Helen and Lucille Western each went their own way after their spat over John in April 1861. Lucille became a dramatic actress. Helen went in for light comedy and capitalized on her looks. In August 1861, she opened at the Holliday Street Theatre in Baltimore.1 The Baltimore Daily Exchange told its readers, “Miss Helen Western, the pretty and talented actress, whose New York fame follows her here . . . ranks, young as she is [at seventeen], among the first in her line of light comedy, and promises soon to be at the very head of her profession.”2
Helen stayed six weeks at the Holliday Street Theatre before moving on to Washington in September where she was booked into the National Theater. A month later she was back at the Holliday Street Theatre “turning topsy turvey the heads of the bucks of the ‘monument city.’”3
One of the “topsy turvey” heads Helen turned was Bill Hoblitzell’s, a wealthy Baltimore engineer.4 In love with Helen from the moment he saw her, Hoblitzell followed Helen when she went up north for her next engagement and proposed to her in Troy, New York. Hoblitzell knew his family would never approve of his marrying an actress, so they eloped and left for Paris in November 1861.5 A year later, Helen gave birth to a girl she named “Sallie Lawrence Hoblitzell.”6
Helen was not the simple-minded beauty she was made out to be by disapproving theatre critics. Though only eighteen years old and a young mother, she put together a travelling company, set Hoblitzell to work as her publicity agent, and toured England, Ireland, and Scotland for the next two years.
Theater reviewers in England and elsewhere were just as taken with her beauty as American critics. There were also those who were just as disapproving. In London and Hull, “her admirable and clever” appearance garnered enthusiastic reviews. The applause she received testified to the audience’s deep satisfaction.7 Liverpool’s theatre critic, on the other hand, was frigid. Although he conceded she was “remarkably beautiful,” he said she was “stupid.” The same critic later praised Edwin Booth, who appeared after Helen, as “a great actor,” but Edwin “couldn’t draw expenses” whereas Helen “made money.”8
At the end of her two-year tour, Helen left for home with two-year-old Sallie and without Hoblitzell. During their time abroad, Hoblitzell and Helen had become estranged, and Hoblitzell had gotten himself into at least one serious confrontation with theatre managers. Hoblitzell hadn’t realized what being married to an itinerant star would be like. He tired of following Helen around as her manager and returned to the United States without her or his daughter.
Helen had originally made arrangements to appear in Montreal. On her way back she changed her mind and headed instead for her mother’s home in Malden, a small town north of Boston. As soon as she settled Sallie with her mother, Helen filed papers to divorce Hoblitzell and booked herself in Baltimore then Alexandria then Toronto.9
Helen was the star attraction at the Broadway Theatre from July to August 1864 where she filled every seat in the theatre with men willing to “‘pay any price’ to gawk at her in her barely concealing costumes.”10 A titillated New York Times critic had little to say about the plays she appeared in and a lot to say about how she looked. “When we state that Miss HELEN WESTERN is a well looking lady, with a free and unembarrassed presence in the fairest of garments, we have said all that is necessary.”11
Helen Western, circa 1864. Courtesy of New York Public Library, Billy Rose Division.
A growing number of theatre critics, however, began lambasting Helen’s “naked school” of acting and complained about her “stripping class” of plays that stretched the bounds of immorality. The New York Post complained her style of acting and lack of refinement was “sometimes really offensive” and “disgusted the respectable portion of the audience.”12
The New York Clipper, the theatre trade’s newspaper, which had previously commented on Helen’s and Lucille’s raunchy antics as the “Star Sisters,” defended Helen:
Let Miss Western go ahead, and play the pieces that please her patrons most . . . . Shakespeare is not her forte, and the people would cut her if she attempted anything of that sort. Her line is the sensational and people go to see as such of a pretty woman as they can for the money, and as Miss Western is one of the pretty kind, the lovers of the beauties of animated nature go to see and hear her.13
One of those lovers of beauty was John Wilkes Booth. John was staying at his brother Edwin’s home in New York for the summer and undoubtedly kept up with who was starring at the local theatres. During Helen’s last week at the Broadway Theatre, the theater management handed everyone in the audience her photo as a souvenir.14 That photo was likely the one he had in his pocket when he died. Despite his many other affairs, for John the brief time they spent together was an affair to remember.
