Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 109, October 26, 1895

Sir Augustus Anglo-Operaticus has done well at Covent Garden, and will probably go one better. To Miss Alice Esty, as Elsa , in Lohengrin , we say Esty perpetua . All are good: and the houses have been apparently as good as the company. A season of German-French-Italian Opera in English is a risky venture for a winter season; still, if successful, and at popular prices, there is in it good promise for the future. The conductors are Messrs. Feld, Henschel, Glover, and Mr. C. Hedmondt, which sounds like an English rendering of Tête Monté . A Tête Monté can carry many a project through triumphantly where a Tête moins Monté would fail.
Tuesday. —Excellent Faust . Mr. Philip Brozel, first time in English, decidedly good. Sir Druriolanus thought the old opera wanted a fillip, and so gave us Philip Brozel. Kate Lee a capital nurse, and Fanny Moody a delightful Marguerite . Olitzka a pleasing Siebel , and conductor Glover, as his name implies, keeping all hands well employed, and ready to give fits to any hand that might be difficult. The remainder of the week going strong.
In the interests of English opera, or rather of opera in English, we wish Druriolanus Covent Gardensis Operaticus, with Messieurs Tête Monté et Cie. , every possible success.
IT was an alarming state of affairs. The first indications of the new epidemic were noticed in the autumn of 1895. A lady who mislaid her identity at Brighton, and failed to recover it for a whole week, had the doubtful distinction of being the initial case. Her example was very shortly after followed by a servant-girl who lost her memory at Three Bridges Railway Station. Not being properly labelled, there was naturally some delay before she was returned to her supperless and sorrowing mistress. Then the plague spread.
Among the first to suffer were the numerous class of persons who had been so unfortunate as to borrow money. The simple operation of transferring a half-crown or a fiver seemed to carry contagion with it. From the instant that the fatal coin was in the palm of the innocent and unsuspecting borrower, all recollection of his previous personality vanished. The unhappy victim had no resource but to start life afresh as he best could, with new struggles to face, new lenders thus to victimise him—and new capital (a paltry equivalent!) wherewith to mourn his hopeless loss of memory. It was observed that these sufferers were subject to recurrent attacks of the amnesia bacillus . Some scientific alienists went so far as to maintain that the complaint was no new one, but had been prevalent, in a more or less virulent form, ever since the first leather coinage was invented.