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Behind the cook stood the cellarman, known by the appellation of Jack of the Bottles, and at his feet were two playful little turnspits, with long backs, and short forelegs, as crooked almost as sickles.
"No, madame," I said, without appearing irritated; "in Paris, such an excuse as that is quite inadmissible, and since you associate with turnspits, pray ask your cooks, and they will tell you." Fearing to quarrel with the King, she was obliged to be more careful, but to change one's disposition is impossible, and she has loathed and insulted me ever since.
The dog worked in a cage, operating a wheel or drum which in its turn revolved the turnspit. Such turnspits seem to have had a lingering existence, and were occasionally heard of in North Wales late in the nineteenth century. Roasting before the fire lingered on long after the old-fashioned iron jacks and spits had ceased to be the common method of cooking meat.
The furnishing of these tables required a proportionate kitchen; and here were two clerks, a clerk-comptroller, and surveyor of the dressers; a clerk of the spicery; two cooks, with laborers and children for assistants: turnspits a dozen; four scullery-men; two yeomen of the pastry, and two paste-layers.
They were his scullions, marmitons, turnspits, or whatever you like to call it. They had to keep up the supplies of firewood, to prepare the fowls and fish, and generally to do all the dirty work; and the way that Old Colonial "bossed" them round was an edifying sight to see. The preparations were stupendous. Victuals enough had been laid in to feed a regiment, and the variety of them was endless.
I extract the following from Captain Brown's "Popular Natural History," to prove, that if turnspits had crooked legs, they had not crooked wits: "I have had in my kitchen," said the Duke de Liancourt, to M. Descartes, "two turnspits, which took their turns regularly every other day in the wheel; one of them, not liking his employment, hid himself on the day he should have wrought, when his companion was forced to mount the wheel in his stead; but crying and wagging his tail, he intimated that those in attendance should first follow him.
'How dare you laugh behind the gentleman's back? said Mrs Pipchin. 'And what do you take me for? 'I ain't a laughing at nobody, and I'm sure I don't take you for nothing, Ma'am, returned the young man, in consternation. 'A pack of idle dogs! said Mrs Pipchin, 'only fit to be turnspits. Go and tell your master that Mr Dombey's here, or it'll be worse for you!
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