In March 1865, Helen was robbed and then fell in love again. She was at the Chestnut Street Theatre in Philadelphia when a thief broke into her room and made off with some of her most valuable stage dresses, worth about $2,500.15 A few days after the break-in, she met Jim Herne, the male lead at the nearby Walnut Street Theater’s stock company. Less than a year before his involvement with Helen, Herne had been romancing Helen’s married sister, Lucille. Herne would eventually marry Helen but would abandon her and go back to Lucille.
Herne met and fell in love with Lucille when she was the headliner at the Holliday Street Theatre, but she was married to James Mead, and Herne eventually withdrew.16 Herne stayed on at the Holliday Street Theatre until his contract ended in August 1864 then left for Philadelphia. Although he was still carrying the proverbial torch for Lucille, it didn’t keep him from taking up with her sister Helen when she appeared at the nearby Chestnut Street Theater in March 1865.
For Helen, an affair with Herne may at first have been her way of getting back at Lucille, whose liaison with Herne was common theatre gossip. Whatever the reason, as her feelings for the handsome Irish actor deepened, she began missing the scheduled eleven o’clock rehearsals. When Helen didn’t show up for yet another rehearsal, her manager, James Guest, began pacing. Dripping with sweat, he “puffed about, and waddled up and down in front of the theatre his fat cheeks hanging down below his ears like a couple of hams from a pair of butcher’s hooks.”
Exasperated, Guest asked the actors milling about on stage, “Where’s Jim Herne? Find him and perhaps we’ll know where Miss Western is.”
“I seen ‘im half an hour ago,” said one of the theater’s stagehands.
“Where?” Guest nervously asked.
“Why, sir, he was driving down Chestnut Street in an open carriage.”
“Who was with him?”
“Helen Western, sir.”
“Helen fury!” Guest blasted. “That means a rehearsal of catfish and waffles at the Wissachickon [hotel] and none here!”17
Helen was in Boston at the Howard Atheneum for her next scheduled appearance when the news about the assassination flashed across the country. Though it doubtless jolted her, there is no record of her reaction to the news nor to John’s death. One can only imagine how she would have reacted had she found out that John had her picture in his pocket when he died.
Helen drew the usual packed male audiences at the Howard Atheneum. Mayflower, the Boston theater critic, wisecracked that she was “playing with all her ancient vigor and abandon. She is a favorite with the Howard audiences, who have an eye for beauty, and Helen is comely to look upon—-a good deal” and was especially a hit with the “physiologically curious.” “There was no denying,” Mayflower added, no doubt enjoying his pun, that “Miss Western outstrips [Mayflower’s italics] all her contemporaries.”18
In July 1865 Helen was booked at the Theatre Royal in Montreal. The Royal was a popular venue for American actors in the 1860s during the summers, but there was another reason Helen arranged a booking there—Jim Herne was in Montreal.
Sibling rivalry aside, Helen’s feelings for Herne were genuine. Three weeks after she arrived in Montreal, she and Herne were married in what columnist Amy Leslie would later describe as “one of the most tragic romances of the American stage.”19 Although Herne was Helen’s husband, he was still in love with Lucille.
In September, Helen was back in Boston at the Howard Atheneum “displaying her symmetrical shape.” Mayflower, one of Helen’s most ardent admirers among Boston’s theater critics, noticed a woman who had just come from a meeting of the “friends of physical culture.” The woman “had so far overcome her natural scruplings of modesty,” said Mayflower, “as to discard the ordinary garments of her sex and to appear in a costume altogether novel and striking.” But compared to Helen Western, the woman’s lower extremities were “what a pipe-stem is to a watermelon.”20 By 1866 Helen was dressing even more provocatively. Her appearance in The French Spy was “naked and vulgar” with the “wantonness of a Bacchanal.” In the Pet of the Petticoats, “she perpetrates gags which are really indecent.”21
The “bacchanals” were not all on stage. Herne was a drunkard and Helen succumbed to his dissipation. In November, they were in Biddeford, Maine, for a one-night performance. When no one came on stage, the audience hooted and hollered. Helen and Herne heard them from their room in the back of the theater but paid no attention. They were dead drunk.
