Dear Sir, - A number of your one-legged readers have recently been wondering about the continued absence from your pages of stories and articles by Mr. Wallace Stort. I, too, have missed his extraordinary and fascinating stories, and have often wondered what has happened to him. One lady a week or so back suggested that he was dead. But I do hope that this is not so, and that one day we shall be able to welcome him back to "London Life."
Meanwhile, I should like to make a suggestion about his stories. I see that you are issuing in volume form a selection of the literary features published in "London Life" during a whole year. Don't you think it would be a good idea to issue in volume form the whole of the stories and articles written by Mr. Stort since he first started writing for you? I am sure there would be a big demand for the volume. Or, alternatively, why not reissue from time to time in "London Life" all his stories, with fresh illustrations by Miss Stanton? We older readers would welcome them, and new readers would, I am sure, find them something absolutely out of the ordinary.
I think I can claim that I read the very first stories Mr. Stort wrote for you years ago, and I remember how terribly thrilled I was to suddenly come across stories with one-legged heroines. I was at that time one-legged myself, and the curious thing about it was that though the stories thrilled me, I thought they couldn't possibly be true to life.
I was considered pretty and my one leg neat and shapely, I dressed well and used very lightly made, nicely shaped crutches. But although I knew many boys, I had no special boy of my own, and not one ever told me that he found my one leg attractive. I had, in fact, quite resigned to single blessedness (?) all my life.
But about a year later my remaining leg was amputated as a direct result of the accident through which I lost my first. And three years later, while at the seaside, I met the boy who is now my dear husband. He "fell" for me, as the saying is, at once, although I could only move about out of doors in my self propelled wheeled chair, as I still have to do, of course, when I am not in the car. He proved the actual truth of all the Wallace Stort stories and articles, for he told me very soon after we met that he was first attracted to me because of my loss!
We have been very happy together, and he still thinks me wonderful. Although I am only half a woman, with not a single leg to stand on! It never occurs to me to worry about my condition. I really and honestly never miss my limbs, and have got quite used to being without them. And I always remember with very great thankfulness that it was through my loss that I won my dear husband.
It may interest your many readers interested in the subject to know that my amputations were very remarkable of their kind, and not often a complete success as in my case. For both my legs were disarticulated, as the surgeons describe it, and have not even stumps in the proper sense of the word. All that I have below my hips are two plump pads of cushions of soft flesh without bone or muscle. I am glad to say they are quite perfect and symmetrical, and round off the trunk very neatly, and practically all traces of amputation scars have disappeared. In fact I have been told by surgeons who have examined me (and at one time I was quite a show-piece for eminent surgeons and students) that so perfectly was the double hip amputation performed that it might easily be considered that I had been born without any nether limbs.
Personally, as Fate decreed that I should be legless, I prefer to be without stumps. I am quite active in the house, getting about with the greatest of ease by swinging along the carpet on my hands. I can jump from the floor on to a chair, and from a chair to the floor with an agility that astonishes my friends. I can run downstairs on my hands as easily as any normal person (and, by the way, all this activity keeps me slim, I am glad to say; stoutness always threatens people in my condition), so stumps would therefore be only a nuisance to me, always in the way, always in danger of getting hurt, etc. So I can say quite cheerfully and honestly that it is just as well I haven't any.
Goodness, I have written a terribly long letter. I hope you won't mind. And I hope that if Mr. Stort is still in the land of the living you will persuade him to write for us some more of his truly wonderful stories.
Yours truly,
Happy Legless Wife