I have just returned after one of my periodical absences from England, and so am only now making myself au fait with all that has been happening in the pages of "London Life" during the past few months.
I am very glad to see that the "monopede" topic, of what I call the "limbless complex" - though this is, of course, only a loosely convenient and not an exact scientific description - is still of interest to many readers. In fact I think there have recently been more letters on the subject than have appeared during a like period in past years.
I see too, I have been coming in for a few strictures from one or two readers, notably "Blackpool Girl" and "Dawn." I am always more than glad to welcome the views of readers who are not ordinarily interested in the subject, but who have nevertheless done me the honour of reading my stories. "Blackpool Girl" is obviously one of these, and the fact that she was in anyway interested in the story, "At the Moignon D'Or," is quite gratifying. But I don't think that either she or her beautiful one-legged friend, "Dawn," has, if I may say so, quite understood my point of view in my stories and articles.
From certain incidents in these stories, both ladies have deduced that I am in favour of the indiscriminate, public exhibition by a one-legged girl of her misfortune. But really, I must protest that I am in favour of nothing of the sort!
Obviously I am aware, as everybody else is, that to the ordinary, normally minded individual, a crippled girl, however pretty and attractive, is an object more of pity than admiration and that this ordinary individual does not like to see infirmity flaunted in his face.
What has been forgotten by my two charming critics is the fact, which I have stressed more than once before in these columns, that my stories and articles are primarily addressed to that particular band of readers interested in this particular type - just as letters on high heels, tight lacing, macking, etc., etc., are primarily addressed to the particular devotees of these different fads.
These stories and articles of mine are, therefore, conceived each within its own very circumscribed orbit or compass. The incidents described are, for the most part, not those which normally could be enacted before an audience of the general public. The characters in the stories are specialised characters, most of whom accept, as a sort of article of faith, that abnormal attraction of limbless beauty. It is before an audience of such specialised people that the one-legged heroine of any one of my stories provocatively displays a single shapely leg. And - an important point, by the way - the interested readers of such a story are readers who accept the possible charm of limbless beauty.
I am afraid that what I say may read a bit abstrusely. But I hope I have conveyed what I mean - viz.: that I am not concerned as "Blackpool Girl" and "Dawn" imagine - with the public exhibition of infirmity.
"Dawn" appears to doubt the very existence of this curious and inexplicable complex. Her own experience has, curiously enough, as yet provided no evidence of the existence of such a point of view.
That is inexplicable and, if you like, even absurd, I admit, just as are the hundred and one other psychological conundrums to which the human mind is liable. How explain, for example, even the ordinary preferences of mankind in general? One man's liking for a tall blonde, and another's for a short brunette, etc., etc., "There are as many different opinions as there are men," says the old Latin rag, and that pretty well sums up the matter. a mental attitude is, after all, an opinion or a preference pushed to extremes; and that is about all we can say about it by way of explanation.
But that this particular complex exists cannot possibly be controverted. Why should a letter-writer confess to such a point of view if he did not possess it? Why, in fact, should I have written articles on this topic if I were not similarly constituted?
All the prominent authorities on psychological complexes - Havelock Ellis, Kraft-Ebbing, Bloch, Reisinger, and others - deal with this subject along with hundreds of others that affect the human mind. Ellis and Kraft-Ebbing call it "the abnormal worship on the part of a lover of the absence Or some feature in the beloved." Reisinger says it is "the abnormal condition which induces the lover not only to prefer the absence of a limb, in the beloved, but to find attractive the remains of the absent limb."
This latter aspect of the fetish is not always present, but it very frequently is. It is explained by the fact that the "lover" (to continue to use the term employed by the psychologists referred to) simply transfers to the remains of the limb that "worship" or appreciation which he would normally have for the absent limb, and naturally, and, in fact, logically enough, the degree of attraction depends upon the degree of shapeliness and neatness of the stump, as it is commonly called, just as it normally does upon the degree of attractiveness of a shapely leg.
I should like to add that those readers who advocate the wearing of pin-legs or artificial limbs by their monopede lady friends, have not got the complex very strongly. If an artificial leg is not worn, and the stump has had from the outset a certain shapeliness, then by care, massage, etc., it can be developed into a perfectly formed, beautifully shaped oval, and therefore, in its own way, as much a thing of beauty as any other beautiful part of a girl's body. Not at all "useful" from the surgeons point of view, but much more ornamental.
