She Stoops to Conquer was first performed on this day at Covent Garden Theatre in 1773. Over two-and-a-half centuries, countless people have laughed at the antics of Tony Lumpkin as related by his stepfather, Hardcastle:

MRS. HARDCASTLE. Humour, my dear; nothing but humour. Come, Mr. Hardcastle, you must allow the boy [Lumpkin] a little humour.

HARDCASTLE. I'd sooner allow him a horse-pond. If burning the footmen's shoes, frightening the maids, and worrying the kittens be humour, he has it. It was but yesterday he fastened my wig to the back of my chair, and when I went to make a bow, I popt my bald head in Mrs. Frizzle's face.

This event was inspired by a prank played on the author, Oliver Goldsmith, by the young Mary Nugent, later the 1st Marchioness of Buckingham, my mother. 

Oliver Goldsmith, studio of Sir Joshua Reynolds c. 1770

The story is told in the Memoir of Robert Nugent by Claude Nugent (1898):

Nugent’s daughter Mary was a great favourite of Goldsmith’s and an amusing story is told of how on one occasion, when he was asleep after dinner, she tied his wig on the back of a chair, so that on walking and rising to his feet, his wig was dragged from his head exposing his baldness. He treated it as a joke, however, with the utmost good-nature, and put the incident into his delightful comedy, She Stoops to Conquer.

So my playful mother was, in part at least, an inspiration for the antics of Tony Lumpkin!

Richard Temple

Lady Maria Nugent writes a note in her diary after dining at my father’s house in Pall Mall, where the talk was of William Pitt’s illness. Mr Pitt, Prime Minister, died two days later. Maria’s last words in this record will resonate with politicians and their families in any era.

Dine again in Pall Mall. A sociable and agreeable, though a rather melancholy party, poor Mr. Pitt being at the point of death, and almost the sole subject of conversation. Came home, reflecting much upon the lives of politicians, and how absorbing politics are of every other feeling.

“How absorbing politics are of every other feeling,” Maria wrote. Days after this was written, I was to join the new government. How true her words were to prove!

The cartoon below by James Gillray shows my family's government being kicked out by George III. I am head first in the water at the front with the label: "Last Stake of the Broad-Bottomed Family". Ouch!

Richard Temple

The State Music Room at Stowe is one of the great jewels in the crown of this magnificent house. Its ornamentation is pleasing, gracious and intriguing.

Accounts of the décor, furniture and artists are given elsewhere (for example, Stowe House, Michael Bevington 2002 and The Stowe Catalogue Priced and Annotated, Henry Rumsey Forster 1848). This note focuses on a single panel, featuring Apollo, and a woman and child.

The Music Room and the panel we are examining was painted by Vincenzo Valdre (1742–1814). Bevington suggests that the room was finished after 1781 and I know of no more precise date for its completion.

All the elements of the panel are superbly executed but only two have a significant interest to a historian of Stowe and the Grenvilles. These are the lady and the child.

Bevington almost says it, as others have before and since. “Perhaps it is not too-far fetched to see in the attractive lady before [Apollo] a reminder of Lady Buckingham, herself a keen musician,” he writes. This is too coy. The sitter for the Grecian lady playing her lyre in an offering to the god of music is without a doubt Mary Nugent—Lady Buckingham, who from 1784 was the Marchioness of Buckingham. The following portraits illustrate the likeness (Valdre c. 1780; Unknown c. 1770; Reynolds 1780-82).

This is not the only likeness in Vincenzo Valdre’s panel. The chubby cherub is a stocky child just a little too large for the assemblage and has familiar features. There is no doubt in my mind that this child is Richard Temple, later the first Duke of Buckingham and Chandos. He was born in 1776 and would have been a few years old when the panel was painted. The hair and eyes are Richard Temple through and through. Again the portraits illustrate the likeness (Valdre c. 1780; Reynolds 1780-82; Romney before 1802).

We need entertain no discomfort in recognising the lady of the house as the sitter for a portrait that borders on the raunchy. Mary Nugent, politically minded, devoutly catholic and the mother of a duke to be, was a lady who loved art, music and fun in equal measure. Betsy Wynne’s diaries, and a host of letters give witness to the merriness and gaiety at Stowe at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries. And of course, her son was the model for the cherub. You only need to look at the eyes. They are Richard Temple’s eyes.

Andy Boddington @andybodders

Note: This blog will usually be written in the character of Richard Temple, 1st Duke of Buckingham and Chandos, but sometimes, like today, that will not work and we adopt another persona.