Lady Fanshawe's Receipt Book: An Englishwoman's Life During the Civil War by Lucy Moore (review)

Despite its title, which might lead the reader to expect an edition of Lady Ann Fanshawe's collection of "receipts" or recipes, both medical and culinary, this volume is instead an account of Fanshawe's life from 1643 to 1660 and a cultural history of her time: in this instance the subtitle is a much more accurate description of the contents.

Lucy Moore begins by explaining the term receipts, in the seventeenth century used to refer to "medicinal remedies as well as culinary recipes," and argues for such a collection as "the indispensable handbook for every woman who commanded a household, compiled by her from receipts given to her by friends and relations, her guide and manual as she traveled through life, wherever it might take her" (1). Moore emphasizes the importance of these collections—both for the knowledge they contained and for their social significance. As she explains, they were seen "as practical manuals and … repositories of arcane, almost miraculous knowledge" (6), and "[f]or Royalists in particular, … reminders of happier times past and images of what they believed they were working so hard to restore: … a healed and whole country" (6).

This book then has two agendas. One is biographical: it recounts what happened to Ann Harrison Fanshawe, the daughter of Sir John Harrison, a customs officer to the king, and his wife Margaret during the years of the Civil War [1642–1651] and the Interregnum, until the Restoration of Charles II in 1660. It records her marriage to Richard Fanshawe, diplomat and poet, ambassador to Spain and Portugal, translator of the sixteenth-century Portuguese poet Camões's The Lusiads (1572). It details the Fanshawes' adventurous life as their loyalty, first to King Charles I and then to his son and heir, led them through England to France, Spain, Portugal, and back. It recounts Ann's many pregnancies: in addition to multiple miscarriages, she bore fourteen children, many of whom died in infancy or childhood; at her death in 1679, only one son and four daughters survived her. And it demonstrates Ann Fanshawe's perseverance, quickness of wit, courage, and ability to respond to physical and financial hardship, political intrigue, and enemy attack.

Secondly, as indicated by the title, Moore uses excerpts from Fanshawe's receipt book to introduce readers to the culture of which she was a part. These books indicate the role women played in the medical practice of the day: their knowledge of (and sometimes the mythology about) herbs and compounds made them the chief and sometimes the only physicians available. Moore also emphasizes the ties of family and friendship evidenced by the receipts in Fanshawe's book; more broadly, she sees the receipt book as emblematic of an attempt to heal the nation. Similarly, she takes The Queen's Closet Opened, published in 1655 and purported to be by Queen Henrietta Maria, as a political intervention: an attempt to show the queen, not as a foreign princess attempting to rule England but as an English housewife. Moore notes that, in contrast to the receipts of women like Ann Fanshawe, which often called for ingredients that were difficult or expensive to procure, more popular medical books, intended for a wider audience, were also being published.

Moore is unusual in giving Fanshawe's receipt book equal prominence with her much better-known memoirs (not published until the nineteenth century), which she addressed to her son as an account of his father's exemplary life and handsomely preserved in manuscript form. Moore quotes liberally from the memoirs, without which it would be impossible to understand Fanshawe's life, and she uses the receipt book chiefly to frame her chronological account of the civil war years, with a "receipt" as a heading for each chapter, chosen to signal the main themes or events of the year. For example, chapter...