The house was first opened as a coffee-house in 1731 by one James Ashley, and its vast cellars stretched under Ludgate Hill to the foundations of the city walls. In those days, it was "within the Rules of the Fleet Prison, and was noted for the sales held there of booksellers' stocks and literary copyrights," and used to afford hospitality to the juries from the Old Bailey sessions when they disagreed. The grandfather of John Leech, the illustrator of _A Christmas Carol_ was the landlord of the tavern for some years, and later the father of the famous _Punch_ artist became the tenant, and filled it with the merry crowd associated with Mr. Punch's early days. Leech was followed as landlord by Mr. Lovegrove from the Horn Tavern in Doctors' Commons. There is a casual mention of the famous old George Inn in the Borough High Street, in Chapter XXII of Book 1 of _Little Dorrit_, where Tip Dorrit is spoken of as going into the inn to write a letter; and also passing references to Garraway's and the Jerusalem Coffee-House, as occasional resorts of Mr. Flintwinch. Full details concerning the George and Garraway's will be found in "The Inns and Taverns of Pickwick." The Jerusalem Coffee House was one of the oldest in the city of London, and was famous for its news-rooms, where merchants and captains connected with the commerce of India, China and Australia could see and consult the files of all the most important papers from those countries, as well as the chief shipping lists. The hotel in Brook Street, Grosvenor Square, where Mr. Dorrit stayed when he reached London from the Continent, was probably Mivart's, and is dealt with in the chapter devoted to Nicholas Nickleby. Coketown, of _Hard Times_, is generally supposed to be Manchester. We suspect it to be a composite picture, with a good deal of Preston in it, and other manufacturing towns as well. It is not possible, therefore, to identify the one or two inns which figure in the story. The hotel where Mr. James Harthouse stayed when he went there with an introduction to Mr. Bounderby might be any hotel in any town; and there seems no means of tracing the original of the "mean little public-house with red lights in it" at Pod's End, where Sissy Jupe brought Gradgrind and Bounderby. Dickens describes it "as haggard and as shabby as if, for want of custom, it had itself taken to drinking and had gone the way all drunkards go, and was very near the end of it." The name he gives to the public-house was the Pegasus' Arms. The Pegasus' leg, he informs us, might have been more to the purpose; but, underneath the winged horse upon the sign-board, the Pegasus' Arms was inscribed in Roman letters. Beneath that inscription, again, in a flowing scroll, the painter had touched off the lines: Good malt makes good beer, Walk in, and they'll draw it here; Good wine makes good brandy, Give us a call, and you'll find it handy.