The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1900-08-19
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BOyc'S DOC.

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tSt Louis Dispatch.)
Charley Hoyt began his career with
farce comedy. He leaped to fame on "a
Bunch of Keys"
A tragedy has hurled him into obscur-
ity.
Two years ago he looked upon his you 2
wife in her coffin with her dead infant on
her breast. He looked, and the golden
thread which bound him to life snapped
When the curtain was rung down upon
peautlful Caroline Miskel HOyt il caught
the playwright in its folds. Today it has
obscured him utterly. He made his last
performance in public a week ago.
The funmakeF came into the Hartford
probate court to plead for his liberty. He
came 10 make last vain protest against
friends who, in their regard TOR him, in
I their pity for his decline, would immune
him in a retreat for the insane.
nave had great deal Of trouble.
judge, he said: I have lost my wife
and h-both-both"
The brain that for twenty years had
provided fun for thousands seemed to
WAIVER, the voice that had so often been
raised to create new witticism broke
The funmaker's head fell upon his
breast.
,.
tottering where he stood.
Out of the past behind the walls of
the Hartford theatre, he has carried the
memory of his beautiful wife's last aD-
pearance.
Charley Hoyt's insanity is not happy.
He has still the realization that his
idol the woman who made life precious
He knows that in a little cemetery at
Charlestown, N. II, his wife and infant
son are sleeping.
Because OF them he has forgotten his
Jokes.
While others sing them to the worlds
| applause he weeps and weeps alone.
Alas, poor Yorick.
bols? Your songs? Your flashes of merri-
ment?
Alas, poor Hoyti
He could sing once, songs that for many
year yet thousands Will laugh at
If he sang today il should be a verse
from the old, old melody that runs this
wise:
Here lies my wife.
The pride OF my life,
And the child in the grave
With its mother.
And the child in its grave with its
mother"
The funmaker's idol died two years ago,
His business till then was to make
people laugh. He did 1t well and easily.
Sour must have been the man who could
resist him.
A Hoyt play meant an evening of fun.
A Hoyt play was synonymous with a
good time.
But that was before his child lay in the
grave with its mother.
That was before Charley Hoyt had been
driven insane by sorrow. That was before
the maker of jokes had dipped his pen in
tears.
Caroline MiskeI Hoyt was one of the
most beautiful women of her day-a day
only two short years back
To most play-gOers it is scarcely neces-
sary to recall her. She was a beauty and
an actress. The former was her birth
right. When Caroline Miskel first burst
upon the metropolis as the pensive maiden
in her husbands Temperance Town
she was beauty without experience.
She was as the poet would have her tall
and diVinely fair She was a beWitching
beauty. with amiabiIity in her smile and
gracfOusnesS in her manner. Her hair was
golden, her cheeks were pink, her skin
was white Those who may not have had
the pleasure of seeing her of the stage
may have fancied that powder and dye
and rouge might so endow her. But Caro-
line Miskel Hoyt was a beauty who might
have stepped from behind the 1OotliShtS
into a glare of natures own making and
have held her own beneath it.
The charm of her coloring was an acces-
sorry 10 the charm of her eatures. Her
chin captivated, her eyes delighted, her
lips allured. In the memory of men Caro-
line Miskel HOyt would have lived as
| beauty even if she had never learned TO
act.
But she was not satisfied to be glorious
merely in form and face.
She was d beauty with ambition, a
beauty with ability, beauty destined TO
be a brief inspiration to the man whose
idol she was For his wife Charley
Hoyt, the playwright, wrote the most
classical comedy of his career, "A Con
tented Woman" Through 1t caroline
When Caroline MiSkel first came upon
the vision of genial Charley Hoyt she
was still a novice. He saw her in Robert
Mantefs company, which was then ap-
Moonlight a young slip OF q girl, with
an Undesirable charm of face and fas-
cinatiOn of manner.
That night she enchanted Charley Hoyt
in her list of slaves. When Fate loOSened
| those shackles it was to consign him TO
a madhOuse.
appeared to him the playwright had in
his mind a new play. II was still IN the
chaotic state that precedes writing. That
night, as he sat in an orchestra chair
! watching THE Face in the Moonlight, a
! little golden-haired novice inspired the
| character of Ruth, the simple young girl
| in "a Temperance Town.
| Before he slept that night Charley Royt
| had met and engaged Caroline MlSkel Tor
! his unwritten play His other engagement
with her came later. 1t came after her ap-
! pearance in "a Temperance Town, In
| the midst of an overwhelming triumph.
! Before the season was ever the ne"
! beauty had become Mrs. Charley Hoyt.
She was accounted the playwright s
| greatest success. Her charms were so OBJ
vious, so luXuriant, so pzslsh, that not
! the Sternest critic could dispute them.
! Charley Hoyt basked In them From
| them he received the most serious 1nsplra-
/ ton of his life His wife's ambition TO be
come an actress inspired him to weave the
| cleYerest satire he ever wrote.
| From "A Temperance Town Caroline
! MiSkey Hoyt stepped into role that
! showed she had become an actress. She
appeared as Grace Holne in "A Content
| ed Woman"
Il can see her now,'' wrote Alan Dale.
after her death, in her disheveled en-
| thusiasm at the end of her siege with the
! strong Winded women of the play, the
| very picture of that clinging, delicately
| tinted femininity that is so strangely op-
posed to the woman-of-the-world brand
| / could note the dramatic progress in this
comedy, and it looked as though the stage
| was about to gain not only the beauty
! that il accepts without question. but the
talent that is rarer and more Intellectual
| This was the woman who was Charley
| Hoyt's idol. For three years she was his
life, his light, his happiness. At the end OF
them he bowed his head over her coffin,
where she Law with her dead baby on heI
breast. When he raised 1t Charley Hoyt
the funmaker had fed. In his place was
a broken-hearted man destined to weeI
and weep alone.
Before six months had passed the au
thor Of "A ParlOr Match, "A Trip Il
Chinatown "A Stranger in New York,
down He had tried 70 do what hundred!
of other grief-stricken men have done be
fore him In work and dissipation n
sought surcease of sorrow. He burned tn