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

My distant cousin Lady Nugent is a great diarist. Her journal is mostly written in India and the West Indies. Modern day readers of the Journal will find that dear Maria is small in stature, emotional, deeply religious, loving to her children and compassionate to her slaves. She also has a playful aspect, which does help lighten the spirit during our long Christmas gatherings at Stowe. She writes:

Stowe. Am amused to find that my old maid, Johnson, passed herself on the French valets de chambre for having been a maid of honour, in foreign parts, where; she assured them, I had been a queen! This accounts for poor nurse’s anxiety, to be dressed smarter than usual every evening; for I suppose she passed for a maid of honour also.

Chandos Buckingham