Tired of waiting and hissing, the grumbling audience left. The furniture dealer from whom Herne had rented tables and chairs for their dressing room came backstage to claim his property and forced his way into Helen’s room. Inside, empty bottles were strewn all over the floor. A barely costumed Helen, in her role as a fairy nymph that night, was lounging on a sofa. Herne and several other actors were sprawled in chairs. Everyone was juiced. Defiantly standing on wobbly legs, Helen and Herne rose to confront the intruder.
In the brief tussle that ensued, the furniture man scratched Helen’s face. Plastered as she was, she managed to deck him and sent him sprawling. Sensing blood dripping from her face, she became frightened and fell into Herne’s arms. Just as he was about to fall into a chair with her on top of him, he stammered, “I’ll, hic, protect you to the last, hic!” and collapsed. The New York Clipper reported the debacle as “A Gay Old Time” without further comment.22 It would not be the last time Herne’s boozing would keep his leading lady from performing.
Helen’s next fracas occurred in February 1867 at the Chestnut Street Theatre in Chicago. Reverend Dr. Hatfield, a clergyman well known to Chicago’s citizenry for raiding and closing down theatres he considered immoral, burst into the Chestnut Street Theatre with a police escort during The French Spy and shut down the “salacious” play.23 The grandstanding raid had no lasting impact. The next night Helen was back on stage as provocative as before.
A few months later Helen received an offer from Tom Maguire in San Francisco she could not refuse. In return for a fifty-night engagement at his Opera House, Maguire promised her “very liberal terms,” payable “in gold.”24
Helen and Herne arrived in San Francisco in late April 1867.25 McGuire had playbills printed that titillated theater-goers with “a fresh sensation and a fresh topic for conversation.”26 Colored photographs of Helen were posted in window store fronts and remained up for months.27 A life-sized oil portrait, displayed in a store window, by an artist, Fortunato Arriola, made him a celebrated local artist.28
Helen was showered with bouquets of flowers from the audience at her opening on April 29. The theatre critic for the Daily Alta California gushed that “her movements are graceful, her voice is powerful, and some of her attitudes are grande.”29 California’s other theatre critics were far less enthusiastic, praising the “Western shape” while disparaging the “Western acting.”30 Helen’s performance of Nancy Sykes in Oliver Twist “was rather a Bowery g’hal than a creature of low life in London.”31 The critics were also appalled at Helen’s scanty costumes. “Helen Western outstrips anybody ever seen at the San Francisco theatres,” said one columnist. “The Monkey was clothed in comparison.”32
Back east, Helen retreated to their farm in Massachusetts and wrote the San Francisco Chronicle that she was “completely disgusted with the people of California.”33
By then Helen and Herne’s marriage had come apart.34 Like Lucille’s husband, Herne had sapped his wife’s money. When Herne learned that Lucille’s marriage had also come apart35 and that Lucille had accepted an engagement in San Francisco while waiting for her divorce, Herne made up his mind. He left Helen and headed back to California.36
After Herne left, Helen hired Charles Wing as her new business agent and tried to resume her career, but by then she was seriously ill.
In early November 1868, while on stage in Pittsburgh, she felt an excruciating pain inside her abdomen and had to leave in the midst of her performance.37 After a few days’ rest, she felt well enough to travel to Washington for her scheduled appearance at Wall’s Opera House. Wing booked her into the Kirkwood House,38 the same hotel Vice President Andrew Johnson had been staying at when Lincoln was shot.
