It was Madame Nilsson‘s first appearance that winter, and what the daily press had already learned to describe as "exceptionally brilliant audience" had gathered to hear her, transported through the slippery, snowy streets in private broughams, in the specious family landau, or in the humbler but more convenient "Brown coupe" To come to the Opera in a Brown coupe was almost as honourable a way of arriving as in one‘s own carriage; and departure by the same means had the immense advantage of enabling one (with a playful allusion to democratic principles) to scramble into the first Brown conveyance in the line, instead of waiting till the cold-and-gin congested nose of one‘s own coachman gleaned under the portico of the Academy.
- P11