Dean never told me which of Chopin’s waltzes she and her cousins all knew by heart but “Waltz in A Minor” with its tone of reflection and loss could have been the theme song of “Judith,” the ghost of Rowan Oak, who as the story goes, jilted by her Yankee soldier, committed suicide. One night at Rowan Oak in the late ’40s, Dean’s cousin Victoria, William’s stepdaughter, began playing the Chopin waltz at midnight. Jill, Dean and Vicki rushed downstairs only to find no one at the piano. Of course they believed the poltergeist Judith was haunting them. Only when Victoria was dying of cancer would she admit that she and Pappy set up the prank. When Dean was getting married in 1958 (to first husband), before leaving for St. Peter’s Episcopal Church she stopped on the steps of Rowan Oak where Judith “fell to her death” and asked Pappy if Judith was real. He said, “No, Dean, I made her up for you and the girls, but I believe in her, don’t you?”
And now, Chopin’s Waltz in A Minor as performed by “Miss Judith Sheegog” of Oxford, Mississippi:
