Dear sir, - The letters from your readers about their fascination about one-armed girls and men with one leg very greatly rouse my interest. That is because for the last fifty years I have known, and been closely associated with, an extraordinary number of these abnormal and unfortunate people not as a doctor or anything but a business and personal capacity.
I must explain. I have been in the show and circus business ever since I ran away from home to join Barnum's World Show, when I was a schoolboy of 13. After picking up a living as odd lad about the tents, I graduated into a high-trapeze troupe, and later had a speciality gymnast turn of my own, with which I toured the New and the Old Worlds, topping the bill everywhere.
As Anno Domini laid its stiffening hand on me, I began to run side-shows in circuses and exhibitions - fasting men, fat women, midgets, giants, etc. In particular I have engaged and shown under my direct personal management more of these "novelties" the public call them freaks, which is bitterly resented by the exhibitees - than any other living showman.
Your correspondents write of monopedes and one-armed folk. From a show standpoint there is no attraction in these unlucky cripples. But some of my most extraordinary successes have been men and women born without arms; without legs; and without arms and legs.
I some curious way Nature always acts in duplicate: so that limbs are missing in pairs. During all my long experience I have met only a solitary individual who was barn with one arm. She was a good-looking girl; and, barring the missing right arm, physically perfect and attractive.
Lifelong use of only one arm made her able to get through life as easily as mast people do with two. She was married, and had one child. It was very interesting to see how dexterously she nursed, washed, dressed, fed and tended her baby single-handed.
For this reason I was able to give her engagement for about a year. She was a great attraction to women, who flocked to watch her deft toilet of the baby, admiring at once her cleverness and pitying her deformity.
As the baby grew up, the interest lackened. She dropped out of the show business, which had tided over some disastrous time in her husband's business, and she returned to him to set up a new home out of her exhibition earnings with a nice little nestegg left over.
More extraordinary was the man whom I stared for many years as the "Comte sans Bras et Jambes", or in England and the States "The Limbless Lord."
That is exactly what he was - except that he wasn't really a nobleman. But he had neither arms nor legs. He was born just a body - a perfect trunk fully grown and proportioned, but without even rudiments of arms at the shoulders and thighs at the hips.
His face was frank and handsome, with curly hair, deep blue eyes, a charming smile and manner. He enjoyed the soundest health - I mean really enjoyed it, for he never ailed and, despite his helplessness, lived heartily and with a laugh all the time.
In some countries doctors quietly end the life of such abnormalities at birth. If he had been so extinguished he would never have known life which he found so well worth living, and the world at large have lost the interest which hundreds of thousands of people obtained from visiting and seeing the strange wonders of which Nature is capable.
He was put into the show business when scarcely out of babyhood. This was not in England, but in Russia before the Bolshevik Revolution. As a valuable exhibit he was cared for as his peasant parents could not or would never have done. His earnings provided them with a comfortable addition to their earnings and made a very much more than comfortable fortune for himself.
Indeed by the time he was 40 he was wealthy, with a flat in Paris, a villa on the Riviera - both his own property - and a substantial income from investments. He took four months' holiday a year, going on show for only eight months.
Being legless and armless you must think he was also helpless. That is true to only a certain extent; but it was mystifying what he could do.
For instance, he wrote a good hand - I mean he wrote quite well, holding the pen or pencil in his teeth.
It was staggering to see what he could do with that mouth, those lips and teeth of his. Lying on his tummy he could feed himself at a pinch and not make a mess of it either. Usually he was carried everywhere by an attendant, but in his flat he would get about by rolling over and over across the rooms, which had swing doors, through which he rolled his way.
He was a most jovial companion, and enjoyed thoroughly seeing and being seen by the crowd who flocked to his side-show. He travelled all over the world, and not least interesting is the fact of his marriage.
She was tall, Junoesque, and as perfect a women as he was the limbless trunk of a man, scarcely bigger than a seven-year-old lad. For it is extraordinary how small is the human body without its usual arms and legs.
They had no fewer than nine children - six boys and three girls - each absolutely physically perfect, remarkably handsome, and the girls real peaches.
It was an ideally happy family. She adored her husband; and, despite his disability, he was a gallant devoted lover. Sometimes too gallant for her peace of mind, for his attractiveness to other women was immense.
Time and again, in my show life, I have noticed how strangely some women are fascinated by dwarfed, midget, undersized men and - but not the same extent - by giants, lion-headed men, etc. In every town some women would fall for my limbless Count. They used to spend the whole day going in each time he was on view, thronging as near as possible to him and doing anything to get a word or smile from him.
If I had not kept a sharp look-out I am sure he would have been abducted by some passion-smitten spinster or widow. He had adventures I was powerless to stop, though ultimately, at his wife's request, I went through all the letters addressed to him and handed over the least inflammable of these missives.
They arrived by the dozens every day, and were a revelation what women think, feel, and can pour out to an utter stranger. Of course it was all good for business, but his wife's jealousy would literally flame at times, and I had the job not only of making peace but of protecting him of the correction which mothers administer to small sons, not wives to husbands, even when the latter is only the size of a little schoolboy.
Then there was La Renee de Valle, one of the most charming and beautiful women I have ever met, though she was born without arms. I have often dreamed how exquisite her hands would have been if she had had them instead of nothing below her lovely shoulders.
I knew how wonderful her arms and hands must have been, because I knew the beauty of her feet and legs. To see her kick off her shoes, seat herself at the piano, her supple toes twinkling over the notes to evoke dreamy or thrilling music. I can never forget the grace of her every movement, the vivacity and beauty of her face, her wit and charm.
I starred her in three countries, over here and every state in America, and Canada. She would not go to Australia, because her mother - to whom she was devoted as only French children can be feared so long a voyage, and everywhere that La Valle went her mother must go too.
Not that La Valle was helpless because she was armless. Au contraire, she was defter with her toes and feet than many a tennis Amazon with her two hands. She would pick up a pin with her toes, and I know (though I never saw) that she could carry through her toilette without any aid or assistance. From babyhood (her parents were French peasants) she had instinctively used her legs and feet and toes where others use their hands and fingers. Her limbs were accordingly so supple and deft that with an upswung leg she could fasten a button or broach at her neck or adjust a lace collar.
She was not 40 when she retired to the little chateau she had bought near her native village for herself and her mother. The man she was to have married was killed during the war.
I am afraid, Mr. Editor, I have run most unconscionably, though I have written only of two or three people; but your live paper has spurred my pen.
Yours truly,
Barnum Junior.