A good deal has been written in "London Life" from time to time regarding the phenomenon called by psychologists Fetishism, and it is evident from the number of letters that have appeared from young ladies who lack one or more limbs that they take a great deal of interest in their own limbless condition and are at pains to discover the effect of their disabilities upon other people.
The attraction that a girl may have for a certain type of man because she is physically different from others of her sex is by no means confined to those who are seriously disabled. For instance, a man of my acquaintance simply cannot bear slim women. I honestly believe it is, to him, an absolute penance to have to remain in the same room with one for any length of time.
Again, I observed that whatever girl another male friend was in company with, she always wore glasses. One day I teased him with a fandness for the society of girls with poor eyesight, and he admitted that what I had guessed was correct. In fact he went so far as to say that unless a girl wore spectacles - the thicker the lenses the better - her society was of little interest for him. He could not say why. He was just built like that.
About eighteen months ago he got married and, although I have not yet met his wife, she is described to me as a "tall blonde who wears rimless spectacles with lenses as thick as five shilling pieces."
During and after the war several cases occurred of girls marrying blind soldiers. Generally these girls had either nursed their future husbands in hospital or had been their companions during their convalescence. But a case occurred recently in a town in the Midlands where a young man fell in love with a beautiful blind girl and, in spite of protests and advice from both parents and friends, eventually married her. They are, I believe, perfectly happy.
Having always been interested in anomalies of sex appeal, I have made a habit of following up any cases brought to my notice.
The following two examples of men being attracted by, and marrying wives who have major physical deficiencies, and, what is more, who appear to derive some more than ordinary thrill from their wives incomplete charms, are worthy of note.
A little while ago I was staying in the Taj Mahal Hotel, in Bombay, when I met a girl whom I had not met since the war. We had been nursing in the same hospital in London and were close friends, though we had lost touch with each other when the war ended. She told me that she was living with her brother, a cotton broker, in Bombay, and that their house was at Malabar Hill.
Refusing to take "No" for an answer, she insisted on my spending the rest of my time in Bombay as their guest.
We arrived at their house just in time to change for dinner, and while I was finishing dressing, Mary, my friend, came and chatted. She told me that her brother's wife was a Dane but that she spoke good English. She also said that they were giving a small dinner party that night, and if I noticed anything peculiar about my hostess's appearance not to make any remark. She then left me wandering what it was all about.
When I entered the drawing-room the other guests - three men and two women - had arrived, and I was introduced to Mrs. W., my hostess. She was a very pretty fair-haired women of about 30, with dark eyes and eyebrows. She was wearing a charming and, as was then the fashion, very short evening frock of wine-coloured taffeta, which displayed to advantage a pair of the shapeliest legs I have ever seen.
She was standing in the middle of the room talking to her guests, who seemed to be old friends, and I was wandering what Mary had expected me to see odd in her sister-in-law's appearance, when the Indian butler announced that dinner was served.
The guests trooped into the dining-room, and as they went Mr. W. walked over to his wife and picked her up in his arms, leaving her legs still standing on the floor!
I spite of Mary's warning, I must have shown a certain amount of surprise; but Mrs. W. smiled gaily at me and waved me on into the dining-room, where Mr. W. having deposited his wife in a wheeled chair at the table, the dinner proceeded as though nothing unusual had happened.
For the rest of my stay with them Mrs. W. remained, during her indoor waking hours, in her wheeled chair. She was very good company and, despite her appalling physical handicap, was always very cheery.
One night Mary told me all about her.
At the age of 14 she had met with a motor accident and has lost her left leg at the thigh. Five years later, travelling with her parents to the Riviera, she was in a terrible railway accident near Lyons and, as a result, had lost her other leg, also at the thigh. Mary's brother had met her when on a yachting trip in Denmark and, in spite of - or, more probably, because of her disability, had fallen in love with her and had eventually married her and brought her out to share his fortunes in the East.
The trick she played on me - all the other guests being old friends were au fait with the joke - the first evening was one in which she occasionally rejoiced with newcomers to the house.
The shapely understandings which I had admired so much were of wood clad in shoes and stockings and fixed upon a thin steel plate pedestal painted to represent a small rug. Her legless trunk rested in a cup-shaped receptacle fixed on top of her legs and, being covered, of course, by the skirts of the frock, completed the illusion.
Mrs. W. was totally without embarrassment regarding her unusual condition and often made laughing references in her rather quaint English to herself as "ze legless wander." Once she said, "I am more interesting without my legs. They vas fat - oh, so fat!"
The other case to which I referred was in some ways just as extraordinary as that mentioned above, and brought out Fetichism in a form hitherto unknown to me.
It was in Geneva, where I was visiting a sister working in the League of Nations secretariat.
She is a keen musician, and among her friends was the wife of a well-known German-Swiss musician violinist, herself an accomplished pianist. Frau H.'s story, as told by my sister, is as follows:
When she was about 20 years old she met with an accident which necessitated the amputation of her right leg five inches below the knee, and also the front portion of her left foot, leaving only the heel.
Two years after she met Herr H., a young man a few years her senior, who heard her play, fell in love with and duly married her.
She had been fitted with an artificial right leg, and wore a specially made boot on her left foot; and these, when she was sitting down, effectually concealed her disability. She had, however, great difficulty in walking, and never succeed in doing so in comfort without a crutch.
A further difficulty was that owing to the fact that she had no independent control over the movements of either foot she could not properly manipulate the piano pedals, and was even more seriously handicapped as regards the organ. Furthermore, she could no longer drive a car, owing to similar difficulties with the brake and clutch pedals.
At last her husband solved the problem for her. For the specially shaped boot for her left foot he had made another boot, almost cylindrical in shape, which fitted the stump closely and laced almost to the knee. For her artificial right leg he substituted a very light aluminium peg-leg the exact size and shape as the stump of her left leg. On this was laced a boot to match that on her left leg, giving both limbs a symmetrical appearance.
The result of these changes is that, with the exception of walking, for which she still has to use a crutch, Frau H. can manipulate both piano and car pedals with ease. On the latter her husband has had fitted narrow detachable troughs in which the booted extremities of her legs can rest without fear of their slipping off the pedals.
Her new substitutes for feet, being much lighter than before, she finds even walking, though of course still with crutches, much easier.
To say that Frau H. was sensitive or tried to conceal her physical disabilities in any way would be to give an entirely wrong impression. She fairly seem to flaunt them, and now regards her lack of feet rather as an interesting phenomenon which attracts for her a good deal of notice than a handicap.
As for her husband, he seems to be absolutely fascinated by the results his fertile brain has achieved, and encourages his wife to display her limbs as much as possible.
As an example, my sister and I called to see them one evening, and found Frau H., as usual, at her beloved piano. It was after dinner and she wore a very smart and very short navy blue silk frock.
For a below the knee amputation, as some readers probably know, the artificial limb concists of a wooden, leather or metal socket, into which the stump fits and from which metal hinges on either side of the knee protrude into into a stout leather 'corset' laced round the wearer's thigh.
In Frau H.'s case the metal hinges were enamelled blue and matched the blue silk stump stockings she was wearing. Her tight-fitting laced boots completed a tout ensemble which, although bizarre, was not inelegant.
As we entered the room Frau H. seized her crutch and hurried to greet us without a shade of embarrassment, and when I come to know her better I could not help admiring this sunnynatured woman who made light of what to many another would have been a soul destroying misfortune.