Forex Exchange

by J.A. Beard "Not so large, I dare say, as many people suppose. I do not mean to complain, however; it is undoubtedly a comfortable one, and I hope, will in time be better. The inclosure of Norland Common, now carrying on, is a most serious drain. And then I have made a little purchase within this half year -- East Kingham Farm, you must remember the place, where old Gibson used to live. The land was so very desirable for me in every respect, so immediately adjoining my own property, that I felt it my duty to buy it. I could not have answered it to my conscience to let it fall into any other hands. A man must pay for his convenience, and it has cost me a vast deal of money." -- John Dashwood, Sense and Sensibility , Chapter 33 Mr. Dashwood's comments don't initially seem to be all that important in the grander discussion of the nature of socio-economic disparity and economic realignment in Georgian and Regency England. His off-hand mention of "the inclosure of N...

Emma (Hart) Hamilton April 26 1765 to January 15 1815 Born the daughter of a blacksmith, died in infamy, the avowed mistress of England’s hero, Horatio Nelson. She was born Amy Lyon and later changed her name to Emma Hart.  At the age of 12 she was a maid at the Hawarden, Wales. House of Doctor Honoratus Leigh Thomas, a surgeon in Chester. She then worked for the Budd family in Chatham place and helped a fellow maid, Jane Powell rehearse to become an actress. She then became a maid at the Theatre Royal in Drury Lane to such notables as Mary Robinson. From being a maid she advanced to model and dancer.   At the age of 15 she met Sir Harry Featherstonhaugh. She became an entertainer for him, dancing naked on the dining room table for he and his friends. At Harry’s Uppark estate in the South Downs she met the second son of the Earl of Warwick, the honorable Charles Francis Greville. She also conceived a child by Sir Harry. (1781.)   Emma was sent off to London until the baby...

By Maria Grace "Hallo!A great deal of steam! The pudding was out of the copper [boiler]. A smell like washing –day! That was the cloth [the pudding bag]. A smell like an eating house and a pastrycook’s next door to each other, with a laundress’s next door to that! That was the pudding! In half a minute Mrs. Cratchit entered—flushed, but smiling proudly—with the pudding. like a speckled cannon ball, so hard and firm, blazing in half of half-a-quartern of ignited brandy, and bedight with Christmas holly stuck into the top." "Oh, a wonderful pudding! Bob Cratchit said, and calmly too, that he regarded it as the greatest success achieved by Mrs. Cratchit since their marriage..." Charles Dickens~A Christmas Carol   Origins of the Plum Pudding Few foods can trace their history back through multiple centuries. Plum pudding stands out as one of those few. It began in Roman times as a pottage, a meat and vegetable concoction prepared in a large cauldron. Dried fruits, s...

by Diane Scott Lewis In the summer of 1815, Plymouth, England received startling news. A ship had entered the sound with the notorious Corsican Ogre on board. England had fought different coalition wars with General Bonaparte (the government refused to accept him as in emperor) on and off since 1796, and defeated him at Waterloo on June 18, 1815. In the aftermath of Waterloo, the 74-gun, third rate ship, HMS Bellerophon, was assigned to blockade the French Atlantic port of Rochefort. The ship had served during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. In July, finding escape to America barred by the blockading Bellerophon , Napoleon came aboard "the ship that had dogged his steps for twenty years" to finally surrender to the British. Napoleon had thought he would be granted asylum in England, but the British government knew it would never work. He’d still be too close to France, and many in the French military were still loyal to their defeated emperor. Rebellion in Fr...

This week marks the 200th anniversary of the publication of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. It actually was on Monday, January the 28th. Today, though, is my day in our haphazard rotation, and as I have mostly presented pieces of history from the Regency era, this is one of them. Often we equate John Murray (1778-1843) as a preeminent publisher of the period. He was. His father, also John (1745-1793), had started the famous publishing business. John II brought forth such works as Scott's Marmion , Byron's Childe Harold ,   The Quarterly Review  with the help of future prime minister George Canning . Still, John Murray was not the first publisher of Austen's works, and not the publisher of Pride and Prejudice. This fell to Thomas Egerton. A man who did publish Austen's Sense and Sensibility. Jane Austen began the writing of her most famous novel in 1796 and finished this novel then called First Impressions in August of 1797. On November 1 Austen's father, Ge...

by J.A. Beard Often when thinking about the late Georgian Era and the Regency Period, it’s easy to fixate on the many cultural and political changes that occurred. Controversial and charismatic men like Lord Byron challenged social mores , and decades of war, in the form of the Napoleonic Wars, presented an ever-present additional stress to a country that was already undergoing rapid change due to industrialization partially facilitated by many other legal and social changes, such as land reform. Sometimes lost in discussions of aspects of the period such as industrialization is that the late Georgian Era was also a time of impressive scientific progress. It is easy, in the light of modern genetic engineering, nanotechnology, and control of nuclear power to be dismissive of the achievements of these “natural philosophers” who set the stage for the massive advances in science and technology that define the modern human condition. Today, I will spotlight one of these pioneers: Sir Hump...