kind of roof,” and the words seem woefully inadequate to the occasion.
There were no chops that night for supper, nor chickens; and they fed, with what grace they could summon up, on a “small leg of starved mutton and a duck,” which, by the scent of them, had been cooked a fortnight. For sauce they had hunger only.
“Our bedrooms,” says Wigstead, “were most miserable indeed: the rain poured in at every tile in the ceiling,” and the sheets were literally wringing wet; so that, in Wigstead’s elegant phrasing, they “thought it most prudent to sacrifice to Somnus in our own garments, between blankets”: which may perhaps be translated, into everyday English, to mean that they slept in their own clothes.
They saw strange sights on that wild tour, and, in the course of their hazardous travels through the then scarcely civilised interior of the Principality, came to the “pleasant village” of Newcastle Emlyn, Carmarthenshire, where they found a “decent inn” in whose kitchen they remarked a dog acting as turnspit. That the dogs so employed did not particularly relish the work is evident in Wigstead’s remark: “Great care must be taken that this animal does not observe the cook approach the larder. If he does, he immediately hides himself for the remainder of the day,” acting, in fact, like a professional “unemployed” when offered a job!
A familiar sight in the kitchen of any considerable inn of the long ago was the turnspit dog, who, like the caged mouse or squirrel with his recreation-wheel, revolved a kind of treadwheel which, in this instance, was connected with apparatus for turning the joints roasting at the fire, and formed not so much recreation as extremely hard work. The dogs commonly used for this purpose were of the long-bodied, short-legged, Dachshund type.
Machinery, in the form of bottle-jacks revolved by clockwork, came to the relief of those hard-working dogs so long ago that all knowledge of turnspits, except such as may be gleaned from books of reference, is now lost, and illustrations of them performing their duties are exceedingly rare. Rowlandson’s spirited drawing is, on that account, doubly welcome.
THE KITCHEN OF A COUNTRY INN, 1797: SHOWING THE TURNSPIT DOG.
From the engraving after Rowlandson.
Turnspits were made the subject of a very illuminating notice, a generation or so back, by a former writer on country life: “How well do I recollect,” he says, “in the days of my youth watching the operations of a turnspit at the house of a worthy old Welsh clergyman in Worcestershire, who taught me to read! He was a good man, wore a bushy wig, black worsted stockings, and large plated buckles in his shoes. As he had several boarders as well as day-scholars, his two turnspits had plenty to do. They were long-bodied, crook-legged and ugly dogs, with a suspicious, unhappy look about them, as if they were weary of the task they had to do, and expected every moment to be seized upon, to perform it. Cooks in those days, as they are said to be at present, were very cross; and if the poor animal, wearied with having a larger joint than usual to turn, stopped for a moment, the voice of the cook might be heard, rating him in no very gentle terms. When we consider that a large, solid piece of beef would take at least three hours before it was properly roasted, we may form some idea of the task a dog had to perform in turning a wheel during that time. A pointer has pleasure in finding game, the terrier worries rats with eagerness and delight, and the bull-dog even attacks bulls with the greatest energy, while the poor turnspit performs his task with compulsion, like a culprit on a tread-wheel, subject to scolding or beating if he stops a moment to rest his weary limbs, and is then kicked about the kitchen when the task is over.”
The work being so hard, how ever did the dogs allow themselves to be put to it? The training was, after all, extremely simple. You first, as Mrs. Glasse might say, caught your dog. That, it will be agreed, was indispensable. Then you put him, ignorant and uneducated, into the wheel, and in company with him a live coal, which burnt his legs if he stood still. He accordingly tried to race away from it, and the quicker he spun the wheel round in his efforts the faster followed the coal: so that, by dint of much painful experience, he eventually learned the (comparatively) happy medium between standing still and going too fast. “These dogs,” it was somewhat unnecessarily added, “were by no means fond of their profession.” Of course they were not! Does the convict love his crank or treadmill, or the galley-slave his oar and bench?
The turnspit was once so well-known an institution that he found an allusion in poetry, and an orator was likened, in uncomplimentary fashion, to one:
His arguments in silly circles run,
Still round and round, and end where they begun.
So the poor turnspit, as the wheel runs round,
The more he gains, the more he loses ground.
These unfortunate dogs acquired a preternatural intelligence. A humorous, but probably not true, story is told, illustrating this. It was at Bath, and some of them had accompanied their mistresses to church, where the lesson chanced to be the tenth chapter of Ezekiel, in which there is an amazing deal about self-propelled chariots, and wheels. When the dogs first heard the word “wheel” they started up in alarm; on its occurring a second time they howled dolefully, and at the third instance they all rushed from the church.
Strangely modern appear the grievances raised against innkeepers in the old times. The bills they presented were early pronounced exorbitant, and so, in spite of measures intended for the relief of travellers, they remained. Indeed, throughout the centuries, until the present day, the curious in these matters will find, not unexpectedly, that innkeepers charged according to what they considered their guests would grumble at—and pay.
The eighteenth-century locus classicus in this sort is the account rendered to the Duc de Nivernais, the French Ambassador to England, who in 1762, coming to negotiate a treaty of peace, halted the night, on his way from Dover to London, at the “Red Lion,” Canterbury.
For the night’s lodging for twelve persons, with a frugal supper in which oysters, fowls, boiled mutton, poached eggs and fried whiting figure, the landlord presented an account of over £44. Our soldiers fought the Frenchman; mine host did his humble, non-combatant part, and fleeced him.
This truly magnificent bill has been preserved, not, let us hope, for the emulation of other hotel-keepers, but by way of a “terrible example.” Here it is:
| £ | s. | d. | ||||
| Tea, coffee, and chocolate | 1 | 4 | 0 | |||
| Supper for self and servants | 15 | 10 | 0 | |||
| Bread and beer | 3 | 0 | 0 | |||
| Fruit | 2 | 15 |
