Blue Ridge Country - July/August 2018 - 109

An unlikely pairing
If Fox's life reads like its own rags-to-riches
novel, then the most titillating chapter
surrounds his improbable, late-in-life

marriage to opera star Fritzi Scheff, a native of Vienna who had been the talk of
New York following her 1901 stage debut.
Fox and Scheff married in December
1908-when he was just shy of 46 and
she was 29-mere months after her divorce from her first husband, Baron Fritz
von Bardeleben, was finalized. The union
brought an unexpected cadre of sophistication to Big Stone Gap whenever the
couple visited. In a public address in
1957, Fox's brother-in-law William Cabell Moore recalled Scheff's first visit to
Virginia to meet the family, in which she
brought with her "her companion, her
personal maid, eight trunks, and a number of bags, including one important bag
or case in which she carried many beautiful jewels."
Best known for her roles as Fifi in "Mlle.
Modiste" (1905-1908) and as the title role
in "The Prima Donna" (1908), Scheff was,
by most accounts, a prima donna in real
life as well. A favorite singer of composer
Victor Herbert, her performance of his
song "Kiss Me Again" became iconic-so
much so that she appeared on Ed Sullivan's "Talk of the Town" to sing it again

She was
legendary
both for her
beautiful voice
as well as her
antics on and
off the stage.

COURTESY UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY SPECIAL COLLECTIONS RESEARCH CENTER

books were riveting. Struck by the talent
he saw in Fox's prose, future president
Theodore Roosevelt wrote to him on June
4, 1894, as "a fellow Harvard man" wishing to "congratulate [him] most heartily
on the way [his] novel is opening." (From
the date, it's likely Roosevelt is referring
to Fox's novella "A Cumberland Vendetta," published serially in Century in summer 1894.) In the typewritten but handsigned missive, held at the University of
Kentucky-the first of dozens of letters
offering a glimpse into the pair's enduring friendship, which culminated in frequent invitations from Roosevelt to dine
together, including at the White House-
Roosevelt wrote that he felt Fox was on a
path to create a "lasting and real addition
to American literature."
Through the success of his serialized
stories, "the name of John Fox, Jr." had
become, according to the Nov. 9, 1901
edition of The New York Times, "inseparably connected with the world's knowledge of the Southern mountaineer-with
his primitive ways, his moonshining, his
open-handed hospitality, and his feuds."
But it was the breakout success of Fox's
1903 novel "The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come," a coming-of-age tale set in
Civil War-era Kentucky, which took his
life on a new economic and social trajectory. The book had something for everyone-war, romance, drama-and it
seemed there was no one in America at
the time who hadn't fallen under its spell.
In correspondence dated Sept. 8, 1904,
preserved in the Fox family holdings at
the University of Kentucky, a 17-year-old
reader named Kent Brooklyn Stiles wrote
to Fox to admit that he'd been initially
reluctant to read the novel, fearing it was
a "goody goody book." He finally acquiesced and was riveted. It was the "best
book I ever read," he attested. And, to
drive home the point further, he added
this postscript: "'The Little Shepherd of
Kingdom Come' makes me wish I had
been born in Kentucky instead of New
Hampshire. I'll always have a longing for
the Bluegrass State now."

John Fox Jr. was a gifted musician and performer, appearing in many theater productions during
his time at Harvard.

JULY/AUGUST 2018

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