Dear Sir, - Here is something to interest Mr. Stort and his readers, an odd experience of mine that happened recently to me and might have come out of one of his stories. For a start, may I mention that I am not a "monopede lover," or anything of the sort? I like my lady friends to have all their proper limbs. I don't understand a kink that makes some people find one leg more attractive than two. But I know it takes all sorts to make a world, and we all have our funny ideas, I know I have.
I am a reader of many years' standing, but have only be written to you once before upon a very different subject. I have just returned from a holiday in Central Europe, and among other places I visited I spent three pleasant days in a pleasant hotel on the outskirts of Budapest. I was very interested in a party staying there, an American family consisting of a father and a mother, a daughter and her fiance, and a maid who traveled with them.
The girl, a very pretty and vivacious blonde of about 24, was what has become known to readers as a monopede. She was very slight and willowy, and had only one leg, a very neat and shapely limb, which she was very proud of. Except in the evening she usually wore bright-coloured dresses touching her knee. Here stockings were of the invisible kind, usually flesh coloured, though she didn't wear a stocking in the evening as her toes with red polished nails could be seen peeping through her sandal. She had a small, dainty foot, and wore a very thin, flimsy shoe, with a very high heel.
She swung about very nimbly, usually on a pair of thin black crutches, though often she used only one crutch in the hotel.
You may wonder how I came to notice all this about her; but I wasn't the only one. We were all interested in her. You don't often come across a pretty, one-legged girl in a hotel on holiday, and I dare say that I took more notice of her because of the letters and stories about monopedes I have read from time to time in "London Life".
I noticed that she wore an engagement ring. The ladies noticed that, you may be sure! Her fiance, a tall, good-looking American didn't seem to mind showing he was very fond of her.
But I haven't really come to the real reason for the great interest we took all in her and her family, and why I came to write this letter. We should have been interested in her for her own sake. But though I know it sounds like a fairy tale and a bit of imagination, the strangest and most curious thing was that her mother had no legs at all!
I remember the first night we were at the hotel just as we were finishing dinner. The party I speak of had finished, and I first of all saw the girl. She was passing our table, swinging along on her crutches. I didn't know then that she was one-legged, as she wore a long evening dress. Then came her mother in a wheel chair pushed along by the good-looking boy, and the father at the side. She was also in full evening dress, and I thought she must be an invalid, though she looked a very healthy invalid, all the same!
But I soon heard the gossip in the hotel - everybody was full of it. They were an American family with plenty of money, touring Europe and doing everything regardless of the expense.
The mother was a good-looking woman, not a day older than 45. I should say, with a nice figure, a bit on the plump side. She was very smart, with her hair just as blonde and waved as the girl's. She was a very jolly woman, laughing and joking with her family, though none of them had much to do with anybody else.
The curious thing about it all - at any rate, to people like myself - was that the family didn't seem to worry about things or about the curiosity of the other people in the hotel. All they did was to fuss very much and very affectionately about the mother. They didn't seem to trouble a great deal about the girl. I don't think she would have let them, if they tried. She seemed to take her one leg for granted. She was a very active and independent sort of girl, and she'd have probably told them off if they tried to make a fuss of her.
There were many stories floating round the hotel about the loss of their legs. People who professed to know all about it told us that the mother had never had any legs, being born without them. Others who also knew it all had a more interesting story. The mother, according to them, had lost her legs in an accident when a young girl, and had made a romantic marriage as a legless bride with the son of a very rich man. Then, strange to say, her only daughter had lost her leg in exactly the same way years later.
But the story most of us believed was that both mother and daughter had lost their legs in the same car crash. I should say that was the real truth, as it explained things in a simple way.
I remember seeing an account in the papers only a few months ago, where an engaged couple both lost their right legs in a motor cycle accident and now go about on crutches with only one leg each. So such an accident can easily happen.
Yours truly,
A. B. T.
(The facts alluded to by our correspondent will probably, in the future, be much more common than in the past, since there are now so many accidents involving the loss of life and limb, particularly the latter. - Ed.)