The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1912-03-28

The infelicities and ramifications Of the famous Hichborn-w wylie "quadran- romance about as startling as the army, navy and State circles at Wash ington have ever known. In fact, ever since December, 1910, it has been a steady source of gossip at clubs and tea tables, and twice-when the elope- ment of the fair young Mrs. Hichborn with the forty-eight-year but Wylie first became known and later when the runaway Mrs. Hitchborn de- vised her famous scheme of trial reconciliations''-well then the gosSips were fairly gasping. It was as if the renegade society beauty were attempt ing to perform a real life drama un- der the direction of such a dramatist as Arthur Wing Pinero. The audac- ity of her proposal was as bold as any social situation Pinero had ever in- vented.
 In brief, having run away with Hor- ace Wylie, she proposed that he go back to his wife and she to her hus- band and that, if after five months or some such period of time, they found
  each other and that their elopement had not been merely the result of a temporary infatuation, why Wylie was to desert his wife all over again and she her husband and they would snap their fingers full in the face of so- ciety and live their lives out among the, Italian lakes and European capi- tals.
 This, in fact, is what Wylie and the former beauty of the White House dances are doing right now, and the news of Hichborn's suicide will reach them by press dispatches cabled over seas.
 Wylie actually did test the ''trial reconciliation" plan suggested by Mrs. Hichborn. His wife assented for the sake of her three children, the eldest of whom is Andrew Wylie, now a Yale student. It was, however, recon. ciliation in name only. Husband and peared as husband and wife conVen- tional1y. In reclity there was no re- sumption of their old intimacy. At the end of the prescribed five months he gave it up and fled from wife and family for the joys of existence with Mrs. HichbOrn, even as she had de- serted her baby girl, and young hus' She had coolly proposed the trial reconciliation as between her husband and herself, but his family so bitterly opposed the suggestion that, whatever Hichborn's secret leanings may have been, young Mrs. Hichborn was in- formed that in her case no such bizarre ''test" would be countenanced
 This merely sketches the situation. For the full realization of the size of the sensation which flashed intermit> tently it's shocks on exclusive Wash ington society, dating from the dis. appearance simultaneously of Wylie and Mrs. Hichborn, to the surpris- ing trial reconciliation proposition and again when in January of this year Hichborn began suit for divorce against his wife with flat allegations of fragrant infidelity against her, the wealth and social position of the mem bers of the ''quadrangle' must be con- sidered.
 The father of the young husband was the late Rear-Admiral Philip Hichborn, who as Chief of the Bu- reau of Construction and Repairs, di- rected the building of the first of our present great battleships. Young Philip Hichborn's elder sister was famous in Washington society de- cade or so ago as the 'Heliotrope Belle" She married James G. Blaine. Jr., but divorced him and then mar ried Paul Pearsall, formerly in the naval service, but afterward well known in New York and Washington society. Since the elopement of Mrs. Hichborn the little girl has fallen to the care of her beautiful aunt.
 The runaway Mrs. Hichborn was Miss Elinor Hoyt, daughter of the late Henry M. Hoyt, who for a quar- ter of a century was solicitor for the State Department. Her sister, Miss Constance Hoyt, became the bride of Ferdinand von Stumm, now First Secretary to the German Embassy at Rome.
 Elinor Hoyt was twenty years of age and Hichborn, twenty-five when they were married by Bishop Satter- lee in 1906. It was a very simple. quiet wedding, Mime. von Stumm be- ing the brides only attendant, and Henry NJ. Hoyt, IT,, their brother, act. as they had settled in their handsome home in Thomas Circle society was most cordially bidden to their enter tainments, which were many and had distinction and brilliancy. They had been lovers from SchoOldays. There was no opposition to the match. But young Hichborn is a quiet-mannered young man, not given at all to the athletic advertisements of which his wife was so fond.
 Wylie and his family lived only a block away from the Hichborn house. He is the son of Judge Wylie, the trial judge of Mrs. Surratt, hanged for her part in the Lincoln assassina- tion conspiracy. Wylie is a graduate of Yale and was a member of the Chevy Chase and Alibi University. Metropolitan Union and Yale clubs He was wealthy. Although we'll on in middle life, he Kept in splendid physical trim, is much of a dandy. affecting foreign styles in clothing. and the uptwisted. flaring mustaches of the Emperor William type. His wife was Miss Katharine Hopkinson,