Esoteric London

The Brunswick, Bernard Street, London, WC1. Photo © Roger Dean 2013

Gaslight and Daylight, with Some London Scenes They Shine Upon – George Augustus Sala, 1859:

It is but a quarter to five, now; and I am so jaded and tired that I can scarcely drag one foot after another. The rain has ceased; but the morning air is raw and cold; and the rawness clings, as it were, to the marrow of my bones. My hair is wet, and falls in draggled hanks on my cheeks. My feet seem to have grown preposterously large, and my boots so preposterously small. I wish I were a dog or a dormouse! I long for a haystack, or a heap of sacks, or anything. I even think I could find repose on one of those terrible inclined planes which you see tilted towards you through the window of the Morgue at Paris. I have a good mind to smash a lamp, and be taken to the station-house. I have a good mind to throw myself over Westminster Bridge. I suppose I am afraid; for I don’t do either.
Seeing a bench under a tree, I fling myself thereon; and, hard and full of knots and bumps as the seat is, roll myself into a species of ball, and strive to go to sleep.