Two oval portraits framed with ribbons. Left: a bust-length portrait of an unidentified woman in a wide-brimmed hat, facing to left, labelled ‘No. XXVIII’ and ‘Miss Amb--se.’ Right: a bust-length portrait of George Bridges Rodney (bap. 1718, d. 1792) in admiral’s undress uniform, 1767–87, labelled ‘No. XXIX’ and ‘The approved Candidate.’ These portraits were published in ‘The Town and Country Magazine; or Universal Repository of Knowledge, Instruction, and Entertainment’, volume 16 (October 1784), page 513, alongside ‘Histories of the Tete-a-Tete annexed; or, Memoirs of the Approved Candidate, and Miss Amb--se.’ Published by Archibald Hamilton between 1769 and 1796, the ‘Town and Country Magazine’ was one of the most popular British magazines of the late eighteenth century. The ‘Histories of the Tete-a-Tete’ were a regular feature of the magazine, combining portrait prints with rakish biographies and scurrilous gossip. Each ‘Tete-a-Tete’ focussed upon two prominent figures within high society (one male, one female) and alleged an illicit relationship between the pair. The subjects were never overtly named but were instead referred to using abbreviated titles, puns or suggestive epithets, which enabled contemporary readers to guess their identities. Here, the naval officer George Bridges Rodney is described as the ‘Approved Candidate’, a satirical comment referring to his landslide victory as Member of Parliament for Westminster in the general election of 1780. The ‘Tete-a-Tete’ discusses his alleged relationship with the daughter of a wealthy hairdresser, who had received a genteel education and entered high society but whose reputation was ruined after she was seduced and abandoned by an aristocratic rake. According to the magazine, she turned to prostitution, before becoming Rodney’s kept mistress. Rodney separated from his second wife, Henrietta, in 1784, the year this ‘Tete-a-Tete’ was published. (Updated May 2019.)