Helen barely managed to get through her first night. “The performance was given but not enjoyed by the audience,” the New York Clipper reported, adding that Miss Western was “laboring under quite a severe illness.”39 Wall’s Opera House remained dark for the next two nights while Helen recuperated in her room. By the third day Helen felt strong enough to return. Just before start time Wing sent word Helen was still in too much pain to go on stage. Minutes before the curtain was to go up, the theatre manager came on stage to inform the audience two of the theater’s stock actresses would play her scheduled parts.40
The next night Helen mustered her remaining strength and went on stage despite still feeling ill. Halfway through the first play of the night her voice turned husky, she slurred her words, and she became so unsteady on her feet she fell onto the stage several times. Many in the audience thought she was drunk and hissed and jeered as the curtain abruptly came down.41
With Helen gravely ill and languishing in her room, there was no money coming in, but Wing was still running up heavy bills for “extras” like wines, liquor, etc.42 At the height of her career, Helen was estimated to have been worth $100,000, the equivalent of a million in today’s dollars. Much of it had been drained away by her various managers, including Herne. Helen had also been very charitable to other actors who had fallen on hard times.43 Now her money was almost all gone. Wing pawned some of Helen’s wardrobe to pay their hotel bill and promised the manager they would check out the next day.
When it came time to depart Helen had taken a turn for the worse. The manager agreed to let Helen stay but insisted she would have to move to a smaller room (by coincidence she was staying in the same suite as Andrew Johnson the night of the assassination44) because it had been rented to a congressman and his wife.45
Helen was wrapped in warm clothing and blankets, seated in a chair, and carried to her new room.46 A doctor, called in to examine her, did not hold out hope for improvement.47 On the morning of December 11, 1868, just before she died, Helen was heard to mutter, “This is becoming serious.”48
She was just twenty-three. Her cause of death was reported as “congestion of the bowels.”49
Wing had Helen’s body clothed in a pearl colored silk dress, one of her remaining stage costumes he hadn’t pawned,50 and arranged with an undertaker to have her body shipped by train back to Boston. When the undertaker demanded payment in advance, Wing bartered Helen’s remaining possessions as payment51 and paid off his bill at the Kirkwood House with the rest. Somehow he managed to scrape enough money together to accompany Helen’s remains back to Boston.
Helen was interred in Mount Auburn Cemetery outside Boston.52 Lucille told a friend that she had had a premonition Helen was going to die a month before she passed.53 Neither Lucille nor Herne came to Helen’s funeral.
Although they had started out as a sister act, Helen and Lucille had been opposites from the beginning. Helen was a lighthearted and playful actress; Lucille was what theatre critics liked to call a “legitimate” actress, which meant either Shakespeare or melodramas. But in one respect Helen and Lucille were no different from one another: they both fell victim to Jim Herne’s charm and both suffered for it.
In the spring of 1869, Herne was offered a job as manager of the Grand Opera House in New York. He and Lucille came back east by train from California, stopping off at various towns along the way to earn some extra money. In Salt Lake City, the manager of the local theater had to cancel their shows twice—once because Herne was too drunk to go on stage, and once because Lucille “was so beastly drunk” she could hardly speak her lines. The Utah Daily Reporter bemoaned that the night’s aptly titled potboiler, The Foul Play, was a “foul play indeed.”54
Despite Lucille’s considerable earnings, Herne was spending her money as fast as she was making it. To cope she turned to morphine, a drug legal in America until the early twentieth century.55 By 1873 Lucille was seriously ill. A year later Herne left her and returned to California.
Lucille became a recluse after Herne left.56 On January 11, 1877, a few minutes into her performance, the theater manager lowered the curtain. Lucille was so weak she could not speak above a whisper. She was helped back to her room where she lapsed into a coma and died. She had just turned thirty-four. Just before becoming unconscious she muttered, “Rest at last.”57 Herne did not attend her funeral.58
Although they had not spoken to one another for more than twenty years, with the exception of one appearance to raise money for their destitute mother, the “Star Sisters” were reunited in death, buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery in Boston beside one another and alongside their step-father, William English, who had launched their career. Looking at the markers in Mount Auburn Cemetery where Helen and Lucille are buried, no one would know they were sisters. The name on Helen’s tombstone is “Helen Western Herne.” Lucille is buried under the name “Pauline Mead.”