The Duplicity of Hargraves

Summary

A threadbare Confederate relic and his iron-willed daughter descend on Washington like two displaced monarchs in a city that has forgotten courtliness; while the Major parades antebellum anecdotes through boarding-house parlors, a quick-change actor next door siphons the old man’s voice, posture, and very soul for a savage stage caricature that convulses the Capitol. Yet the jest becomes gift: when ruin stares the Talbots down, the mimic reappears in blackface and borrowed memory, slipping three crumpled centuries of dignity across a tavern table, proving that identity—like currency—can be counterfeited, spent, and, in rare alchemy, redeemed.

Synopsis

Old Major Pendleton Talbot of Mobile moves with his daughter Lydia to Washington, D.C., where he works on his book of reminiscences about Alabama, while Lydia scrimps to keep up appearances. Although the young government clerks ridicule the Major's dress, vaudeville actor Henry Hopkins Hargraves, the Talbots' boardinghouse neighbor, cultivates their friendship and listens attentively to the Major's stories. When a new Southern play opens, the Major splurges and buys tickets for himself and Lydia. Hargraves, playing the lead, imitates the Major's dress, mannerisms, and speech, and delights the audience, while infuriating the Major. He castigates Hargraves, who leaves, to Lydia's dismay. Later, when the Major is broke and refuses to seek a loan, an old slave from the Talbot plantation, Uncle Mose, arrives and gives the Major $300 which, he claims, is payment for a pair of mules which the Major's father gave him. The Major soon finds a publisher for this book, and Lydia gets a letter from Hargraves revealing that he, as Uncle Moses, repaid the Major for his help with the role.