Page:The Story of the House of Cassell (book).djvu/47

 Gibbons carved a pot of flowers with such delicacy that they "shook surprisingly with the motion of the coaches that passed by." This reference to coaches indicates that in the reign of Charles II, at any rate, as probably long before, the inn was one of the coaching centres of the capital. The London Gazette advertisement of the year 1676 gave the number of its rooms as forty, and declared it to have stabling for 100 horses. As a coaching inn it long continued to flourish, but when the railways came it fell upon evil days, and by the middle of the nineteenth century had dwindled to a mere "tap" and a starting-place for omnibuses plying to Richmond. With an eye to the crowds that would flock to London during the Great Exhibition of 1851, a Mr. John Thorburn had taken the property, or a portion of it, on a fourteen years' lease, in order that he might fit up the disused and dilapidated hotel for the accommodation of visitors. The venture was not a success, and after Cassell had installed his printing machines in the building which he had taken over, the noise and shaking so disturbed the guests that they would not stay. So it was that Mr. Thorburn, before many months, was glad to be relieved by Cassell of his interest in the property.

When, in 1853, Thomas Frost, who subsequently joined the staff, came to La Belle Sauvage he was struck by the decayed condition of the premises. "Just under the archway on the left," he writes, "there was a dilapidated building, the greater part of which was propped up within and without to prevent the whole from crumbling and cracking until it came down with a crash. Farther up, on the same side of the Yard, but detached from the main building, was a six roomed house, the ground floor of which was used as storerooms, the apartments above being occupied by the proprietor and the members of his editorial staff." Year by year, however, as the business developed, the premises were rebuilt, until both sides of the Yard were almost entirely covered. Yet within twenty years from the