Dear Sir, - Like "Air Gunner," it is a continual source of irritation to me to find so much of the fad and fancy in your paper. By all means keep the Correspondence Supplement for this kind of debate if you wish, but for heaven's sake keep it from straggling all over the rest of the paper. It is very great galling for a reader to try and get into a yarn and then to come up against the fad and fancy! As it is, I think we got too much of "Bottier" and Beth Hilliad, who drool on eternally about their fetishes, and in the articles one reads there is far too much dwelling on the psychological side of life.
Surely it is not too much to ask that the literary section of the paper be kept free of faddist topics? Let us have some goad stories and articles in that, and keep the fads and fancies confined to the back half of the paper, where those readers who are not interested need not read them unless they choose to.
I enjoyed the story about the Caribs, and I enjoy "Old London" etc. This is real reading matter and raises London Life beyond the "silly magazine" stage. As "Air Gunner" truly says, not all your readers are interested in the fads and fancies, though I know that a few stalwarts would believe that they were. If there is one fad above another that irritates me, is that of the so called "charm of the monopede." I would be the last man on earth to deny these unlucky girls the sympathy and chivalry that their sad state merits, and for this reason I am sorry to see how eagerly they lap up the tales of their one-legged admirers about their "unique charm." To my mind, in attempting to glamorise and draw attention to their sad state, they are both undignified and far too credulous. The majority of healthy minded males prefer their women to be whole, and if amputation is a sad necessity, then they much prefer the amputated one to do all possible to conceal, and not reveal, her deficiency.
I can't understand the type of mind that will, by letters to your columns, endeavour to lead a one-legged girl on to make an exhibition of herself, and I think that it is time that the attention of maimed girls was drawn to the fact that monopede admirers are very much in the minority, and so their extravagant views should not be catered for.
No doubt this letter is too frank for your columns, so I can hardly expect it to be printed, nevertheless I can no longer go on reading London Life without telling you frankly what a continual source of irritation the fad and fancy debates are to me.
Yours truly,
Honesty