Pauline Lucille Western and her sister were born in New Orleans, the daughters of George Western, a comedian, and of an actress who became known after her second marriage to William B. English, an actor and playwright, as Mrs. Jane English.
Both Lucille and Helen were on the stage almost from their infancy, being exploited throughout their childhood by their mother and stepfather. As early as 1849, Lucille was dancing at the National Theatre in Boston, and for some seasons both the sisters were acting and dancing in the theatres of the New England circuit, in New York, and elsewhere, in a curious hodgepodge sort of entertainment known as The Three Fast Men, or, the Female Robinson Crusoes, its only merit being the opportunity it gave them to show their skill at rapid changes of costume and at the clever and farcical impersonation of mode characters. One of its features was a female minstrel scene. When Lucille grew to maturity, her forte became the acting of emotional rôles. From season to season she reached New York again and again on her tours throughout the country, and she thus acquired a wide repute at an early age. She was not long past her twentieth year when she made herself famous in a great variety of characters designed especially to reveal a range of feminine emotions and passions, some of the more important being the dual rôles of Lady Isabel and Madame Vine in East Lynne, Camille, Lucretia Borgia, Leah the Forsaken, Cynthia in Flowers of the Forest, Peg Woffington in Masks and Faces, and Mrs. Haller in The Stranger. One of her most popular and famous impersonations was of Nancy in Oliver Twist, and during two or three seasons she was a leading figure in a triple-star cast that included Edward L. Davenport as Bill Sikes, and the younger James W. Wallack as Fagin. With Davenport, she also played the Queen in Hamlet, and the dual rôles in East Lynne. She had been in ill health for sometime, but persisted in a continuance of her tours until early in 1877 she reached Brooklyn, where after acting Nancy in Oliver Twist through a Wednesday matinée, she was compelled to abandon her engagement at the Park Theatre in that city, dying at her hotel the following evening of pneumonia.
Pauline Lucille Western was one of two sisters who rose from the most inferior ranks of the stage to astonishing popularity and celebrity. In their earlier days they were billed as "the Star Sisters". Lucille was a conspicuous and in many ways a tempestuous figure on the American stage. She was one of the many wayward geniuses of the stage, striking and appealing in everything she did, but impulsive rather than artistic.
In her interpretation of character she was emotional on the stage for the simple reason that she was always herself temperamentally emotional. She has been described by one of her fellow actors as having features somewhat of a Jewish cast, with eyes a peculiar gray that seemed at times a bright black and lustrous. Had it not been for her spendthrift habits she might have amassed a large fortune as a result of her great popular success on the stage.
She had married James Harrison Meade of St. Louis, Mo. , in 1859, and was later separated from him.