And the "lover" is in this case not the only admirer of the well-farmed, well-cared-for oval, far its possessor, the one-legged girl herself, comes almost naturally to regard the remains of her lost leg as one of her outstanding charms, the natural complement in attraction of her single leg.
My charming critic "Dawn," will, I have no doubt, emphatically repudiate this last contention mine. One gathers from her letter that she does not regard her stump with favour and is always at pains to keep it hidden. But "Dawn" has also told us that she has not, as yet, had any experience of the attraction a charming monopede has for some people. Let her be quite certain that sooner or later she will, and then - unless she constitutionally dislikes or fears such attention, for not all monopedes succumb to this attraction, by the way - she may very easily find herself gradually changing her whole point of view.
Belief me, I am not merely theorising in this matter. I am writing from my own experience, as well as from a lifelong study of psychopathology. Older readers of "London Life" will, I have no doubt, remember as I revealed in my very first articles, twelve or so years ago, that I am myself married to a charming and attractive monopede, who has served as the model for most of the heroines of my stories ever since. In particular she was the original of the "bride" in the article, "The Confessions of a Monopede Bride," which first appeared in these columns about ten years ago. Most of the incidents I have recorded in that article happened as recorded, though I introduced little fictional embellishments to make an attractive story. For instance, I did not meet my wife as described in the article. Actually I met her at a Christmas party in the North of England; and though I was at once attracted to her, I had no idea she was one-legged until I asked her to dance! (And dance she did, with amazing spirit and agility.) I saw her home that night, and we were married within six months. The local paper, by the way, gave the ceremony a special "splash" (I think they call it) under the headings of:
To return to the present day, however. My wife, who lost her right leg when only a child of seven, possesses, in addition to still a very pretty and slim figure and a slender shapely single leg, what I am happy to regard as a perfect stump...
Now there isn't any doubt at all, and she would tell you herself with the greatest cheerfulness, that she herself, during the course of years has come to regard this attractive and shapely little fragment of her loss with as much admiration and pleasure as I do myself. She devotes special care to it, massaging and exercising it so that it will not become soft and flabby and is as much concerned about its daintiness and shapeliness as any Society beauty about her face and figure.
She wouldn't dream of adopting a pin-leg or, for that matter, any type of artificial leg, even if I were in favour of such a course.
She also fully agrees with me that a pin-leg, particularly when worn in a street, is destructive to all charm, about as unsightly and awkward a method of support as could possibly have been devised. A critical reader may ask at this juncture in what way the use of a crutch or crutches is more attractive than a pin-leg. The question has some point, and I admit that crutches can be employed awkwardly and unattractively. Some unfortunate people do actually "hobble" on them, as the action is so often described in the newspapers. But they can also be used most attractively and, in the hands of an expert and long experienced user, they usually are.
It will interest readers to learn that all the "exhibition" women, from "arm-less beauties" to "limbless wonders." have "fanmails," some of them very extensive, from admirers in every city in which they are on exhibition. Practically all the letters come from men and a good many of the epistles contain offers of marriage. The women delight in these letters and I have been shown batches of them with very great pride by their highly gratified recipients. By far the majority of these women, as I have stated more than once before in my articles, do not regard their lack of limbs as a misfortune. On the contrary, they are usually intensely vain of their uniquely formed bodies and enjoy exhibiting themselves to the awed, open-eyed gaze of their audiences.
It is, I suppose, a way nature has of compensating a human being for something withheld. Madame Gabrielle, perhaps the most famous of showland's "half-ladies," a really beautiful woman with a perfectly formed body (and, by the way, an exceptionally small and neat waist) except that she is totally without legs, once stated, in an interview with an American newspaper, that: "Women really do not need legs. I have never had them and have never missed them. I can enjoy life and do everything I want to do without them. I any case they are not always particularly beautiful things, and I don't envy any woman the possession of them."
A very similar comment was made to myself by a pretty armless girl of 19 with whom I talked after her show in Coney Island seven or eight years ago.
