Dear Miss Roper, - I am not proposing to conduct a lengthy controversy in these columns, and I am sure you would not wish to do so either. In any case, the Editor would have something very tense to say about such a proposal. But I hope he will allow me just a little of his valuable space to reply to one of your contentions in your recently published letter addressed to me.
For that reasonable and well-considered reply to me and for its very charming but, I am afraid, no wholly deserved references to my stories and articles, I thank you very much. With the bulk of the letter I have no quarrel, but in one respect either I did not make my meaning sufficiently clear in my own letter, or you have misunderstood what I intended to convey.
You say that it is my opinion that "most" men find one-legged girls attractive, because of their deficiency. My dear Miss Roper, I should be an unthinking idiot if I held such an opinion or made such a statement! I know, as anybody else does, that nine men out of ten, ninety-nine out of every hundred, regard a one-legged girl as a one-legged cripple; but the prettier the girl, the more pity they feel for her misfortune. How could I think otherwise?
No, Miss Roper; what I think you have missed is the fact that I was not dealing with the normal point of view of the vast majority of men at all. Very few letters in the correspondence columns of this journal of any subject do so! I was thinking "solely" in terms of readers of "London Life" interested in this particular topic.
All I wished to convey - as has become very obvious to readers over a long period of years - was that there happens to be a "certain type" of man abnormally and inexplicably attracted by one-legged girls - and, in fact, by all degrees of limblessness in attractive woman. And further, that it was this type (and this type only) that was represented for most part in the letters from interested men readers to the correspondence columns.
I also expressed the view that most of the "monopedes" who contribute to the correspondents columns are aware of this attraction and, in very many cases, find the knowledge very acceptable and even thrilling. I still maintain that, and I still offer the correspondence columns for the past ten or twelve years as convincing evidence of my claim.
When, therefore, I made my suggestion that your fashions for one-legged girls might be designed rather to enhance than to conceal such a girl's charms, I was thinking "solely" of the one-legged lady readers of this paper. I had no intention of legislating for the general run of one-legged or otherwise crippled girls.
I know, of course, that the vast majority of crippled girls have no desire at all to draw attention to their cripple condition. That is the normal and reasonable attitude.
You see, Miss Roper, you are a comparative newcomer to "London Life." This particular topic - the allure of the monopede - has been discussed in its pages for many years and, apart from my own articles and stories, which cover a period of twelve or so years, has drawn forth many hundreds of letters, both from monopedes and limbless girls, and from their admirers.
Practically all the letters have been concerned solely with the "attraction" of the one-legged girl. It was that strange and inexplicable attraction that gave the subject its peculiar interest when it was first introduced in these columns and has continued to be of interest to its coterie of readers ever since.
I hope I have my standpoint a little clearer and, in doing so, I hope I haven't appeared too dogmatic or unkind. As for your own standpoint, as I have said, I understand it and respect it. It is in fact the normal, healthy point of view. And now I agree that, with that viewpoint, the attitude you take in your articles is the only one possible for you.
So, my dear Miss Roper, don't worry any more about any strictures of mine, but go ahead on your own very interesting and very helpful lines. At any rate, you will have gathered that I have been sufficiently interested to read everything you have written! Perhaps that will compensate far any annoyance I may have caused you.
Yours very sincerely,
Wallace Stort.