Dear Sir, - may I write to thank "Walking on Two" and "Left Leg Only" for their kind and interesting replies to my first letter?
I am afraid I disagree entirely with "Walking on Two." There's no medical reason why I should not wear an artificial leg, but I have yet to see anyone, male or female, with or without a stick, walk gracefully on one, and I still have enough feminine vanity to wish to appear just as graceful as I can. Nor do I wish to make an exhibition of myself by using "a single crutch to match the dress." It would, I am sure, embarrass my friends. But if "walking on Two" gets away with it, the best of luck to her!
It would take more space than I could ask you to give if I were to answer fully "Left Leg Only," so let me concentrate for the moment on this "inferiority complex" question. I know I am self-conscious about being one-legged; it was to help me overcome that that a friend introduced me to "London Life." I realise that it is only natural that people should stare at me as I swing my way along on my crutches or stop and lean an them, because I consciously endeavour to do so as gracefully as I can. It's sheer stupidity on my part to invite attention and begrudge it when it is given. Yes it worries me when I am sitting in a 'bus, perhaps, and my skirt drops over the outline of my shortened right leg; and there are times when I suddenly want to howl my eyed out over a vague feeling of - well; inferiority. For instance, if I am walking as fast as I can along the pavement and realise that two-legged people are all overtaking me, or if the 'bus I want doesn't pull up just where I am standing, and move off before I have been able to get to it. On the other hand, there are simple little accomplishments which give a huge sense of triumph negotiating a moving staircase or revolving door; finding that one can still swim; walking the best part of five miles over the Downs.
"Left Leg only" says I should tell men all about my accident. I can see that in that way I could forestall their curiosity, but wouldn't it sound rather as though I was begging their sympathy? Am I to tell comparative strangers that I was being driven home one night after supper, that the driver had his hand on my knee the knee that's no longer there - that there was a crash, that I went through six weeks of agony in hospital, with dressing and draining, setting and re-setting, before they finally amputated my right leg about five inches below the groin? That I was then, three years ago, professional hostess, dependent on dancing for my living, and that I danced my last dance at the age of nineteen? Wouldn't that be making a tragedy queen of myself? Or perhaps I should treat the whole thing lightly, so that he would have to tell me how plucky I am?
No, "Left Leg Only," I am afraid I am not the sort of person who could carry that off. However, as I am only 22, I needn't worry yet about being unmarried!
In conclusion, I should like to repeat that I am not a disgruntled person. I have just been reading John Knyveton's "Diary of a Surgeon in 1752" which has some interesting things to me about amputations in those days, and I fully appreciate being alive at all! And I feel that in time I shall honestly overcome my present muddled feeling that there is something just a little immoral in deliberately adding one-leggedness to my feminine attractions. After all, I might just as well be ashamed of having an attractive figure or face or eyes or hair.
I should have liked to answer "Left Leg Only" more fully, but I am sure I have gone on long enough for the present. I'll write about the other points she raises in a later letter.
Yours truly,
Colleen On Crutches.