"I don't know that I particularly hanker after arms," she said with a laugh, as she puffed a cigarette, held between her long, slender, beautifully kept toes. "After all, they would sure spoil my shoulders, wouldn't they?"
As her armless shoulders (always left quite bare by her scanty costumes during her shows) were perfectly modelled and smooth-skinned, without a trace of stump or blemish, and so in their way really beautiful, one could at least sympathise with her interesting if unusual point of view. It must be remembered, of course, that she had never possessed arms, could do everything she wanted with her toes, and was one of the highest salaried "artistes" of her class. Why, then, according to her philosophy, should she worry?
So one can understand why these women delight in the letters they received, which usually dilate upon their limbless charms, and particularly in the offers of marriage they frequently contain. But in most cases the women are already married, usually to some other performer of the show world, or to their managers, though now and then they marry outside.
Madame Gabrielle, mentioned above, has been married three times and is now a Baroness, having married a German nobleman. She is originally a German, though she has spent most of her show life in the States.
Miss Weeks, also a well known side show artiste in the States, billed as the "Legless Lady Acrobat," who can do anything on her hands and performs the most incredible acrobatics while thus supported, married the giant in one of her shows. It is a strange experience to see her being carried about her hotel, or the fair ground between shows, by her husband, as he is nearly 8 ft. in height and she is a tiny, dark, fragment of a woman, her legless, hipless body, narrowing gradually from the waist downwards. He carries her on the crook of his arm while she puts an arm about his neck, and the first time one encounters them one sees just the upper part of her with one long shapely arm hanging down, and wonders where on earth the rest of her is!
An even more fragmentary portion of a woman, probably the most amazing woman on show in the world to-day has been married many times and twice divorced! She so almost incredible as to appear as something out of a fantastic dream, for she is actually and literally only a living bust, being completely without arms, legs, or the lower part of the body.
Older readers will recall that I wrote an article about this remarkable woman some years ago in these columns, which Miss Stanton illustrated with a specially drawn portrait of the lady. Seeing her carried about her show booth, resting on a big, soft cushion placed on a ornamental tray, one is convinced that the whole thing is a clever and unfathomable illusion. But, as I know from personal experience, there isn't any illusion about it. She is actually a living woman and one of the greatest medical phenomena of all times. Actually the whole limbless trunk, with the exception of the handsome, well proportioned head and the magnificent and rounded breasts, is dwarfed and all the internal organs, which are quite complete and function perfectly, are also dwarfed. There are, however, only two ribs on each side instead of the usual number, and these are placed well up in the chest cavity in stead of, as in normal persons, below it. So that in spite of her having only the tiniest remnant of body, she is perfectly healthy and enjoys the life of the shows to the full.
This quite beautiful living bust is regularly shown loaded with glittering jewellery, ropes of pearls, flashing diamond-studded breast-plates, long heavy earrings, a towering jewelled head-dress, and little other clothing. And one gazes at it and comes away later, still almost convinced that the woman simply isn't true! But the fragment lives and breathes - and has sufficiently fascinated four or five men as to induce them to marry her in turn!
The show-world of limbless women has had its romances just like any other. A few years ago an Italian millionaire fell in love with a beautiful armless acrobat, known as "Christine", appearing with a circus visiting Rome, and married her a few weeks after seeing her performance. The wedding was a big, public affair, and a churchful of Italian nobles saw the bridegroom place the ring on the toe of his armless bride, and later fashionable friends of the groom watched the pretty bride sign the register with the pen held between her toes.
"Irma," a well-known German legless side-show beauty, also married a very rich man a few years ago, and she was carried into church in full bridal attire by her father and carried out after the ceremony by her newly married husband.
The classic romance of the show-booth, however, occurred well over twenty years ago. At a fair in Geneva there was on show a very beautiful girl of 19 billed as "Princess Anetta." She was entirely armless and legless, and I remember the photograph that appeared in the newspapers recording the romance at the time, showing her resting on a pedestal in a tight-fitting tunic of glittering sequins, with perfectly modelled, armless shoulders, nicely rounded bust, and swelling shapely hips, where the trunk was rounded off cleanly without either legs or stumps being present.
