Blue Ridge Country - July/August 2018 - 110

COURTESY JOHN FOX JR. LIBRARY AT THE DUNCAN TAVERN HISTORIC CENTER, PARIS, KY.

Wearing the uniform of war correspondent, covering the Spanish-American War for Harper's
magazine, 1898. During his coverage, he was embedded for a time with Teddy Roosevelt's Rough
Riders.

at age 73 (a performance that's available
today on YouTube).
She was legendary both for her beautiful voice as well as her antics on and off
the stage. Polish pianist and composer
Ignacy Jan Paderewski once referred to
her as "that little devil of the opera," and
an April 3, 1910, New York Times article
blamed her for accidentally setting a fire
and flooding the stage at Pittsburgh's Nixon Theater.
Moreover, Scheff-like Fox-was frequently plagued by illness, and was often,
apparently, prone to fainting mid-act.

110

BLUERIDGECOUNTRY.COM

Between 1901 and 1910, The New York
Times ran articles with titles such as "Fritzi Scheff Faints," "Fritzi Scheff Ill," "Fritzi
Scheff Collapses"-or variants of them-
no less than seven times.
Still, the Fox family seems to have
embraced Scheff fully-she struck up a
particular closeness with Fox's younger
sister, Minnie, who often traveled with
her on tour-and by March 14, 1910, she
felt close enough to Fox's parents to add
the following postscript to a letter he had
written home:
"Love to you and Papa, I wished it was
not so Dang far to you all . . . Your little
in-law, but I hope by now more related,
Fritzi."
In the early days of their courtship and
marriage, the pair seemed to be genuinely
happy. Fox completed the manuscript
for "The Trail of the Lonesome Pine"
(1908)-his biggest commercial success
since "Little Shepherd"-while courting
Scheff, and he dedicated the work to her.
Nearly a year into their marriage,
their bliss was still apparent in letters Fox
sent home. On December 2, 1909, Fox
wrote: "[T]his afternoon Fritzi bought
and dressed a doll for little Helen and got
some other things for her other nephews
and nieces in-law. She is like a child about
Xmas and it is fearful to think about the
lonely Xmases she has had. She is devoted
to Minnie and to all of you and she has
no greater pleasure than in doing things
for other people. I wish she had all the
money that she wants at all times, but especially now."
In time, though, their relationship
soured-perhaps, according to Fox's biographers, in part due to Scheff's incessant
touring, or the pressures of her extravagant lifestyle and the money it demanded. Adding fuel to the fire, York writes that
"[r]umors of John's drinking and jealousy
started to surface not too long after they
were married." He backtracks that assertion immediately, though, saying "[t]here
was nothing serious about any of it." Still,
in subsequent paragraphs, he details an
alleged instance in which Fox threatened
"to shoot a man if [he] so much as looked
at [Fritzi] again."
All that aside, Fox may also have begun to miss his decades-long bachelor
lifestyle. He would sometimes "disappear

http://www.BLUERIDGECOUNTRY.COM

Blue Ridge Country - July/August 2018

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Blue Ridge Country - July/August 2018