“'What! You are singing in a theatre!' exclaimed my aunt, when I told her of my engagement at Brussels. 'My poor child! You will be everlastingly damned! Who would ever have thought such a thing possible? A little girl of our family going to be an actress—one of those women who could not be buried in consecrated ground in the old days! The curé himself has told me all about it. It's terrible, terrible!' she cried, rocking herself back and forth in her chair and bursting into tears. 'I will pray for you!'”

Emma Calve, 1922