To her booth there came every day a young student who had fallen madly in love with her. The show was scheduled to move on to another and distant fair at the end of the week, but the day before the departure, the young man appeared and, watching his opportunity, suddenly snatched the girl from her pedestal and ran at full speed with the beautiful armless and legless charmer in his arms.
Arrangements had apparently already been made by the youthful lover, for he raced to the local notary's office, were the pair were married, the bridegroom holding his limbless bride in his arms during the ceremony. A few minutes later the irate manager of the attraction arrived hot-foot, but the wedding was over. He was, of course, mollified by promises of adequate compensation to be made by the student's parents and the happy pair went off down the street together, amid the cheers of the crowd that had gathered, the blushing, limbless bride, still in her revealing show costume, lying happily in her newly wedded husband's arms.
The affair was widely reported at the time in the English and in the Continental papers, and I remember the clever and amusing headlines in one paper, which ran as follows:
I have often wondered what happened to the pair afterwards, and how the romantic young husband settled down to the ordinary humdrum routine of life with a wife who was just a beautiful but helpless torso, entirely deficient in either arms and legs. I don't think the girl ever returned to the shows. At any rate, I have never heard of her since or encountered her in my own extensive tours through showland. She will be only forty or so at the present time, and no doubt a very handsome woman still. One would like to think that one of the strangest runaway marriages in history turned out to success and that the husband is still a devoted admirer of the unique charms of his attractive armless and legless wife.
A more recent romantic marriage of a more or less similar kind had a very happy sequel a year later. Some years ago Phyllida Corkran, a dazzlingly beautiful New York "Follies" girl, was terribly injured in a motor crash, and eventually both her lovely legs wee amputated close to the hips. After lingering between life and death, she recovered, and a rich and devoted admirer, who had got into touch with her after her amputation, persuaded her to marry him.
The happy sequel was a beautiful baby girl a year after marriage, and the photograph that appeared in the New York papers in connection with the news of the event showed her, a lovely blond, radiantly happy, seated in her wheeled chair with her baby in her arms. It did not need the caption, "Beautiful legless ex Follies girl now a happy mother," to reveal that she was quite without legs, for the short skirt of her thin silk frock quite obviously hung slack and empty over the edge of the chair seat.
Well, I appear to have digressed somewhat, though I hope not uninterestingly. But these experiences will help readers to realise that, in my case, the odds against my encountering an armless and one-legged girl - always supposing one existed - were not really so great as might have imagined. And, as I related in my article I wrote last year for these columns, and to which I referred above, such a girl did exist, and I actually met her and became temporarily friendly with her in Paris before the war.
She was, as I explained, a side-show exhibit at the famous annual fair at Neuilly, a Paris suburb, and she was a genuinely authentic example, being completely without arms from the shoulders and having only one leg, her right being absent and only a short, well-shaped stump remaining, about five or six inches from the hip. She was not, however, congenitally mono-limbed. She was born without arms, but had lost her right leg as the result of an accident in a lions' den.
And certainly I have to confess to the fascination there was for me in watching her wonderfully expert use of her toes, realising all the time, as I did, that she was quite armless and that she possessed only that single shapely leg and the foot and the neatly rounded stump at her right hip.
I did not miss how at intervals she smilingly rippled her prominent, well-shaped, bare, armless shoulders, obviously to draw the crowd's attention to them. Or with what perfect grace and ease she hopped about her show-booth, or stood perfectly poised on her single leg, while she exchange laughing banter with her audience.
I should be just as interested to-day, if I happened to come across another mono-limbed girl, and should like to talk to her and get her experiences of life, and perhaps use her as a model for a character in one of my stories, but as a matter of plain fact, I have never since encountered or even heard of another armless and one-legged girl or woman in or out of showland. I should certainly be interested to hear of one, if such a girl is appearing anywhere in the world to-day.
And finally, I hope that Miss "Dawn" and "Blackpool Girl," and other critics as fair-minded as they both are, will at least have found this record of experiences and points of view interesting, even if they regard the whole thing as being "more than somewhat" eccentric. I hope that "Dawn" will write again and that all the other readers interested in this topic will continue to express their views and tell of their experiences.