who was Hargreaves ? describe the majors relationship with Hargreaves
Answers
Sixty-eight-year-old Major Pendleton Talbot and his practical spinster daughter Lydia move to Washington D.C. The Talbots have fallen from their aristocratic past in the South before the American Civil War and are now quite poor. The pair stay at a boarding house in the nation's capital. There they become acquainted with Henry Hopkins Hargraves, an ambitious actor in vaudeville. Hargraves is seemingly spellbound by the Major's tales of his happier past
Eventually, the Talbots become behind on their rent. The Major seeks the help of their congressman in getting his book published, but to little avail. The impractical Major spends their last two dollars on play tickets. Lydia is dismayed, but seeing as the money has been spent, goes to see the play with her father. They are shocked to see Hargraves impersonating her father on stage. When Hargraves comes to see the Major to offer him financial help, the Major informs him that he saw the actor's performance and is highly offended. He refuses to accept any money, even though he and Lydia are almost destitute.
Just when the father and daughter's situation is most bleak, "an old colored man" appears and tells the Talbots that he was once one of Talbot's slaves. He has prospered and wants to repay an old family debt. Major Talbot accepts the payment. Later Lydia received a letter from Hargraves, explaining that he played the ex-slave. She hides the letter from her father.
by O. Henry
An illustration for the story The Duplicity of Hargraves by the author O. Henry
When Major Pendleton Talbot, of Mobile, sir, and his daughter, Miss Lydia Talbot, came to Washington to reside, they selected for a boarding place a house that stood fifty yards back from one of the quietest avenues. It was an old-fashioned brick building, with a portico upheld by tall white pillars. The yard was shaded by stately locusts and elms, and a catalpa tree in season rained its pink and white blossoms upon the grass. Rows of high box bushes lined the fence and walks. It was the Southern style and aspect of the place that pleased the eyes of the Talbots.
In this pleasant, private boarding house they engaged rooms, including a study for Major Talbot, who was adding the finishing chapters to his book, "Anecdotes and Reminiscences of the Alabama Army, Bench, and Bar."
Major Talbot was of the old, old South. The present day had little interest or excellence in his eyes. His mind lived in that period before the Civil War, when the Talbots owned thousands of acres of fine cotton land and the slaves to till them; when the family mansion was the scene of princely hospitality, and drew its guests from the aristocracy of the South. Out of that period he had brought all its old pride and scruples of honour, an antiquated and punctilious politeness, and (you would think) its wardrobe.