a second as Hermione is in Tallis's ‘Drawing-room Table Book.’
[Era newspaper, 1 Oct. 1854; Scott and Howard's Blanchard; Macready's Reminiscences; Westland Marston's Our Recent Actors; Morley's Journal of a London Playgoer; Dramatic and Musical Review; Hist. of the Dublin Theatre; Era Almanack, various years; Clark Russell's Representative Actors.]
WARNER, RICHARD (1713?–1775), botanist and classical and Shakespearean scholar, was born in London, probably in 1713, being the third son of John Warner, goldsmith and banker, in business in the Strand, near Temple Bar. John Warner, sheriff of London in 1640, and lord mayor in 1648, in which year he was knighted, was probably Richard Warner's great-grandfather. John Warner, Richard's father, was a friend of Bishop Burnet. John Warner and his son Robert, a barrister, purchased property in Clerkenwell, comprising what was afterwards Little Warner Street, Cold Bath Square, Great and Little Bath Streets, &c. (Pink, History of Clerkenwell, p. 124). John Warner seems to have died about 1721 or 1722, and in the latter year his widow purchased Harts, an estate at Woodford, Essex, which, at her death in 1743, she left to her son Richard (cf. Gent. Mag. 1789, ii. 583).
Richard entered Wadham College, Oxford, in July 1730, and graduated B.A. in 1734. He was, says Nichols (Lit. Anecd. iii. 75), ‘bred to the law, and for some time had chambers in Lincoln's Inn; but, being possessed of an ample fortune, resided chiefly at a good old house at Woodford Green, where he maintained a botanical garden, and was very successful in the cultivation of rare exotics.’ He was ‘also in his youth, as is related of the great Linnæus, … remarkably fond of dancing; nor, till his passion for that diversion subsided, did he convert the largest room in his house into a library’ (Pulteney, Sketches of the Progress of Botany, ii. 283).
In 1748 Warner received a visit from Pehr Kalm, the pupil of Linnæus, then on his way to North America (Lucas Kalm's account of his Visit to England, 1892). Warner took Kalm to London, to Peter Collinson's garden
