Don't put your daughter n the stage

 Milan -We left the Hotel Belvédère [in Paris] on Easter Tuesday. The company there was more interesting than last year. There was also an American, the adopted son of an old American-German woman (both of them came down to breakfast very early, earlier than we sometimes), and he was exceedingly cultivated if not highly intelligent. When he got on to the subject of Charlemagne I had to shut up. They were queer mysterious people. They were very friendly with a young Egyptian nationalist, with whom they constantly went walking. Whenever we came across them basking during one of these walks, there was always a pair of hairbrushes lying near. We never understood those hair brushes. Then there was a Mrs P. and her daughters. I had two long talks with the mother, who is tall and thin, and desired embonpoint (‘comeliness’) to be matronly, as she called it. I told her it wasn’t a sincere desire, and that she was only searching for compliments. A well-meaning but hasty and silly woman, redeemed by a genuine anxiety to bring up her English vicarage-y daughter in the best way. The little Krafft girl, aged 15 or 16, had said to her that she would like to go on the stage, but she couldn’t, because it would be necessary for her not to be an honest woman, and she wished to be an honest woman. Mrs P. pretended ton  be horrified by this candour, and said how glad she was that her daughter had not been there to hear it. We had a long yarn about this, and I told her she was bringing up her daughter entirely wrong, with all this ‘innocence’ convention, which I said was merely Oriental. She vehemently dissented. But I kept repeating she was wrong, and at last she said reflectively, ‘I wonder whether I am!’ Not that I have any hope of having changed her heart; she would fly back to her old notion as soon as I has left her.

                                                                         Arnold Bennett's Journal - Saturday, April 2^nd  1910