which at one time contained private houses. A distinguished resident
in one of these (No. 11) was Grinling Gibbons. According to Horace
Walpole, Gibbons carved an exquisite pot of flowers in wood, which
stood on his window-sill there, and shook surprisingly with the
motion of the coaches that passed beneath. The inn proper,
surrounded by its picturesque galleries, stood in a corner of the
inner court, entered by a second archway about half-way up the yard.

Part of the inn abutted on to the back of Fleet Prison, and Mr.
Tearle in his Rambles with an American, bearing this fact in mind,
ingeniously suggests that the conception of the idea for smuggling
Mr. Pickwick from the prison by means of a piano without works may
have been conceived in Mr. Weller's brain while resting in the
"Belle Sauvage" and contemplating the prison wall.

In 1828, the period of The Pickwick Papers, J. Pollard painted a
picture of the Cambridge coach ("The Star") leaving the inn. A
portion of this picture showing the coach and the north side of
Ludgate Hill, was published as a lithograph by Thomas McLean of
the Haymarket. It gives the details of the inn entrance and the
coach on a large scale. The inn at the time was owned by Robert
Nelson. He was a son of Mrs. Ann Nelson, the popular proprietor
of the "Bull," Whitechapel. Besides the coaches for the eastern
counties, those also for other parts of the country started from
its precincts, for such names as Bath, Bristol, Exeter, Plymouth,
Oxford, Gloucester, Coventry, Carlisle, Manchester were announced
on the signboard at the side of the archway.

In spite of the fact that Dickens only once refers to the inn,
its name and fame, nevertheless, will always be associated with